Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
1
The most important point, when choosing how to get started, is that starting in WordPress.com
gives you a chance to get up and running with a WordPress blog quickly and easily. You don't incur
any penalty for deferring the move to WordPress software. Many blogs go on for years without
ever moving from WordPress.com.
When you do make the move to WordPress software, you'll actually be much better educated and
more experienced with blogging, allowing you to make the most of the more capable, but more
costly, platform.
Other Ways to Create an Online Presence
Increasingly, people and businesses both have an opportunity to use a variety of social media—and
what feels increasingly like an obligation to have multiple points of presence online.
For instance, if you're a professional, you might find that your colleagues are all on LinkedIn. If
you're a businessperson seeking to hire recent college graduates, you might find your target audi-
ence expects you to have a Facebook page.
Twitter allows you to send out an endless stream of messages, called
tweets
, to your subscribers,
called
followers
. You—whether that's “you” as an individual, or “you” as an organization—might be
deemed cool, not cool, or somewhere in between depending on whether or how you use Twitter.
Facebook updates are also handled in a Twitter-like manner now, and you can even use the two
services together.
As a business, you probably need a traditional website more than you need a blog. A blog is a “nice
to have”—if you do it right, a very “nice to have,” but still optional—whereas at least a basic web-
site is a must-have.
WordPress can remove the either/or nature of this dilemma. You can use WordPress as a full-fledged
content management system that can create a traditional website with excellent built-in blogging
capabilities. You can also use your blog as a home or reference point for all your social media inter-
actions.
The point is not that you shouldn't have a blog; it's that the days when having a blog was, by itself,
enough to make your online presence both complete and “cool” have passed. Be ready to use what
you learn from blogging to establish a presence elsewhere in the online world as needed.
