Blogger: Should You Use it?

Over the last week, there's been  discussion on one of the forums for our Mentor program, about Blogger.  The topic was "why is Blogger inadequate?" You already know Patsi and I recommend TypePad for our clients who are not technically inclined and are looking for support and ease of use. I thought you might be interested in the questions and views of others.

Our clients come to us with all different levels of knowledge, understanding and some already have blogs on other platforms. Our position is that whatever works best for you is the best.  But if you ask our opinion, we'll tell you.

The following forum discussion was between Judy Rodman, Debra Simpson and me. Judy is a vocal coach and currently has a blog on Blogger. Debra is a digital marketer and has blogs on Blogger and Wordpress.

Knowing The Blog Squad's preference for TypePad, Judy asked, "why is Blogger inadequate?"

Judy: The important differences I can see in the New Blogger service and Typepad is live tech support and that Blogger doesn't offer trackbacks. Could you be more specific on your experience with why, as stated by your guest on this week's B&B radio show [Debra Simpson0, Blogger has been so disappointing?

Denise: One of my problems is that with a free service like Blogger, there are no guarantees and no support. You know that bar with the Blogger logo that's at the top of every Blogger blog?

1. You're advertising their service
2. You have no control over what blog appears if someone clicks on the Next Blog link. I heard a story of a professional who was using Blogger and when a reader clicked on that link, was directed to a porn blog. Is that what you want your readers to find when they leave your blog? What kind of message could that give about you?
3. Blogger is the blog of choice for spammer and spam blogs. I don't want to be associated with that.

If you want to pay someone to customize the blog for you, that's great. But for someone who wants to be able to do it themself, I don't think it's that easy or intuitive.

Debra: Ok, well, my first impression is that I've been on Blogger since Feb. 2005. When asked to switch over to the new Blogger this year, I happily complied. Until today, after having searched out how to update my blogs with the new template I hadn't seen the new template. Apparently Blogger decided to only give a handful of blogs the option to change to the new template (easily). For the rest of us, we have to go to the help section and search it out.

So, now that my customer service rant is over....I'd like the opportunity to look at the new blogger template and play around with it this weekend. I'll give you my opinion on Monday.

With a cursory look, I'm happy with Blogger's changes. At least they've brought it up to date and can offer customizations they couldn't offer before. It will be fun to check it out and see how it compares to WordPress, which is my specialty

Debra: Ok, I've had plenty of time to pound Blogger and I stand by what I said. I wouldn't use blogger. First of all, I agree with Denise that blogger's ad will never go away and you can click the "next blog" not being sure what will come up.

However, for me, there are two issues with Blogger. After having been with Blogger for over two years, I have no way to export my blog content so I can import it into WordPress. That's a big bummer. The only way for me to get my content out is to go post by post. Not happy!!

Second, no pages. I use RSS extensively with WordPress to feed the blog content into websites. Blogger's limited to categories and that's it. For what I do, that's next to useless.

I am advising my small business buddies not to go with Blogger.

Denise: Debra, thanks for the update and confirming our reasons for not using Blogger. Regarding export/import, there is a way to export your content [I think]. I don't know about importing it to Wordpress, but you can import it to a TypePad blog. It's not easy or simple, but it can be done. I've managed to do it for a couple of clients and other clients have paid web people to do it.

Pages are another ball of wax. I know that is a benefit of WP. TypePad can be customized that way as well, but you have to be a techie or have a techie do it for you.

Debra: Yes, you can import into WordPress, you can't export out of Blogger...therein lies the rub!! I tried converting my North San Diego Business At Large into the new template and just don't like it at all and took it back to the classic template I customized. When you get spoiled........there's no turning back!

Denise: Here's the info how it works with TypePad. Don't know if that helps with Wordpress: http://support.typepad.com/cgi-bin/typepad.cfg/php/enduser/home.php

Judy: As follow up...My web designer is still saying that for what I want to do, (host a blog on my new site) Blogger platform works fine, in his experience. Don't know what I'm going to do right now. I may use the website blog for my and my clients' news and go with a TypePad for a new "All Things Vocal" blog about... well, all things vocal :)

I want to point out that I have no problem with using free blog platforms for personal blogging, or using Wordpress if you're technically inclined or you hire someone to set it up and train you how to use it.  But for many professionals who just want to blog about their business, we think Typepad is a fairly simple and cost-effective solution.

What do you think? Have 2 cents you want to add to the discussion? Hit the comments link and contribute your opinion.

Comments

[Vin]

Hi,
The Blogger navbar no longer carries Ads. There is a hack to make it disappear. See
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2006/10/navbar-in-beta-blogger.html. The new layout templates offer a graphical interface to blog design making it easy. There is a hack for Blogger to WP transfer. You can use RSS to feed blogger content to websites. See http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2006/10/add-content-with-rss-feeds.html

[Debra]

I'll try the hack for removing the top nav bar, thank you. I'd appreciate knowing where the hack for exporting to wordpress is located.

I know I can feed blogger content into a website with RSS, however I do like being able to create pages, as well as category/posts. Is there a hack to create pages?

[Ramon Ray]

I've used Blogger.com for years with no problems, to update smallbiztechnology.com.

there is no advertising; templates are limited but you can find others; blogger does have RSS feeds;

It's not as robust as typepad or WP of course - but it works and works quite well I think.

Ramon Ray, Smallbiztechnology.com

[Karl Peschel]

Blogger also has the capability to host on your own domain, instead of on their servers. Use the Advanced options and enter your FTP info. Setup yourdomain.com/blog (for example) to house all the files.
Being that all posts will be stored on your own domain host, you can backup and/or move them to another platform like Wordpress or Typepad. Also helps if Blogger ever decides to shut down your blog.

[TET]

I've used blogger for years without any issues. I chose it because at the time I could build it right into my web site and host my blog on my server. I'm able to customise blogger's templates so that it looks exactly like my web site (and being on my server, is in fact part of my web site).

Blogger no longer forces advertising on your blog (even if they host your blog on blogspot) and the blog tool bar has an option to turn it off if you don't want it displayed.

Blogger does have RSS feeds which you can extend the capability of using a service like Feedburner.

I don't know what all the fuss is about regarding exporting and importing between blog platforms. How often do you actually do that? Must be hell for search engines to keep track of your blog if you keep moving it around.