SquareSpace.com Offers an Elegant Solution for "Blogging Evolved"

There is a lot of discussion these days about corporate blogging, with some even suggesting that perhaps blogs should replace corporate sites entirely.  While I am a big believer in the power of blogging, I don’t think blogs will completely replace corporate sites.  The main reason is because there is useful static content that corporate sites need to deliver which don’t fit very well into the structure of a blog.  Aside from cramming every bit of corporate information onto a few "About" pages … the need for both a corporate site and a blog remains for many organizations, big and small.  Ultimately, what I think will start to happen is these will merge and for many small to mid-size businesses, their corporate website may become a "blogsite" where the blog is integrated as a core feature of their website.  If a corporate site were an organization’s online living room, the blog would become the big plasma HDTV in the center that everything else is built around.  But it’s not the only thing in the house.  There are many examples of corporate sites are going in this direction – including sites like Peerflix, Squidoo, Idea Grove, Technorati, and lots of others.   

If this continues to emerge as a new model for corporate sites – organizations of all sizes will start to seek tools to make the publishing of these expanded sites as easy as publishing a blog has become.  Doing a search online for tools that cater for this growing need, I came across a service called Squarespace which has what looks like the most sophisticated, well designed and easy to use solution for anyone wanted to go beyond blogging and create a full site while integrating a blog.  Surprisingly few of the blog software companies have even realized this niche exists – and even fewer target small businesses.  The tagline for SquareSpace is "Blogging Evolved" and the functionality of the site lives up to the promise.  From a range of very elegant and professional looking templates to a huge array of features and smart integration options to easily move over your current blog on another platform – the folks behind SquareSpace seem to have thought of everything.  As a result, for anyone seeking to use the power of a blog for a small business site (or a personal site for that matter!), SquareSpace has one of the best solutions by far.  With the news last week that SixApart has purchased Rojo to help them capture those reading blogs as well as creating them … perhaps SquareSpace is the next place where they should consider spending acquisition dollars to add a complimentary service to their already strong suite of blogging and content management tools.