Blogging for Business: How to choose the Right Platform

Lady in office

Many business professionals and entrepreneurs do now know that Blogging is an essential ingredient for success of businesses, big or small. It’s also a great tool for upcoming journalists, photographers, artists and virtually all industry new comers or even old players to embrace the medium and carve out a content platform of their own.

Those who blog know that the rules are no static, technology changes, new platforms come on board and potential keeps improving just like new users online keep increasing. All these factors affect the rules, so no one is an expert in this field. Businesses that succeed at creating some of the best blog sites have done that by being more interactive, giving readers a behind the scene look at what they do or offer to the market, collaboration through guest blog posts and at times offer tips.

In the blogosphere there are 3 main platforms to choose from: WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr and they all are unique and special in offer to fit you business requirements.  If you own a content driven business like a publication, international beauty corporation WordPress or Blogger may be the best for you. If you are a photographer and relay more on photos than words, then Tumblr is most likely the best for you. Whichever platform you’ll choose, they all have their pros and corns.

Blogger

Blogger

Pros: Best for beginners, this is the best platform for getting started, it’s easy to navigate with very user-friendly graphics and directions for where to preview, post, insert pictures , drafts, upload videos and check out daily activity updates on your dashboard. As with other platforms there are templates and theme designs available. Blogger also auto saves drafts every minute so you can rest assured your draft will be saved in case of power cut or computer crushing.

Cons: Has limited number of templates to choose from in comparison to WordPress. Customizing widgets is also a trick. It also lacks the bells and whistles that have made the other platforms more viable for savvy bloggers.

WordPress

WordPress

Pros: WordPress is now recognized as the Crème de la Crème of blogging platforms. You can sign up for a free blog at WordPress.com or a self hosted version via WordPress.org. Also boost of numerous features to help manage multiple authors and support more robust content. There are also numerous themes to choose from offering more professional content and comes with the bells and whistles.

Cons: It’s not easy to tell who is following your blog and also expect some level of distress in uploading photos or videos if not yet well conversant with the platform. to track growth of your audience you will need third parties such as wimbiya.

Tumblr

Tumblr

Pros: it’s a micro blogging platform and social network site that allows you to post short form blogs with ease. It has a great number of themes to choose from and best for “niche” bloggers with more photographic content.

Cons: It’s not fully featured so you will not have as much control over formatting.  Also you can’t self host meaning when the site experiences technical problems, your site goes down too.

Businesses only need to note that blogging is not a quick fix solution to brand development or sales but a communication tool that should be supplementary and not used in isolation. The blogosphere is an open place for all with an idea or opinion to find others to rally behind them. Thus the funs of you Business blog are always the most enlighten to spread good news about you.

Economy Yet to Benefit from the High Entrepreneurial Spirit in Uganda

 By Andrew Ekwang

The Ugandan economy has been beaming with a very informal sector growing at a high rate, yet still failing to deliver the stable economic performance that is expected. The question economic planners should be asking is when will these informal businesses formalize? Statistics don’t seem to be working in our favor at the moment, but we already have something to build on.

A World Bank funded census released by Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) revealed that 98.6% of businesses in Uganda are owned and run by Ugandans, 94% of these are informal and 80% are carried in households thus no business premises and mostly employing family members in informal jobs. At first impression you might be tempted to believe that these figures means the Ugandan households are highly active, productive and generates some income, yet looked at carefully we a rapidly creating a business system so complex if not impossible to provide formal jobs for the young and educated population let alone be taxed. This makes the matter a little worrying if it can really lead us to the destination we were expecting, more especially when 61% of these businesses is in Trade “buying and selling of goods” and manufacturing and agriculture at only 7% and 2% respectively, the independent a leading news magazine I trust called this state a country of traders.

Market venders & Shoppers in Western Uganda

Recently I met Mr. Ssentongo (not real name) for a drink in one of his favorite joints, he is a produce trader in Kampala supplying some retail traders in Nakasero, and Nakawa markets literally he is doing well far better than his employed counterparts. His actual role is to buy these food items from the rural farmers, transport and sell to the retail traders in these markets, to support his operations he now employs about 13 young men located in the different village areas to do door to door purchase of the food items, he also got a second hand truck to collect these items from the rural areas to a house turned warehouse in Kampala. Though his challenges include among others the boys disappearing with his monies, traffic bribes ones his truck is got overloading, high fuel prices and bad roads in rural areas, he has manage to make a good fortune from his business of above 500 million in turnover per financial quarter and invested heavily in real estate’s( land and rentals). Asking where he sees the business in 3 years from today he says getting another truck maybe and increasing the volumes of his business to 1 billion in turnover per quarter is his target. While I was still admiring his achievements he asked whether there was some connects I had that could get his daughter who as graduated but has been home unemployed for about a year now. I answered softly we will see, in my mind I was only thinking with 500 million as quarterly turnover expecting to grow to a billion surely Mr. Ssentongo should be in position to at least employ the daughter and some few lucky Ugandans formally.

Most businesses in Uganda at the moment however well they are doing are stuck in the informal setting and a move to formalize them is something the businessmen (traders) fear mostly due to tax associated with formal businesses and sometimes the lack of know how. And yet to boost job creation and a tax base you need Mr. Ssentongo and friends to formalize and grow these businesses to the sound SMEs this economy needs for a take off in the near feature, short of that the economy my look good but its stuck and not healthy at all.

To create the expected jobs and tax base to drive the economy in a highly un-regulated business environment like it is in Uganda is and will always be a challenge, some level of business regulation has to be effected enough to create economic order and yet not discourage the creative spirit.