Top Blogging platforms for 2021

The blogging guides you ever need to get started on the successful path of blogging

I kept seeing the TV commercials and ads on Spotify for Wix, with the unbeatable headline:

“The Leader in Website Creation”

The most popular blogging platforms have been Wix, WordPress, LinkedIn for business content generation. Of course, let’s not forget Medium and I will add dev.to to the list in this post.

Why Blogging?

• You have a passion for sharing ideas and spreading the knowledge about a particular topic of interests
• Pick a blogging platform with or without a hosting provider (I recommend Namecheap, Bluehost or GoDaddy)
• Build your own website the hard way, but you get almost limitless of customization with WordPress theme development. It took me literally 2 months to finish the design and development of my professional site

Lets get cooking and dive into the various blogging platforms we can tap into for gaining readership or for journaling!

1. Wix — “ Create a Website You Are Proud Of “

• Upon creating an account, I did the lazy way of connecting it with my Facebook account, I was directed to a slick UI that prompts the question of what got me started on Wix
• Wix offers various beautiful templates for blogs for any purposes. Easily customizable with drag-and-drop feature. For developers, the customize development may be limited in the features that we can tweak. After answering a few questions about your website, keywords and location, you will get a highly personalized SEO plan.

• They make it as easy as pie to create a post, add/edit images and writing in general. In addition to the personalized SEO features, you can also invite other contributors to generate content for your website with customized writing privileges.
• Mobile version gives you control of the mobile view in smaller screen sizes — no app required.

How Much Does It Cost?

Reference: Wix.com/upgrade/website

• Wix pricing starts with the Combo plans at $14/month locked in for the yearly subscription upgrade, 23% of price reduction compared with the $18/month monthly plan. It’s ad-free, hosting, and a domain name for a year.
• Unlimited plan starting at $18/month is great for larger business websites included with 10GB of storage without bandwidth limits.
• For E-commerce plans, the cheapest is the Business Basic at $23/month and can go up to $49/month for Business VIP. The differences are VIP plan offers 50 GB of storage, unlimited video hours you can post, customized reports and priority 24/7 customer care, even though with the Business Basic plan you will still get the standard 24/7 customer care.

In a nutshell, it’s a great starting point for getting into blogging or journaling even for personal self-care or promoting your business to gain readership. The easy-to-learn drag-and-drop editor within the template builder, personalized SEO settings for each blog post make it easy to start a blog with a hosting service, rather than blogging platforms like Medium, Dev.to or social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchap to attract younger audience.

2. WordPress — World’s Most Popular Website Builder

WordPress has been around for decades with a robust and dedicated developer and blogger community and forum. It’s been the most popular website builder and the reputable content managing service to-date.

To get started on creating your blog, you’ll need to get a hosting and domain before creating a wordpress account with a simple database management.

Create any blog or business site you want with no prior experience in CMS (Content Management System) . Here’s the UI when you navigate to customize your site:

WordPress.com

If you don’t want to go with the option of selecting your own domain or hosting, you can host a blog on WordPress.com .

There’s a free version, but the benefit of the premium plans are you get to have your own custom domain name, custom CSS, Google Analytics, better customer support and E-Commerce plans to help you monetize and grow your online branding for the latest online store you’re running or planning to launch.

3. LinkedIn— World’s Best Business Blogging Site

LinkedIn has been the most popular for viral business blogging and content generation across different industries.

LinkedIn Stats at a glance:

• 766 Million LinkedIn Users
• 171 Million LinkedIn Users who are based in the US
• 47% of monthly active users

LinkedIn used to be a resume hosting platform, turned job application dating app and a lot of networking opportunities to connect with those you want to hire or work for. Most referrals happen with a tap of a LinkedIn message. I got my current job through a referral by a former coworker at one of my previous companies.

I read LinkedIn articles on a regular basis, mostly on a weekly cadence depends on my schedule. The readability and visibility of articles are quit high and will be read by more than 45% of the upper-level professionals including managers, directors, VPs and C-level executives.

It serves as a professional blogging, promoting the most viral business related content, and quite often shared and read by those in the same industry looking to expand their knowledge to.

• Plan for a topic related to your profession or the industry you’re interested
• Post regularly on a fixed interval, so you can keep the LinkedIn influencers engaged and stop by your LinkedIn Blog regularly. However, too much of everything is not always optimal.
• Gauge the effectiveness of your content by reviewing each post’s stats as an inspiration and lessons learned for what’s working and what’s not
• Limitation of not owning the blogging site or traffic.

4. Medium— Best Blogging Site: The Traditional, Old-School Way

With its boasting 60 Million of monthly active users, the blogging platform was created by the Twitter co-founder, Ev Williams, with the vision of having an open space for writers and readers alike to share and post stories. 95% of medium users are college graduates, 43% of them earning six-figures.

On Medium, it’s easy to find thought-provoking, and the latest trending piece online. The articles are typically of high virality and many active communities of engaged readers who will promote and comment on high-traffic content.

Posting on the platform is pretty straightforward of using a WYSIWYC editor. The first step is creating an account, and start editing your username, profile picture and a short story about yourself in the About Page and Profile Settings.

Medium Publications allow you to add other contributors to write content on your blog, that way you also gain a better control of what you want your blog to loo like.

• It’s great for going the traditional blogging route, with the downside of not owning the blogging site or traffic
• Perfect for growing engaged readers when you have a lot to say and share stories about any topics of interests with the intent to reach a virality readership and make sure the audience makes it a must-read on a daily or weekly basis

5. Dev.to — Developers Like To Blog, Too !

It’s more geared towards developers, the platform will publicize your blog posts to the communities. In the above screenshot, it’s featuring the latest article about Github repositories.

Currently, it already has 524,000 active developers in the communities. To create an account, you can either create through a Github or a Twitter account.

After connecting with my Github account, I was redirected back to the Dev.to page to start creating content. Similar to Medium, blogging is a breeze by utilizing the WYSIWYC editor.

I like the UI interface and the featured image option just like WordPress, it helps the audience get a sense of the content in the preview. It’s a great platform to gain visibility and promote content to showcase and share knowledge with other interested developers in a chosen field. It shows the most trending articles in the selected categories and give you recommended articles in a layout similar to Stackoverflow.

• Write the first post in the community and edit the personal profile to create an unique brand value
• Get visibility and network with other developers by joining the community’s welcome thread
• Check the stats for the most favorable articles in the programming language or topic you’re interested in and learn from developers what’s working and what’s not
• Don’t let self-sabotaging or writer’s block discourage you from writing, with the typical stigma or misconception that developers couldn’t write or create valuable content.

I’m a developer myself, and I’ve had a deep passion for sharing stories and writing with a background in Psychology and Journalism back in the college days.