Landcare Australia Limited LAL, part of Australia’s Landcare leadership has stepped seriously into the world of eExtension with the launch of a new wordpress blog. Below is a quick video review of their new site.
Why is it important for LAL to use a blog?
As the video shows LAL’s existing website is an excellent resource, it looks good, has lot’s of information and for the one time visitor it pretty much does the job. However it is left for dead by the new blog. Let’s compare the 2 sites.
| Existing LAL site | New LAL Blog |
|---|---|
| http://landcareblog.com | http://wwwlandcareonline.com.au |
| Looks good. | Looks quite smart. |
| May require a programmer to update content. | Anyone with 10 mins training can update content. |
| Is built on a frames structure which can be more difficult for search engines to index. | Uses a free Wordpress content management system, which automatically creates a new page for each article and “pings” or invites search engines to index it each time a new article is created. |
| Invites visitors to email responses. | Allows visitors to comment directly against articles, creating a conversation. |
| Requires visitors to revisit the site to check for new articles. | Has a feed of articles delivered directly to subscribers. |
| May not be able to track external sites linking to it’s articles. | Has intelligent design that tracks and acknowledges links incoming and outgoing. More conversation. |
| May be more difficult and require a programmer to integrate with web2.0 and social media applications. | Integrates effortlessly with web2.0 and social media applications. |
Ok I admit I am pretty biased, I have Wordpress for 99% of the eExtension strategies I have implemented in the last 2 years. But don’t take my word for it. Try Wordpress yourself for free just visit http://wordpress.com and sign up for a free blog. You’ll be up and running in less that 10 minutes. There are currently more than 4.3 Million websites running on wordpress today, so I am not alone in my bias.
Wordpress is a very cool content management system.
If you don’t like the blog format you can always just use Wordpress as a content management system. Many people have done that also.
If you are new to blogs, can I suggest that you start today by leaving a comment on this site or on the new LAL blog. Let us know what you would like to know how we can improve our blogs because ultimatley we’re writing them for you.
