Squarespace for Blogging
How does Squarespace perform compared to other platforms when it comes to blogging? Brace yourself for another unpopular opinion that is gaining traction in the world of digital creators and blogging.
I have always been intrigued by the world of blogging and content creation. Over the years I have found myself at times influenced by this marketing tool and have always been fascinated by the trends. Not the design trends, although I enjoy those too, but rather how this marketing segment has evolved over the past 10+ years. The current wave maker I am seeing in 2024 and platform expected to experience tremendous growth when it comes to sharing content is Substack. I personally love Substack and find myself spending more time there versus Instagram these days as the content feels fresh and authentic. I digress…more on that another time. The point in sharing this is that Substack gives influencers another outlet that is super easy to navigate making it quicker and more efficient to post and share content. Simplicity is the name of the game which is where hosting your blog on Squarespace comes into play!
Recently I have noticed that a large number of new content creators I follow on the ‘gram are choosing Squarespace to host their blogs and Substack to share their newsletters. Being a website designer, I always like to click on over to the digital creator’s website (if they have one—again a topic for a future blog post). I believe creators are making this choice because it is much easier to start a site on your own and manage than say Wordpress. Wordpress is typically considered the gold standard platform of choice if you are a blogger and it is definitely an awesome option with tons of customizations available.
The other commonly touted reason for choosing Wordpress is for SEO (search engine optimization). Some will say it is “so much better” on Wordpress. The reality, SEO is SEO and can be accomplished on most any platform if you know what you are doing. If you have the time to learn the ins and outs of a more complex website building tool like Wordpress or the budget to pay a designer and developer for a fully custom site (think 5 figure plus investment), then go for it! If your site is in need of more bells and whistles then Wordpress is probably the better fit.
I have also noticed some seasoned influencers moving their blogs to Squarespace and have personally helped facilitate this process from a design and logistics perspective. I am fully on board with how much time this will free up on their end. For these content creators, they already have the following on social media. People find their websites from their social media accounts. The main benefit to them in moving to Squarespace is the ease of use once the site is designed and set up. It is quite simple to add a new blog post and manage the site proving a huge time saver for those wanting an efficient option to maintain and share their content.
While there are many reasons to consider Squarespace for blogging, let’s focus on my theme for 2024 and the goal of simplifying! Here are my top reasons for choosing Squarespace for your blog that will help free up time and energy for the creator while also greatly improving the reader experience:
Squarespace is a closed platform—This means that 3rd party developers and users that are not Squarespace employees cannot contribute to the platform functionality. This also means that Squarespace will run on “autopilot” at the hands of the company itself versus outside developers. Security and technical updates are handled by the Squarespace team without the need of the site owner going in periodically to update plug-ins, etc to keep the site functioning. Are there occasional bugs and downtime, yes. However, this is rare and usually because they are making updates to improve the design and experience!
Squarespace has an easy to use drag and drop editor for the DIY enthusiast—I will say most content creators are going to want more customization which is totally possible with Squarespace. The cool thing about Squarespace is you can hire a website designer like me to add code to enhance the functionality and design of your site while still maintaining the ability to easily make updates at site handoff.
Stunning templates available for customization—These templates have all been curated by Squarespace so you know they are built to function on the platform vs. some templates created by random contributors that are poor quality and may not be maintained over time. Quite honestly a lot of these templates look very similar to what you will find on a fully custom website. Add some designer touches and customizations and you have a beautiful, easy to manage website!
Less overwhelming—There are a lot more customizations and options available on an open platform. However, that can feel overwhelming and unless you have an expert helping you with the build, some of the options available may be less reliable and require more maintenance. You just can’t beat the ease of use for the site owner with Squarespace—especially if your designer offers some sort of post launch training and onboarding support.
Easy to maintain and organize content—Squarespace Fluid editor is very user friendly. Once the site is designed, the owner can easily go in and add new blocks of content as they see fit. The other really cool feature with Squarespace is the Summary Block capability. This enables the blogger to add blocks of content from specific blog categories with specific “tags” to further filter what the reader sees first.
I love this feature as a designer/business owner but also as a reader! Some blogs can feel overly designed and difficult to navigate. If a site visitor is looking for recent posts in say the “Lifestyle” category, those can be easily filtered and presented in a clearly marked section of a page. This also makes it very easy for the blogger to highlight reader favorites and to increase their earnings by showing top performing blog posts for easy reader access.
The blogger can also add sections seasonally like over the holidays and remove those sections post December to clean up the site experience. The content will continue to be indexed by google and searchable even if it is not front and center on the site. You can always present your readers with fresh curated content. Squarespace also easily integrates with LTK, a commonly used shopping application used by influencers.
All in all I think Squarespace is a great place for someone looking to start a blog or continue to grow or rebrand an existing publication. The overall trend I am observing in the world of social media and content creation is that both the reader and the writer are craving simplicity. As readers we expect content to be at our fingertips and if it is hard to find, we move onto the next resource. I think some blogs have gotten to the point where they are overly designed and do not function well for both the reader and the blogger. I truly believe keeping it simple is where the magic happens. I think that is why we are seeing this trend of so many bloggers hopping over to Substack to share their content. Squarespace feels very similar in design and is less time consuming to add content and manage said content. I recently read a post by one of my favorite bloggers where she shared that she is blogging less because of the time it takes to update her site. I only see improvement coming with how Squarespace functions for the blogger, and it definitely offers a huge benefit with keeping it simple!
Please hit me up with any questions or share thoughts via email: jlwatrob@north8designs.com or send me a direct message. I would love to hear your perspective on the evolution of social media and marketing!
