The word “blogging” may conjure up images of academics with too much time on their hands filling the internet with opinions.  That doesn’t matter really; what matters actually is that the tools created in response to the blogging trends are GREAT tools for publishing web content.

Every advanced content management system (CMS) under the sun – Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, phpNuke, etc. – has a learning curve comparable to learning to hand-code HTML, CSS and client scripts in Wordpad.  It defeats the purpose of a content management system when the system itself presents a big bloated user interaction between the user and their goal: publishing content.  (I tried using VBAdvanced, an extension of the fantastic commercial message board VBulletin.  It requires a great deal of background and familiarity with the VBulletin universe and with BBCode, an interpreted markup language.  That’s right…interpreted markup code that only works on message boards.  WOW.  But I digress…)

A blog platform like Wordpress, on the other hand, is installed far easier than the above, often using something like Fantastico which insulates the user from technical b.s. they don’t know nor care about anyway.  Point and click install and initialization….truly turnkey.

Then, using it the best part…as simple as “Action-Done.”  There’s no learning curve; it is as simple and intuitive as using an average Word Processor.  Want to write a new page?  You literally click “Write Page.”

That usability is still secondary to the potential of the tool: an easy-to-use way to publish topical content on the internet in as few steps as are necessary.  This represents tremendous business value.

Administrative overhead is almost nothing; time spent publishing content is equivalent to the content produced.  A three-sentence update takes no longer than you would imagine.

Additionally, a blogging platform archives published content in what is increasingly becoming a very standard, intuitive format.

The way to truly succeed is to leverage tools to their useful extent, instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.

On the other hand, if your priority as a business owner is to impress yourself with a completely Flash-driven website that has techno music the user cannot turn off, then a blogging tool like Wordpress might not get the job done.