Blog-based Sites vs. Traditional SitesSo you want a website for your business. Why should you use a blogging tool rather than a page-based content management tool?
Blog-based sites have a number of advantages over a traditional static site or a site driven by page-based content management systems.
Blog-based Sites:
Build Credibility: Research shows that business build credibility on
web by showing that there is a real company and real people behind
website.
Blogs make it easier to be more personable. No, there's no "be personable" button or checkbox in a blogging interface that would force you to abandon third-person corporate speak, come out from behind
curtain, and be personable on your web site. Many businesses are simply using blogging tools to power their press or news room area on a traditional website, taking advantage of blogs low costs, highly usable interface, RSS feeds, built-in archiving, etc.
But blogging does encourage a first-person, more "business-casual" style than a traditional website, mostly due to bloggings roots as a personal online journal. The Cluetrain Manifesto's main point was that with
advent of
Internet, markets are now conversations. Blogs are perfect tools for allowing and encouraging businesses to be part of that conversation.
Businesses that use blogs to reveal themselves as real people with names, faces, opinions, interests -- and yes, some flaws -- will ultimately be more successful online that those who choose to remain faceless, nameless, and third-person.
Are Able to Handle Smaller Chunks of Content: This is a tough one to get your head around. Typically we think of websites as a collection of "pages", linked together by a navigation bar. Many CMS systems support this paradigm - you log in, find your "page" and edit
content that exists on that page. Pages become
"unit of measure" for a site - if someone asked you how big your site is, you'd answer with
number of pages it contains.
The unit of measure for blog content is a "post". Each new entry is a post, and usually contains (at
minimum) a title and a body. Sometimes there is also an "extended entry", which is used when you see a "Read More" link.
Typically
home page for a blog is a collection of
most recent posts. Each post might also have it's own unique page - otherwise known as a permalink. Posts often get assigned to a category, and a category might have it's own "page" that contains links to all
posts in that category.
But a post might also be a product in an online catalog, a single link in a list of favorite sites, one event in a historical timeline, or contain an image that gets randomized in
site header. A single web "page" may contain posts or lists of posts from one or multiple weblogs. Sidebar content chunks may come from a seperate weblog than
main site content. One post might contain your site copyright date that gets used on every page in
site.
By breaking
traditional "page model" of websites, blogging tools offer
capability of serving up a variety of content types, entered and maintained through a single interface. Adding a product to
online catalog can use
same interface and process as a new image header or a new chunk of content.