My client Mark Akerley loves the idea of online conversations, but he doesn’t have time right now for a business blog.

If you want to blog, but not yet, what can you do?

As we were building Mark’s new website, developer Lara Kulpa led us to the fantastic solution of an in-between blog. What we did is create a section of his Web site where Mark can create a page on a particular topic and invite readers to comment. An in-between blog is half-way between a static Web page and a full blown blog.

Mark’s in-between blog post looks like this -



Visitors to the Sigma Resource Group site reach this page through the “Business Challenges” link on the sidebar. Clicking on the link takes you to an archive page, which leads to the post page (permalink) pictured above.

Benefits

• Mark can add Business Challenge posts whenever he wants, without the “pressure” of publishing that comes along with a full blown business blog.
• Readers can connect, reflect, and suggest just as they would do on a blog.
• For Mark’s clients who are not familiar with blogs, the format we’re using, which looks more like a traditional Web page than a blog, will be more inviting and easier to understand.

With a little ingenuity, WordPress gives companies the flexibility to turn static Web pages into conversations - on a big scale or small.

That is pretty darn cool. And pretty darn useful.