Blogger blogs still work for small business

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Blogger is one of the easiest ways to start a blog for a small business. Easiest, but not the best respected. To the blogging elite, the blogspot.com address has become a kind of badge of shame.

However, Blogger continues to introduce new ways to make your blog look good and work for a small business. Despite all the peer pressure to use WordPress, the secret is that what you share is more important than where you share it.

I've used WordPress, TypePad, Posterous, Tumblr, and more. Blogger still works for me and my small business. It's up to you to decide. Use the tools that suit you best.

Why I like Blogger for Small Business
And TypePad and Posterous

I've talked about the small business website problem before. I think many more small businesses would benefit from having their own web presence, even if it just contained the basics on this website checklist. Here's why I like Blogger as a potential solution for a small business, though TypePad and Posterous also qualify.

1. It's easy.
Almost any person can set up a basic information page about their business in a couple of hours without any professional help. Here's the basic page for my liquor store. Blogger, TypePad, and Posterous make this easy. If you have used Word or Publisher to create document layouts on your computer, you'll be able to do your own setup.

With WordPress, you have to like tinkering around. It is more like advanced page layout software, with many things to get right before you get good results. You have to decide on a hosting provider, and then get WordPress installed on your hosting. Many hosts, but not all, make this a simple process. Then you can get started on making your basic info site. So, much like page layout, you might need to hire a pro to help you get good results.

2. Customization is possible, even for beginners.
Blogger's Layout Designer makes it possible for most anyone to make changes to their design. Want it a bit wider? Adjust the slider. Want different colors or a new background photo? Play around until you are happy. Want that page element in a new location? Drag it over there.

WordPress can only approach this with helper software. The premium Headway theme, for example, provides an excellent Visual Editor that includes most of this functionality and more. If you are a beginner wanting to use WordPress, I highly recommend Headway.

3. Updates are automatic. 

Services like Blogger, TypePad and Posterous keep themselves up to date.

WordPress requires you to do updates on the WordPress software and any plugins you've installed. The more plugins you have, the more you have to do this. This process is getting easier, but still must be done. 

Are you a WordPress fan?

That's OK with me. Use it, and enjoy. I use it for one of my own businesses that requires more intensive web development: Tourism Currents. I also use professional support to keep it running properly. I see this as a case of using the right tool for the right job.

Blogger Tips

If you are interested in using Blogger for your small business, I'll gladly share what I've learned. Here is my third updated list of tips for using Blogger effectively.

Use an outstanding template:

1. Use the new templates in the Template Designer. It's single best thing Blogger has done in years. There are six flexible, easy to customize templates available now. I love them all! It's a huge improvement over the old template system.
   
2. Customize your template. It's easy to adjust the width, change the background image, pick your own fonts and colors. Play around until you find a setup that looks good for your blog.
   
3. Replace your header with a custom image. You can use any graphics program create a banner to suit your site and theme, and post it from the Edit Layout section. It's amazing how much a custom banner can dress up the look of your site.
   
4. Add custom CSS for extra customization. You'll probably never need it, but CSS allows you to customize formatting in additional ways. It's available now in the Template Designer, under Advanced, then scroll down to Add CSS. (Need help? Search for "Editing CSS in the Template Designer" in the Help section.)
   
   

Get your own identity:

5. Get your own custom domain. Register your own .com URL, and set it up to work with Blogger. Go to Blogger Help and search for Custom Domain to get detailed help. Your old blogspot.com address will automatically redirect, and your search results in Google will still find you.
   
   

Change Settings like a pro:

6. Make your site mobile-friendly. It's on the Email and Mobile tab, right up top. It simplifies your template to display nicely on mobile phones and tiny screens. It will automatically display on most mobile phones. To see it on any browser, just add "/?m=1" to the end of your address, like this: http://www.smallbizsurvival.com/?m=1  
7. Use the spiffy new post editor. You'll find it on the Basic settings, all the way at the bottom. It's much better at images and several other important tasks.
8. Set all your Site Feeds to Full. That gives you a separate feed for comments, for individual labels, as well as for comments on individual posts. It's cool to offer readers that option to subscribe to comments on a post, so they can follow discussion. And we'll use the label feed for a cool trick later in this post. 
9. Enable Post Pages, from the Archiving Settings. That gives each post its own page and URL, so other folks can link back to you.
10. Use the MORE feature to split up posts. Put just the teaser on your home page. Let readers click through for the rest. Especially good for posts with lots of photos.
    
