As I help organizations transition to think cloud-first, one of my goals is to help them get the most out of their Office 365 investment.  In this post, we’ll talk about tackling a corporate blog.

SharePoint Online comes with a number of out-of-the-box templates, and the one that most closely maps to the blog requirement is … wait for it … the blog site template.

Create a blog site

1. From the SharePoint Online Admin Center, click Site Collections.
   
2. Click New and select New Private Collection.
   
3. Enter a name for the blog site, as well as a URL.  On the Collaboration tab, select the Blog template.  Select the time zone, and assign a site collection administrator.  Click OK to create the site collection.
   
4. Navigate to the newly created blog site.  Select the URL and save it to the clipboard.  You’ll need it later when you configure Word to post.
   

Connect Word and Publish

1. Launch Word from the Office 365 ProPlus suite.
2. Select File | New and select the Blog template.
   
3. Select Register Now.
   
4. Under Blog Provider, select SharePoint blog, and then click Next.
   
5. Paste the blog URL (from step 4) and click OK.
   
6. Click OK to dismiss the dialog box.
   
7. Edit the document and add a title, text, headings, and images.
   
8. When you are finished, under the Blog Post tab of the ribbon, select Publish.
9. Switch to the browser interface and refresh the blog page to see the blog page posted.
   

Overall, though, we’d recommend you use the modern Communication Sites Templates. 🙂