.svg)
When it comes to generating online visibility and driving patron engagement, blogging is one of the best tools available to public libraries. Libraries that lean on staff and patron voices to create content show the tangible value of their services and lead conversations amid key public issues thrive. They capture the attention of the community and the loyalty of their patrons.
In our previous posts, we studied how our library partners created compelling blog content, and we took a look at a select sample of their great work. In this piece, we’ll examine the blogging platforms available for your needs. Selecting the right blogging platform is important; it can impact everything from blogging performance on the web to how easily you can create and publish content. In this post, we’ll give you an bird’s-eyed view of your top platform options so that you’re equipped to make the best decision.
Today, there are many blogging platforms available on the market, namely: off-the-shelf platforms like WordPress and Drupal; all-in-one website builders such as Wix and SquareSpace; and proprietary or custom systems, either based on existing platforms or totally built from the ground up. These are usually referred to as content management systems (CMS), but they offer built-in blogging capabilities.
Seeing that public libraries have unique requirements, such as close integration between their website and online catalog, a standard website builder like Wix or SquareSpace isn’t typically feasible. In most cases, you’ll likely leverage a custom setup based on either a proven, mature CMS like WordPress or some entirely new, in-house CMS. In this post, we’ll walk through the pros and cons of each approach and give you enough insight to select the best blogging platform for your library.
Must-Have Features in a Library Blogging Platform
When investing in a blogging platform, public libraries need certain tools and capabilities to get the most out of their investments. These are:
Search Visibility
Your blogging platform must be search engine optimized (SEO) friendly. It needs to be accessible to search engine crawlers, like those of Google and Bing, among others. This opens the way for your users to find your blogs via search when they use certain queries or keywords. In addition, your blogs should also work with core SEO conventions, such as H-tagging, internal linking, external linking, meta tagging, etc., so that the search crawlers understand each post. When this works correctly, your blogs will show up on Google’s results pages. For example, that’s how Sneha found Harris County Public Library.
Interested in learning more about BiblioWeb and BiblioEmail?
Accessibility
Ensure your blogging platform (and wider library website stack) comply with accessibility standards, such as WCAG. Pay close consideration to colors, hyperlink hover states, alt-text, navigability using keyboards, and zoom functionality across both desktop and mobile.
Analytics
User metrics like page visits help you measure the impact of your blogging efforts. For example, are you seeing growth traffic from search, social media, email, and other channels? Can you see specific insights about your audience, like the pages they’re visiting after they find your blog? Are your users completing specific tasks, such as signing up for a library card, booking meeting rooms, or joining a newsletter?
These are valuable insights; they help you build your content so that you’re engaging the right audiences and, in turn, help your marketing team drive patron growth and engagement. Your platform should help you capture these insights accurately and build helpful reports using the data.
Google Analytics (GA) is the go-to solution for measuring blogging – and other website – metrics. Not only is GA a robust suite, but it’s widely implemented, thereby giving you a vast pool of existing know-how, training, skilled professionals, and other support to help you use it. Thus, you’ll want to ensure that GA is properly integrated across your digital stack, be it your blog, catalog, website, or app.
Online Catalog Integration
Tight integration between your online catalog and website (including your blog) is crucial. For example, if you’re leveraging your blog to drive more item circulation, then you’ll want the ability to incorporate a book list to your blog. But true integration doesn’t stop there. When that same user looks at the specific items on your list, you’ll want to ensure that your catalog looks and feels like your blog. In other words, the blog and catalog shouldn’t seem like two different websites — it should feel like one environment.
Drive more item circulation from your collections by
integrating your catalog and website experiences.
Top Blogging Platforms for Libraries
With the above features in mind (especially catalog integration), your library’s blogging platform would likely be a custom or proprietary solution. You might be choosing from several options, namely, taking on an internal project, working with a web design agency, or subscribing to an available suite via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Regardless of the development model, you’ll likely need to customize a build of one of the popular CMSs, so we’ve outlined the pros and cons of each:
Custom Drupal Builds
Launched in 2000, Drupal is a CMS. It’s a flexible platform and is often used for building custom websites. It natively supports multilingual websites and offers great security features. However, Drupal isn’t easy to develop for, nor is it straightforward for your end-users. It requires more technical expertise to set up, operate, and update, which can be straining for IT and non-IT staff alike. Moreover, the platform itself can be slow at times and resource-intensive from a technical standpoint.
Custom Joomla Builds
Introduced in 2005, Joomla is a dedicated CMS that offers a high level of web development flexibility and customizability. It’s particularly popular for e-commerce websites. Joomla offers a range of customizable templates and plugins, so it offers a lower barrier to entry compared to Drupal. Like Drupal, Joomla also offers robust security, built-in multilingual support, and other advanced features.