11. Test more cool features with Blogger in Draft. Instead of www.blogger.com, go to draft.blogger.com. You'll get to try all the new features as they come out, much earlier than their "official" release.
    

Add the best Gadgets:

12. Add the Google Search Box, and keep it near the top. It's incredibly common for readers to want to search for something specific in your blog. Make it easy.
    
13. Include your blog Archive. I'm partial to the hierarchy style, myself. Now that we have five years of archives, it's gotten a bit too big to be managed this way.  
14. Add your Labels list. If you Label each post with logical categories, then your Labels list in the sidebar is a terrific index for readers.
15. Show off your Popular Posts. Once you have been blogging a while, you'll have some terrific gems in your archives. Google's Popular Posts gadget will show them off.
    
16. Use the Feed gadget to add automatically updated content. The footer on Small Biz Survival with Entrepreneurship, Marketing, etc., is done with Feed gadgets. I used the Label feed (which you turned on in tip #7 above), and put it in a Feed gadget for each category. Search for help on feed URLs to see how to get your own label feed.  
17. Consider adding a Followers list. It's not just a list of who likes you, it's also a tool for you to contact your readers: Google Connect. It's powerful, and I'm not sure anyone takes enough advantage of it.
    
18. Drag gadgets to alternate page positions. You have more than just a sidebar. Put items above and below the posts, and all the way down in the page footer. 
19. Use LinkWithin to show related posts under each story. The LinkWithin tool brings up a photo and title of three related posts. Highly recommended! 
20. Make the most of the Blogger banner. The Share feature makes it easy for readers to Tweet your stories. Change its color in the Layout Editor.
    
    
    

    Make it easy for readers to comment:

21. Use the inline comment form. Under Settings, on the Comments tab, set the comment form placement to be "embedded below post." That keeps it on the same page as your posts. This is a big improvement over the old separate comment page or the even-worse pop-up window. (Both of those are still options!)
    
22. Open up commenting. Turn off the word verification and comment moderation. Allow anonymous comments. Don't worry; you'll still get less spam than WordPress users. If you ever have a problem, you can selectively turn these controls back on as needed. Even with 21 blogs on my Blogger Dashboard, I delete only a few spam comments per week.
    
23. Use Blogger's comment moderation page. The Comments tab gives you a list of all comments on all your posts. You can easily delete or mark the spam comments. It's terrific to have them in one place when a spammer goes on a spree, leaving you half a dozen little gifts across different posts. When you mark the spam comments, you help Blogger get better at detecting spam, too.
    
24. Post your comment policy. Decide what you allow and don't allow, and let folks know. My comment policy definitely makes it clear.
    

Manage your blog:

25. Use Pages for static content, like "About us." Blogger supports static pages for things that don't change often. We have one for our Guided Tour, a Subscription page, etc. Blogger will link them for you, or you can set up your own linkbar in the gadgets/layout section.
    
26. Check the Stats. Basic statistics are now built in to Blogger. You can learn a lot about what your readers are searching for on the Traffic Sources tab, under Search Keywords. If you need more advanced statistics or Google Analytics, you can add the script in a HTML/Javascript Gadget. 
27. Schedule posts ahead of time. Build your editorial calendar, work ahead, and set Blogger to do the work of posting. This is how I handle posting while I'm away at a conference or on vacation.
    
28. Post via email. It's under Email on the Settings tab. You can set it to post automatically, or to save emailed posts as drafts. This is the easiest way to introduce absolute newbies to blogging.
    
29. Host images at Picasa Web Albums. Images from your posts are automatically uploaded to a Picasa Web Album. You can also use it to host badges, RSS buttons, or other images you want to upload separately and place in a gadget. Yes, you can still use Flickr. I do.
    
30. Let Blogger worry about traffic spikes. Even when my traffic spikes due to sudden popularity of a post, my Blogger site stays up. That's pretty darn cool, and exceptionally tough for other hosts to manage.
    
31. Backup your blog with one click. OK, two clicks. On the Basic Settings tab, there's an option to export. You get an XML file with your whole blog you can save to disk. It works lightning quick. Because you are relying on an unpaid service with Blogger, it is imperative that you back up your posts. And I have a trick to make that easier:
32. Use Posterous (or another service) for an automatic backup of your Blogger blog. Any service that allows posting by email can work. Enter the "post to" email address in the BlogSend Address, on the Email and Mobile Settings. That will send each of your posts to the other service, and it will keep it up-to-date, a shadow of your Blogger blog. If anything happens to your Blogger blog, you can quickly redirect to the shadow site. 

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