Should I add a blog to a site or use a blogging service?

I would go with putting the blog on your website itself. This will help with a number of things: Transparency: Your users will feel as if they are on the same website, because they in fact are. Your blog will become simply an extension to your website.

On the other hand, a blogging service will most likely appear as though you are going to a completely different website Integration: You are able to integrate everything on your website with your blog. This includes any existing user bases, or future ones. Also, the look of your blog can match your website perfectly, much more so than with a blogging service Customization: You get 100% control over every single feature of your blog.

If you want some new crazy feature, you can program it. Blogging services are typically much more closed than this The downsides will be that you have to maintain it, and any features that you want you have to put in yourself.

I would go with putting the blog on your website itself. This will help with a number of things: Transparency: Your users will feel as if they are on the same website, because they in fact are. Your blog will become simply an extension to your website.

On the other hand, a blogging service will most likely appear as though you are going to a completely different website. Integration: You are able to integrate everything on your website with your blog. This includes any existing user bases, or future ones.

Also, the look of your blog can match your website perfectly, much more so than with a blogging service. Customization: You get 100% control over every single feature of your blog. If you want some new crazy feature, you can program it.

Blogging services are typically much more closed than this. The downsides will be that you have to maintain it, and any features that you want you have to put in yourself.

One of the advantages of having blog on your site is that all the content will belong to your site, which is good for search engine since it will increase your site visibility through SERP. But you will have the price to pay: installation and maintenance.

Most blog software needs at least some upgrading or security patching from time to time. Are you relying on some sort of social media network effects from these blogs? If so, you may get better mileage from a hosted product as they often promote related sites within their networks (e.g. Wordpress has the "Possibly related posts" feature).

As Brian said, integration could be an issue if you have other areas of your site that rely on logins.In that case, probably better to host it yourself.

One of the most common questions I get about business blogging is whether it's best to host a blog on your own site vs. hosting it on one of the major blog hosting sites, such as WordPress.com, Blogger or Typepad. The answer is different for each of these, so let's look at them one at a time, as well as some of the alternatives. WordPress.com - WordPress (the application) is a great platform - it's what we run here at About.com, and what I use on all of my other business blogs.

So WordPress.com, which offers free hosting, may seem like a very enticing choice at first. However, they have a strict "non-commercial use" policy and enforce it, well, "rabidly" would be putting it nicely. I have known instances of several people having their blogs simply deleted, without warning, without recourse, without being sent a copy of the data backup, etc., just for having too many affiliate links in their posts.

Blogging about your area of expertise seems to be OK, but try to actually sell something and you could lose all your work. Hardly worth the risk. It's great for personal blogs, but not for business.

They do offer a commercial-grade hosting service, but at $300 a month, it's clearly not targeted at small business. Blogger/Blogspot - Blogger.com is the authoring service, and you have the option to either host the blog on your own site or on Blogspot.com for free. Blogger really deserves credit for bringing blogging into the mainstream.

You can set up a blog in like two minutes, which is pretty cool. But while they don't have the strict anti-commercial policy of WordPress.com (at least not in practice), the problem of "splogging" (blogs set up as a new form of spam, often stealing copyrighted material in doing so) is such a huge problem for them that they frequently have "false positives", i.e. , mark a legitimate blog as spam and remove it.

I've heard of this happening to several business owners. In every case, Blogger reinstated their blogs with no loss of content, but it usually took 2-3 days. Is it worth the risk?

Now you also have the option of using Blogger for authoring but then hosting it on your own site. This works, but if you're paying for hosting anyway, why not use a more robust solution run directly from your site? There's just so much more you can do with blog software run on your own site and frankly, it's not any harder to set it up.

Typepad - Typepad.com is intriguing in that it is purely a blog hosting service, not a full-fledged web hosting service. You can host commercial blogs, and even on your own domain. At $4.95 a month for the basic service, it's pretty reasonable, but that doesn't allow you to customize your template or run it on your own domain.

Those features put you at $8.95 a month, which gets you three blogs on their own domains. By comparison, you can get full-service blog hosting that will support WordPress for around $7 a month or less (WordPress.org recommends several hosts that charge $6.95 a month and specialize in WordPress hosting). Of course, since Typepad is just a blog hosting service, you get any upgrades to the product automatically.

My recommendation is that if you're trying to create one or more blogs as businesses themselves, Typepad represents a viable option. But for a blog in support of your business, I don't think it's the best solution. MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. - There are cases in which running your blog within a blog-based community, such as LiveJournal or even MySpace, could make sense - if and only if that's where your target market is.

And all of the successful internet marketers and affiliate marketers on MySpace are using their blogs. It's a given. See Ross Goldberg, Stephen Ralph, Theo Baskind and Coach Deb Micek, just for a start.

Most of them also have their own blogs on their own sites as well, but they do use the blogs within MySpace as a marketing channel. Also, check out WordPress. Com0, the blog of fashion designer Keiko Lynn, proprietor of Postlapsaria.

Observe how her blog ties in to her business - brilliantly done, in my book. Oddly enough, though, both LiveJournal and Facebook have "non-commercial use" clauses in their terms of service similar to WordPress.com, but neither of them has ever enforced it vigorously. That just covers them when they delete real spammers.

BLOG i360 - I know, you've probably never heard of this yet, but I expect a lot of people will be soon. BLOG i360 is a marketing platform that was built originally on WordPress but has grown way beyond it. In a nutshell, imagine taking all of the cool marketing-oriented plug-ins for WordPress and bundling them all in, pre-installed -- no need to go figure out which ones do what you're trying to do (or even work at all).

On top of that, they have a more robust content management system than WordPress's basic "Pages" feature.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.

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