Product Description
As all these people become publishers – and even more become blog readers – the nature of the material being produced has moved into the realms of politics, professions and consumerism. For example, “Engadget” is one of the more popular blogs, a daily review of newfangled and exciting gadgets.
Blogs and Blogging in business are relatively new, so new that there simply are no rules. If there were rules, they would be changing and evolving too ra… More >>
As a new podcaster, I found the information in the book and all the interviews full of great information. I implemented 5 of the ideas already and feel like I’ve jumped light years ahead of where I would have been without this book!
Rating: 4 / 5
This book will take most readers about 101 minutes to read. It is designed in 101 very short chapters of about a page each. In fact each chapter it much like a Blog post. It is a series of interviews with commentary based on the author’s discussions with 101 blog writers/experts. I got several ideas from it. It sent me off to the computer to find some of these bloggers. It inspired me to make a post or two. The content on podcasting is a handful of these short chapters. It is well worth a look, but it is not likely something one would read a second time.
Rating: 3 / 5
This guy can gather text from a webpage, throw it together with a few glowing reviews from the self-publishing circuit and make a pile of money from nothing.
Save yours (money). There’s very little in this book of value. It’s not even a handy guide or a time saver—you’ll get more infomation from a single Google search than you will from this book.
Rating: 1 / 5
Unfortunately, this book is like so many books on blogging and other Web ventures:
1. It promises “insider information.”
2. It’s a thrown together compendium of the writings of Web marketing “gurus,” most of whose only real experience is in marketing their own purported expertise in Web marketing.
3. From reading it, one does glean a few good ideas.
… and like all the others, it will be useful to those who are new to the field. To use an old saying, it’s like a Texas longhorn: a point here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.
Rating: 2 / 5
Yesterday I read Blogging for Business (ISBN: 1419536451) also written by Mr. Demopoulos. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to read the instant book being reviewed that he just had published. Let me tell you, I wasn’t disappointed to read two books in two days by the same author on the same subject. I highly recommend both to people who run their own small consulting practices and are comfortable using Internet tools to help market their practices. If you use article writing, book writing, seminar/workshop presentations, public speaking, and Web sites to promote yourself, then do yourself a favor and get these two books to help you incorporate blogs and blogging into your marketing repertoire.
Between the two books I actually liked the instant book being reviewed better. Both books seemed to cover the same material, but from a different perspective. I regularly tell my clients to read three books on any subject they want to become expert on. Usually that means they need to get three books on writing business plans, but if someone wants to become an expert on blogs and blogging for business these two books will fit two-thirds of the reading requirement.
The “blog entries” in this book are grouped into 8 topics:
1. The basics
2. Some business uses of blogs & podcasts
3. Planning your blog
4. Making money
5. Promoting your blog & tracking statistics
6. Podcast specific topics
7. Other blog & podcast considerations
8. The future
My favorite topics were 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. I especially loved Topic 3 regarding how to plan your blog or blogs. It’s very difficult to just throw together a blog and expect it to help your business get and retain paying clients. You have to write content for your blog that your clients and prospects will like and value. If you do, then those people are more likely to seek your services that you sell for a fee. If you don’t, then chances are your blog won’t benefit you financially. Of course, it takes planning to be able to hit your targets with your blog(s).
I was happy to not see a topic on building a blog in this book. I would have liked this book more if it had included more stories on how bloggers get their content AND THE INS AND OUTS OF WRITING THEIR BLOGS. Just think, if this author were to write a book just on that subject, then I could recommend THREE books on blogging for someone to read who wants to become an expert on blogging. Writing three great books on the same subject would be quite a feat. 5 stars!
Rating: 5 / 5