However, like Drupal, the platform requires dedicated web development expertise and, likewise, can be difficult for end users. Yes, Joomla offers templates, plugins, and other customization options, but similar to Drupal, you need dedicated web development staff to properly leverage those tools.
Custom Magento Builds
Created by Adobe, Magento is a highly customizable and extensible CMS. Like Joomla, it’s particularly popular among e-commerce websites, especially big hitters like Nike and Coca-Cola, to name a few. It is a highly customizable and functional platform, but that power comes at a high cost.
However, Magento is very demanding from a technical expertise and infrastructure standpoint. You need a team of skilled developers to set up, maintain, and update a Magento website. Moreover, you will also need dedicated hosting, which will add to your maintenance and support overhead.
Custom WordPress Builds
Launched in 2003, WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. Interestingly, WordPress originally began life as a dedicated blogging platform, but it has since evolved into an all-in-one website solution. Thus, it offers a deep level of customizability while still being user-friendly and accessible for both developers as well as content creators and other end users alike.
WordPress is the go-to CMS for a wide range of websites, be it from high-profile publishers (including the White House!), small and large businesses, or even individual bloggers. In fact, we also use WordPress to power BiblioWeb, our fully integrated CMS for public library websites. Here’s why:
BiblioWeb offers a ready-made public library website platform and rich tools designed drive patron engagement.
SEO-Friendly
This is a screenshot from BiblioWeb, our custom CMS based on WordPress. We provide clearly defined input fields for SEO elements. In this case, you'll see the field for the Meta Description as well as recommended best practices.
WordPress makes it easy to integrate SEO functionality across your website, i.e., from your web pages to your blog posts. These include clearly defined fields for H-tags for headings, meta-description fields, and sitemaps, to name a few.
Intuitive for End-Users
This is the blog post creator on BiblioWeb, our custom CMS based on WordPress. In addition to WordPress' standard features, we also equip our users to leverage their catalog (e.g., titles) in their blogs.
WordPress offers intuitive functionality for its end-users, especially content creators who don’t have many (if any) coding knowledge. It leverages a WYSIWYG layout that clearly spells out where each component of your blog post (e.g., feature image, title, copy, etc.) must go and how to publish.
You can retain this intuitive functionality when you develop upon WordPress. So, for example, when we tightly integrated BiblioWeb into our online cataloging platform, BiblioCore, we made sure to make it easy for end-users to add booklists, check out/item hold buttons, and so on. Furthermore, when your staff publish a blog, BiblioWeb will also create a blog card, which you can use to promote your blog.
Customization
This is an example of the close integration between BiblioWeb and our online catalog platform, BiblioCore.
Building on the previous point, WordPress is available as an open-source platform and as such, it’s also very customizable and extendable. We offer our BiblioWeb platform as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), so you get a complete and work-ready suite out-of-the-box. We also leveraged WordPress’ versatility to tightly integrate BiblioWeb into our catalog (BiblioCore), apps (BiblioApps), email marketing (BiblioEmail), and events management (BiblioEvents) platforms.
Extensive Documentation and Developer Support
Thus, with the right development expertise and infrastructure, you can equip your staff with powerful – yet accessible – toolsets and, in turn, richly engage your patrons. While WordPress draws on a vast pool of skilled developers, documentation, and plugins, with BiblioWeb, you get that technical versatility plus a ready product. In turn, we support this product ourselves with a dedicated team of developers who are not just technical experts, but also have real-world experience working with public libraries.
Next Steps
However, as with any significant web development project, as you raise your expectations from the base CMS, you’ll also have to grow your budget and team. Yes, WordPress is easier to develop on and manage than the other top CMS offerings, but customizing it to meet your public library’s needs will add cost and complexity. And it’s not just about money, but the time and attention managing a website can take from your teams when, potentially, they could be needed more urgently in other parts of your library.
Thus, it’s worth exploring a SaaS-based solution for your library’s blogging and wider website needs. For a manageable fee, you can leverage a fully featured and fully supported platform for your library’s needs and not worry about the day-to-day development, maintenance, and compliance tasks. Instead, you can free your library staff to focus on using your blogging efforts to drive strategic goals rather than the platform or technology stack in of itself. The key with SaaS is to find the right partner that makes pushing the digital needs of public libraries its mission and, in turn, builds its team and tunes its investments for that goal.
Sign up to receive the latest in public library topics delivered straight to your inbox!