Best Blogging Platforms for International Businesses

Blogging is one of the surest ways of connecting with a large audience that is interested in your online business. Unlike on-site content where you have to focus on your services and other offerings, blogging allows you to express personal opinions on topics that may or may not be related to your niche.

Today, we will look at the best blogging platforms for Hong Kong Businesses.

Number 1: WordPress.org

WordPress.org is the world’s largest and most popular blogging platform. Research shows that it powers more than 30% of the entire web. Millions of blogs that you find on the internet run on WordPress.

This free and open-source blogging platform allows you to create blogs in virtually any topic in minutes. Since it’s a self-hosting solution, you will need to look for hosting provider. It’s ideal for not only novice bloggers but also large businesses.

• Gives you unlimited control over your site
• Allows addition of complimentary features such as forums and online store
• Plenty of paid and free plugins and themes are available
• Its SEO friendly
• Free – you will not need to pay for domain name and hosting

• Coding expertise is required to fully customise the blog
• You will need to manage your own backups and security

WordPress is an ideal choice for anyone who wants to establish a clean blog that is mobile friendly and professional. The features, plugins, and themes will help you to stand out from the crowd if you utilise them properly.

Number 2: Wix

Wix is not just a blogging platform but also a resource that you can use to create stunning websites. It offers a plethora of drag and drop tools that you can use to create your website. Once complete, you can add a blog to it by using Wix Blog App.

• Easy setup
• Allows you to make your website truly using by providing hundreds of third-party apps and templates
• Easy drag and drop website creation tools

• With a free account, you cannot do much and you will encounter countless ads
• Users are not allowed to change their template

If you are looking for a free online platform for blogging with the intention of scaling up, Wix is a good choice for you. However, you will need to select one of the premium plans if you want priority customer support and your own domain.

Number 3: Weebly

Weebly is a holistic blogging platform that gained traction across the globe for not only enabling users to create stellar blogs but also create websites using easy tools just like Wix.

You can use any of the pre-built themes to customise your website to your liking.

• Easy site builder – no coding expertise is required to use it
• Easy set up – Weebly will host the website for you
• With the free plan, you can try the premium service before buying

• Integration with third-party platforms is limited
• Exporting your Weebly blog to another platform is cumbersome

Weebly is a perfect choice for you if you are looking for a platform that offers website development tools and features.

Number 4: WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a blog hosting provider that is powered by Automatic – a company that founded by Matt Mullenweg. Matt Mullenweg is also the co-founder of WordPress.org.

A majority of the features are free and basic, but you can opt to buy additional features such as extra storage and custom domain. If you don’t want to deal with the complex features of a self-hosted WordPress, this is a good option for you.

• It’s easy to manage and use
• No setup is required
• 100% free if you are comfortable with a WordPress.com domain (https://myblog.wordpress.com)

• Limited features that make it difficult to customise it – for example no custom plugins and themes
• You cannot run ads on your blog. WordPress.com however does display their ads on your blog

WordPress.com is a pretty basic blogging platform that you can use if you are just starting out. However, you may need to spend money on additional features as the blog grows.

Number 5: Blogger.com

Also commonly referred to a BlogSpot, Blogger.com is a free blogging platform that is run and owned by Google. It is ideal for casual bloggers who are just testing the waters on this side of the pool.

It’s one of the earliest blogging platforms and offers an easy and user-friendly way for beginners to create blogs. Originally, it was owned by Pyra Labs but Google purchased it in 2003 and redesigned it to what it is today. You need to have a Google account to use it.

Pros of Blogger.com

• 100% free
• Easy to use and manage as no coding expertise or skills are needed
• Additional Google benefits, security, and reliability

• Very few design options due to lack of theme variety
• Updates are not frequent

Blogger.com is ideal for beginners or casual bloggers. You can use it to share your thoughts and ideas with the world without paying a dollar.

Number 6: Tumblr

Tumblr is quite different from the other five best blogging platforms we have discussed already. Simply put, it’s a microblogging platform that has a number of social networking features. Some of these features are in-built sharing tools, re-blogging tools, and ability to follow other blogs.

There is a lot of similarity between Tumblr and social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. Ideally, blogging involves writing posts and publishing them, but Tumblr is different as it advocates for publishing of really short blog posts, animated GIFs, videos, and photos.

• Free but you will be assigned a Tumblr subdomain (https;//myblog.tumblr.com)
• It is utterly easy to create and use
• Integrated social media component available

• Very limited features that make it impossible to scale up the blog
• Several themes are available but no additional features to support them

Tumblr is ideal for bloggers who are interested in sharing visual content. As you get accustomed to using it, you will start noticing trends that will give you ideas of which type of content you should be sharing with your audience.

Number 7: Medium

Medium was launched in 2012 and has since then grown to become a large community of journalists, experts, writers, and bloggers. It is easy to use even though the number of social network features are limited.

Its model is similar to that of a social networking site that allows anyone to create an account and immediately start publishing blogs. Once you sign up, your blog address will be like this (https://medium.com/@yourname). It is not possible to get your own domain.

• Easy to use – no coding experience needed
• Allows you to reach out to a large number of users in the network and outside
• Let’s you focus fully on writing and publishing blogs instead of creating a website

• The features are limited
• You cannot run custom ads

Medium is an ideal choice for bloggers who are only interested in publishing individual or independent stories and posts. Luckily, the platform pays bloggers based on the number of reads your posts gets on a monthly basis.

Final Thoughts

As a business owner in Hong Kong, blogging can help you connect with a larger audience, improve SEO, and generate more traffic to your website. Check out each of the seven best blogging platforms we have discussed in this article to find one that best suits your needs.

Just like on-site content, you need to ensure that the blog posts are top quality and relevant to the audience. SEO HERO is known to offer the best content writing services as well as SEO services. Get in touch with us for more details. We will help you establish a professional and profitable blog for your business.