Blogger or WordPress … that is the question. UPDATED

This weekend I transferred a number of Blogger blogs over to WordPress. A frequent comment was that if they had known more they would have begun their blog on WordPress. While it doesn’t really matter on what platform you begin your blog experience with, like a spoon or a fork … Blogger and WordPress have differiences that deserve consideration as a tool to reach your objective. (Fortunately like a spoon or a fork, Blogger and WordPress are almost equally easy to use.)

So the choice depends on the objective. If your objective is to reach an audience that is primarily friends and family with a web-based journal, I think Blogger is probably your best choice, even over WordPress.com. On the other hand, if your objective includes presenting your business or profession and engaging clients and potential clients then self-hosted WordPress.org is your best choice.

If you already have a website, cost is probably not a consideration because all the basic software to operate a WordPress blog is free. Your web-host likely even has a “one-click” install function that you can use to do all WordPress the setup.

There are three important advantages with WordPress if you are considering using a blog to represent your business;

• With self-hosted WordPress you have control. All the text, images, add-ons etc are on your server … under your control. Want to move, delete, enhance or anything you (not Blogger) control all the files. Your business should be under your control.

• WordPress can expand as you need, it can even become the basis for a complete website. Recently businesses large and small such as the Time, the NFL, Martha Stewart, even the tiny Daily Coyote have moved from different blog platforms to WordPress. Over the last 18 months WordPress has become one of the premier website content managers allowing for low-cost and even do it yourself websites which can be managed without expensive software and hardware. You can even manage a WordPress based website from an i-Phone. Your business can benefit from a low-cost operation and future expansion options

• With WordPress it is easy and less expensive to route all your blog traffic using your own URL. With Blogger all your traffic will go to Blogspot. Blogs like Wedding Dish regularly get over 100 new visitors each day just from Google searches. Your URL is part of your business branding, it should always be the basis of your web presence.

And the answer is … in summary, if you want to share a journal with friends and family Blogger is the way to go, but if it is to do with your business or profession WordPress is the best choice.

p.s. – I think you can do it for yourself, but if you want some WordPress set-up help and orientation, let me know we have some very inexpensive services that will get you on track quickly.

UPDATE (11-27-08)

I recently came across this factor as to why if you are using your blog for business you should seflhost instead of using Blogspot. From HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing blog

Savvy technical people will tell you that the right way to move a website or blog from one domain to another is via what is called a “301 permanent redirect”. In lay person’s terms, what this means is that you setup a clean forwarding address from your old site to the new site. By using this approach, you don’t lose any of the search engine love you’ve pulled together. Guess what: Google does not let you do a 301 redirect from your old site to anywhere else if you’re using blogspot.com as your domain. Let me repeat this. If you currently have a blog that is something like mybusiness.blogspot.com and you build a ton of inbound links to the site, Google does not let you redirect that SEO value to a new site (like your company website). This is a Very Bad Thing. (emphasis added)

Related posts:

1. Migrating from Blogger to WordPress in 7 Steps While Keeping Subscribers and Search Results (UPDATED)
2. Upgrade your Blogger* blog to self-hosted WordPress – just $47 – This weekend only
3. Free Blog Websites Cost You a Lot
4. SEO Gone Wild in Texas – UPDATED below
5. A Client Shares – How Our WordPress Based Websites Actually Increased His Business