Blogging has become the greatest pastime of all the word with an internet connection. It’s a great way to tell your story, share ideas with the world, and hone your writing skills online, for free. Blogging is also a great way for marketers to drive traffic and conversions through quality content posted online. There are a variety of blogging platforms that aim to achieve this. Our team at 10KeyThings has put together a diverse list of the most popular and powerful blogging platforms out there.
10 best blogging platforms
1. Medium.com
This minimalist blogging platform is right now the hottest thing in online blogs. You will find high quality bloggers and writing on a variety of topics on this platform. This is a great place to get your work noticed by either starting your own Medium publication or collaborating with existing publications to get your work noticed. The vibrant writer’s community is a huge plus to get great feedback on your work.
For some, Medium might feel a bit restrictive owing to its completely minimal features options and almost no customization. However, people have been using its publications feature and social media interactions to great effect in order to publicize their work.
2. WordPress.org
This is the big daddy of all the blogging platforms out there. Blogging at one time had become nearly synonymous with WordPress and this has been there since the beginning of the wave. This blogging platform offers a huge variety of customizations for your own personal space online. You can mould it any way you want, choosing from a huge host of templates and design options and even get a cool WordPress domain name.
Writers can definitely reap the benefits of WordPress’ SEO focus to get their work highlighted in all the right places. WordPress is a powerful website engine and they claim to power a quarter of the internet. So go ahead and jump on the bandwagon.
3. Blogger.com
Google’s open source blogging platform, this was the prototype blogging platform which was hugely popular and still remains a sprawling complex of posts. Blogger offers a limited range of templates and styles to choose from in designing your blog, but the readership base is quite large and you can reach a broad audience.
A disadvantage here is that Google owns the domains you create and can basically shut them down at any time, not that it is likely to happen. Despite this, blogger still remains one of the most popular online platforms to create blogs and attracts a large readership base.
4. Tumblr.com
Tumblr is the perfect spot for the casual, social media blogger in you. It favours content that is rich in images, gifs or design and is not very conducive to long posts or thousands of words per article. Tumblr has a great social community behind it, so it can be the best place for your photo-blog, artistic work and other visually appealing designs.
Tumblr blogging platform offers a variety of creative templates for your blog design and gives you a custom domain you can share across the web easily. This is one of the best hosting platforms for your micro blogging needs, when you want to say more than a tweet, but less than a news report and with plenty of images thrown in the mix.
5. Quora.com
Quora is a vibrant community platform to ask and answer questions about nearly everything on the planet. It can also be used as a blogging platform to publish your thoughts or ideas or even start a small publication. Many of the top writers on Quora actively use the blog feature on it to expound ideas they cannot directly answer in specific questions.
Quora blogs are extremely simple to setup, give you a unique name and URL, and are quite minimalist in layout. Customization is not the mantra in a Quora blog, but enhancing readership and gaining followers is definitely easier.
6. Svbtle.com
This is a blogging platform that is giving hot competition to Medium as the goto place for all new bloggers out there. It has many of the same elements – simple, clean design with the writing as the sole focus. This kind of format is fast gaining traction in the blogging community as it enhances both the reading and writing experience, leading to more views, reads, shares and so on.
The one advantage Svbtle currently offers over Medium is the ability to have your own custom domain. This is great if you want to promote a personal product or brand, but may not be as necessary for a personal blog or newbie writer. Svbtle right now has limits on customizations it offers, but they have promised to add more options soon, so this could be the space to watch out for in the future.
7. LinkedIn.com
This is certainly a strange entry on this list. LinkedIn is known for being the social network of businesses, but recently, they have launched a Long-form post initiative. In other words, blogs. They are doing it cautiously, just like any business would in rolling out a new feature on a solid market product. Currently, they are allowing normal folk as well as the LinkedIn “Influencers” (500 leading professionals across industry) to publish these posts.
A drawback is that this form is not available all over the world, it is limited to geographic location and is not allowed for companies. However, if available to you, it is a powerful tool to showcase your writing prowess or ideas in a professional setting which could connect you to interesting job opportunities.
8. Squarespace.com
Squarespace is in the business of providing a powerful, website builder tool for all your needs, blogging being just one of them. If you have plans to do a website, launch a product or write a professional blog, Squarespace is a blogging platform that will cater to your needs. Squarespace is not an open source platform, with monthly plans starting at 8$ a month for a personal space. It does have a free 14 day trial for you to get used to the platform and be willing to pay for the service.
It’s reputation as a host for the greatest web designs is rock solid and it has a huge user base that you can convert into a loyal following for your writing.
9. Postach.io
The cleverly named Postach.io is an extension of one of the most popular note taking apps, Evernote. The idea here is to enable Evernote users to simply start blogging through the notes app. The concept is interesting and has found a lot of traction with users who have adopted the application. The idea behind the application is to make blogging a super easy task for Evernote users.
The service is not free but works on a “freemium” pricing model, with prices starting at 5$ monthly. The price is not exorbitant in and of itself, however, this does limit its capability to compete as a serious blogging platform against the other heavyweights out there.
10. Jekyll
This is the blogging platform for all the tech geeks out there who take immense pride in building stuff from scratch and take offense at being offered “standard templates” for anything. Technically, Jekyll is supposed to be easier, lighter and simpler to use and generate blogs and websites, but do not be fooled into thinking you can do it overnight with just some basic knowledge.
The recommended platform to run Jekyll is Ruby. Once you get the hang of creating a blog for yourself, the platform offers very powerful tools to customize your content and its appearance online. This is a thoroughly professional tool for the serious bloggers out there.
The most important thing with blogging is for your content to reach the widest possible audience. The blogging platforms listed here are the hottest on the block with people all over the world flocking to them to write and read great content. So go ahead and pick the one that best suits your needs and tell us about your experience in the comments!