Your Agency’s Social Media Hub is far and away the most important aspect of your Social Media Presence since all of your other efforts will direct your audience back to this central location.

Blogger As A Hub

Blogger is the free platform for blogging owned by Google. It recently reached it’s 10 year anniversary, having launched in 1999, and it continues to be a relevant platform in the blogosphere through continued innovation and improvements.

Using Blogger as your Social Media Hub is as good an option as you can get for the price – free. It offers the required ability to provide dynamic content, and it does so right on the front page. The service has implemented a Label system, similar to what other blogging platforms refer to as Categories or Tags. Since it will reside on the reliable servers of Google, bandwidth is not an issue should you receive an inordinate amount of traffic in a short period of time.

Most importantly, it will allow you to use your own custom domain name. Allowing the use of your own domain name by Blogger is a huge win for you from both a marketability and search engine optimization standpoint.

Although the LAFD News & Information Blog that is hosted on Blogger isn’t the Agency’s Hub (LAFD.org is) it still is designed to function like one with links to all of the Agency Spokes

How Difficult Is Customization?

Blogger’s customization options have greatly improved over the years. There are a large number of basic templates to choose from and you no longer need to know advanced HTML to make changes to your template since they introduced widgetized themes:

Another huge improvement over the years is Blogger’s template color management system. Instead of having to hand edit and code a CSS file, Blogger offers a simple scrolling menu option with a live preview:

This makes changing the colors of your blog on Blogger quite literally the easiest of all the other platforms.

Award winning Cross Blog is hosted on Blogger and, as we’ve already pointed out, have customized their template extensively to connect with their audience on a personal level therefore enhancing the effectiveness of their communication

How Do I Start A Blogger Blog?

Starting a blog on Blogger is really easy:

You can either sign in with your Google Account or create an account to create a blog. Of course this is just the first step, because after you establish the blog now the real work comes in creating reliable media in the format of your choice.

Anyone can have a blog. What you do with the blog is really what matters most.

The San Bernardino City Fire Department uses Blogger to provide information formatted for the media about fire calls in the city using a standard template that also links out to their Social Media Spokes which makes them a trusted source of information across multiple media platforms

Blogger Platform Resources

Here are some resources for using the Blogger Platform:

• Blogger Buzz – The Official Blogger Blog
• Blogger Status – Service issues are announced here
• How To Back Up Your Blogger Blog – A headache saving tutorial
• K2 WordPress Theme For Blogger – A popular WordPress Theme cloned for use on the Blogger Platform
• Free Templates – If it’s free… it may just be for me

To get the most out of this series it is highly recommended that you sign up for our Free E-Mail Social Media Bootcamp if you haven’t done so already since we will be referencing techniques and terms introduced in that program

About The Author

Dave Konig has authored 141 articles for PIOSocialMediaTraining.com

Dave has been involved in Social Media since 2005 through the current major services and some defunct ones as well. During this time he has been able to hone the craft by testing out the theories of others, creating his own philosophies, and gathering a better understanding of the mediums involved through networking and most importantly actual practice.

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