Coming to Chennai has introduced me to many new things. I started using Twitter! I have also had the chance to meet up with budding and experienced entrepreneurs. As part of the
Chennai Open Coffee Club I experienced un-conferences. I tried one in office and it didn’t quite go off very well, but then that’s another post.
The charm of being an entrepreneur is huge and draws a lot of people to it. I spoke to many people and listened attentively to many a discussion to understand various business models. I came across some very exiting ideas. But I got stuck at one question. Will it make money? Nothing excited me enough (read: nothing made enough money). Unfortunately I was looking at them through colored glasses of my cushioned existence of a reasonable income being deposited in my bank each month.
What I did realize is that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what your business plan is. It is all about the giant leap of faith, jumping off the cliff and making it happen. All it needs is lots of execution excellence and some luck.
It must be the technology bug in me or just the man in me wanting to play with new toys. In my quest to explore different blogging platforms, I have tried my hand at Blogger, Wordpress.com and self hosted Wordpress. Typepad required me to provide credit card information to sign-up and other platforms just didn’t seem popular enough. I searched and researched the comparisons between Blogger and Wordpress. Most comparison posts compare Blogger and self hosted Wordpress. However I found this really useful post that
compares Blogger and Wordpress.com, which in my mind is the true comparison.
My personal preference is now with Blogger as compared to Wordpres.com, if you want to get started quickly and without any expense. In addition to the comparison in the link above, some additional comparisons are:
- Blogger allows Javascript code in widgets. This allows you to add more variety of widgets on your blog. Wordpress.com doesn’t allow Javascript widgets.
- Blogger is Adsense ready (read 'it allows Javascript code'). Wordpress.com doesn’t allow advertising. Now rest assured, getting your first $100 from Google is going to take you a few years, but still no harm is trying. You need to earn minimum $100 before you get any cash from Google.
- Blogger allows you to add new templates which Wordpress.com doesn’t allow. You are limited to the themes provided by Wordpress.com.
- Blogger provides email alerts for comments (and posts too). Wordpress.com (and self hosted Wordpress too actually) doesn’t provide any email alerts for new comments.
- Blogger has an in-built poll widget. Wordpress.com doesn't have a poll widget.
So there you are. In my view, get started with Blogger. The other criteria for choosing between the two could also be the availability of the blog name. You might need a blog name that may be available on a platform not of your choice.
However, notwithstanding the technology debate about the blogging platform, I finally figured that it is the
CONTENT that matters most. Do I have the content on my blog that will pull readers or which is personally satisfying to me? That is far more important than the blogging platform!!!
I attended two sessions of the Blogging and New Media Workshop organized by
Indian Blog and New Media Society. I was actually surprised to see a relatively large turnout. There would have been approximately 100 people. That’s not bad for a Sunday evening session and a working day Monday evening session. The audience was very varied in terms of their experience as a blogger and I commend how the presenters, Ajay Jain and Abhishek Kant, handled the audience questions with patience.
There were also a significant number of women in the audience so it’s not just the men who are blogging in India.
Quite honestly I thought the audience would be really interested in blogging, learning through blogging and exploring new avenues. Most were interesting in knowing how to make money through blogs. No harm but whatever happened to learning and personal growth through blogging...
The sessions I attended were on Marketing your blog, Benefits of Blogging for Executives, Business and Professionals, and How to Make Money as a Blogger. I found congruence in many of the tips in the sessions and in one of my
previous posts on blogging. A part of the session was dedicated to corporate blogs and how companies can benefit through blogging. Companies should not only use blogs but also other social media sites to manage their brand and monitor what’s being said about their brand. Some important tips of companies were not to outsource blogging, and have people other than just CEOs and PR/Corp Communication Manager to communicate with the readers. There are some examples of corporate blogs. I had posted some examples in my earlier posts on
corporate blogging and
tips on running a team blog.
There was an interesting session on SEO, SEM and generally marketing your blog. I didn’t know that links to authoritative sites like
Wikipedia improved your search ranking. And that broken links on you site can have an adverse effect on your search ranking. When Google search engine searches your blog, it also adds links on your blogs to its search. So having inbound links (links to your own blog pages) are better than outbound links. However out-links to relevant blogs does increase your search ranking. What statistics to measure was also discussed. I found an interesting post on a
quick primer on various web metrics and how to use them.
It was good to see a large turnout for the workshop and to see the audience interacting in the workshop. With the Indian blogging scene growing exponentially, I am sure groups like IBNMS will make a significant contribution. Here’s wishing IBNMS all the very best for their future workshops.
