New WordPress Version Should Be a Corporate Blogger's Dream

The new features that will be available in WordPress 3.0 have been announced, and I’m more excited than I’ve been in a very long time. This new version looks like it is going to solve some of the biggest frustrations I’ve had with the platform (which is my favorite) as a corporate blogger, including the ability to run multiple websites from one instance (instead of needing to install WordPress three times to run three different blogs) and extended content management capabilities, making it possible to use WordPress for your website and your blog.

Mashable ran a great guest post on the top features coming in WordPress 3.0, and there is a lot of useful stuff in there. For me, the major selling point is multi-site, followed by the extended content management features.

For a major insurance or reinsurance company, you need multi-site. Thinking back to my last full-time gig in the industry, I can imagine the parent company having its own blog, which is effectively an aggregator for the operating companies’ blogs … which implies that each of the operating companies would have a blog.

Now, imaging hosting that all from one central location – and being able to manage all that content to take advantage of cross-linking opportunities across blogs, drive up traffic, get more love from the search engines and cut the cost to produce content because you could share it more easily within the environment. Also, any other blogs you’d have – related to specific products, solutions or issues, for example, could be hosted in this same spot. It’s much easier for the IT guys.

The ability to customize content types means you won’t have to shoehorn everything into a page or a post, giving you a lot more flexibility in how you push content, especially when you’re playing across blogs and traditional websites. The custom taxonomy and new menus help in this regard, as well.

Head over to Mashable to check out the other new features in WordPress 3.0.

The new version of WordPress, which is expected come out this month, is a corporate blogger’s dream. It has everything, it seems, that’s been missing. The only challenge will be migrating to the new environment, which requires some techie stuff (though probably won’t be hard for those in the tech world). The bigger challenge will be around consolidating your blogs (not that anyone’s really running multiples per company yet), as any conversion/consolidation does involve some logistical headaches.