2016 Blog Platform Rundown

We focus mainly on Blogger blogs here, but wanted to do a quick review of a few of the other popular blogging platforms for 2016.

WordPress
WordPress is by far the market leader in the blogging and CMS space. More than 20% of all websites are powered by WordPress. WordPress can be used for anything from a simple blog to a more complex CMS solution that powers a major news site (CNN).

Medium
The Medium platform is one of the newest choices for bloggers, and it offers some distinct advantages. The main advantage is for content creators who really want the focus to be on the quality of their content, not on web design. The simple layout of Medium achieves this flawlessly, and the platform also makes it easier to get your content noticed and to network with other bloggers.

Tumblr
Tumblr is mainly used as an image-based platform, and currently has been losing in popularity, as other image-based social networks (e.g. Instagram) take away market share. Tumblr still has its niche market, but unfortunately it is increasingly limited to just the adult space.

Twitter
While Twitter is actually a micro-blogging platform, it's included here because it's hugely popular and the way it's used is evolving. It is very common for people to use Twitter as a blog, despite the character limit. This limit can be circumvented by posting screenshots of longer text, or simply doing several stream of consciousness tweets (Kanye West anyone?).

Which is the best platform for you?
This really varies depending on what you are looking to get from your blog. WordPress is a great choice as a CMS, and is really versatile for a variety of applications. Medium is great as a straight forward blog, and the various social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr also fill a need for shorter communications.

How do you get started?
Ease of use is top of the list for just about every blog platform, so even basic computer skills should get you pretty far on most platforms. WordPress is probably the most complicated of these, but there are a ton of tutorials available online. The Blog Starter from Scott Chow has what is probably the easiest guide for beginners looking to get started with WordPress. The WordPress forums are also a great place to get answers to questions on specific issues.

With all of that said and done, BlogTeacher.net still recommends using Blogger, and you can continue to follow our tutorials so that you get the most from the Blogger platform.

Did we leave out your favorite platform? Let us know in the comments...