Given the ubiquity of services such as Facebook and Twitter you might think that people were less inclined to publish their own blogs. However, you’d be wrong.
At the end of 2011, the social media consultants, NM Incite, said they were tracking over 181m blogs on the Internet, up from just 36m five years ago.
In the same year, the blogging platform, Tumblr, was the fastest growing social networking website in the USA. It’s rapidly closing in on 80m blogs with 34bn individual blog posts.
Being a blog ourselves, it’s great to see that the blogosphere is in such rude health. Just like a regular website, a blog can be informative but at their best they also encourage… Conversations.
For millions of people around the world it is often much simpler than that. A blog is an opportunity to self-publish, write about their interests or just keep an account of what they are eating or the places they have been.
Part of the attraction is that they are simple to maintain and you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to do it. This, of course, is where your Nokia Lumia smartphone can help you out.
There are apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace so that you can blog on your Nokia Lumia for each of the three most popular blogging platforms, WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr.
Whether you have a blog already, or you are thinking about starting one, here are some of the choices available to you.
WordPress
WordPress is an open source project and is maintained by a community of developers for everyone to use. It’s just shy of its 10th anniversary and claims to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world.
WordPress
In the spirit of WordPress itself, this is an open source app and is by some distance the highest rated WordPress client in the Marketplace.
You can write posts, edit them, moderate comments and even view statistics for your blog.
Writer
Writer is another tool for WordPress blogs but it also claims to be compatible with blogs on other publishing services such as Moveable Type, Joomla, and Drupal.
Blogger
Blogger is now Google’s very own blogging tool, although the search giant acquired it, rather than created it themselves.
Blogger, when it was first launched in 1999, was one of the very first companies dedicated to offering self-publish tools.
Blogg
This is a very easy to use Blogger client for your Nokia Lumia, although there is a price to be paid for its simplicity. Currently, you can’t add images to your posts.
Other than the issue over the images, Blogg has a really clean and no-nonsense user interface, which is perfect for quick updates from your phone when you’re on the move.
UpdateMyFeed (£1.49)
If images are important to your Blogger account then you might consider paying for this app. Other advanced features include the ability to save drafts, adding tags and category management.
As well as Blogger, UpdateMyFeed also supports other clients such as WordPress and BlogEngine.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a relatively new kid on the block compared to WordPress and Blogger (it was founded in 2007) but has rapidly become a real darling of the social media landscape.
It’s great for showing off images and has become a favourite among celebrities too.
tumBoard
This is a wonderful app that takes full advantage of the Windows Phone interface with its easy swiping across different screens.
There are nice touches such as being able to take and then post photos within the app using your Lumia’s camera and even supports multiple Tumblr accounts.
Pikchur
Many people use Tumblr as a photo blog and that’s been recognised by the developers behind this app. It’s been created specifically to share videos and images on your blog.
In addition to Tumblr, it also supports other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
Do you use your Lumia to update a blog? Let us know in the comments below.