Customer Reviews

Blog Blazers

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Blog Blazers" presents 40 of the top bloggers answering a series of 24 questions. Of these 33 are men and 7 are women, most of the topics are computer related or financial. As popular as they are, I had never heard of any of them before so I did some poking around the internet first, looking at 10 random blogs after reading this book. But this review is about this book, not the bloggers themselves.

Other reviewers have given this book more stars than me. Yes, everyone provides interesting information. Yes, everyone is honest it seems. But my two star reduction has to do with the organization and presentation of these interviews not with the those interviewed.

First, one of the 40 is the author of the book himself. If you want to promote yourself as a successful blogger, great, but it rubs me wrong to have an interview of self in a book. Instead I really wish Grenier had used himself more in the introduction or a conclusion as I'll discuss in a moment and added another "top 40 blogger" to the book.

Second, as it is organized, alphabetically by blogger's first name, it feels disorganized. I was hoping for something along the lines of "blogs about X" and "blogs about G" and then maybe a "odd and ends category". One of the reoccurring tips throughout the reviews is to write what you know about so why not organize by subject. Or by success however that will be measured -- money made, number of RSS subscribers, number of comments, whatever.

Third, there is a very small introduction and tiny conclusion. Why not pull together some of the most common tips and answers? Why not use the author's own life as a blogger to gauge the answers? What about a list of the references bloggers gave to their questions? As it is I don't feel like I walk away with anything solid about what anyone thinking about blogging seriously needs to consider. Maybe this isn't a "how-to" technically but you know that most folks picking this book up are hoping to learn how-to.

Finally, I just found the interview process here to be very repetitive. So I double checked. Yes, the same 24 questions over and over. No differences. Now, of course you want to ask the same foundation questions in an interview when you are comparing folks and gathering tips but where's the engagement between interviewer and blogger? Where are the follow up questions that dig a bit deeper and demand more specifics or more examples? That would have been both entertaining and enlightening.

So at the end these tips and suggestions are here, the secrets promised on the book's cover are here, but you, the reader will need to be alert and keep track of them as you read.

Having interviewed dozens of thought leaders in recent years, I feel well-qualified to praise Stephane Grenier on the quality of the interviews he conducted of 40 top bloggers who, to varying extent and in diverse ways, share their "secrets to creating a high-profile, high-traffic, and high-profit blog." After providing a mini-bio for each, Grenier poses excellent questions while not interfering with the flow of thought or homogenizing the responses to the same set of questions. (If you think that's easy, try interviewing only two or three rather than 40 different people.) The interviews are listed in a first-name alpha order (i.e. Aaron Wall of SEOBook is first and Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur's Journey is last) rather than in thematic order (formulating a business model and a game plan, aesthetics, infrastructure, getting started, attracting and increasing traffic, developing what Seth Godin calls a "tribe, " etc.). I subscribe to a few blogs (including those of Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki, and Seth Godin), am actively involved in a few others, and have been thinking about launching one of my own. Therefore, I was especially interested in the information and advice provided in the interviews.

Predictably, the responses to the set of questions reflected the different interests, values, objectives, and concerns of the respondents. (Grenier is to be commended on respecting and preserving those differences.) However, there were several areas in which there was a substantial consensus of agreement. For example, the Web sites most frequently recommended to new bloggers include

Bloglines
Boing Boing
BuzzMachine
CopyBlogger
Daily Blog Tips
Dosh Dosh
Enrepreneur's Journey
Headrush Typepad
How to Change the World (Guy Kawasaki)
Joel on SoftwareProBlogger
SerchShoe Money
Seth Godin's Typepad
Successful Blogger
Techno Marketer
Think Simple. Be Decisive

Which books to read? Several of those interviewed indicated that they read more books about writing and marketing than books about blogging. Others recommended that new bloggers read books most relevant to their specific interests. I thoroughly agree with J.D. Roth's recommendations of William Zinnser's On Writing Well, Stephen King's On Writing, and William Strunk and E.B. White's The Elements of Style. With regard to marketing a blog, I agree with others interviewed who strongly recommend Godin's books (especially Purple Cow, The Big Moo, The Dip, and especially Tribes) as well as Marty Neumeier's The Brand Gap and Zag.

Most of those interviewed have invested more hours than dollars in their blogs and few have earned a living from it. Opinions vary as to how to measure a blog's success; several suggest that it should be calculated relative to a blogger's goals for it. Most agreed that new bloggers should allow at least six months, and in most instances 12-18 months, for a blog to achieve its goals, whatever they may be. With regard to what makes a blog successful, responses also vary. Some think it is traffic, others influence, still others a loyal and appreciative readership, and only a few revenue. Here are a few selections of advice that caught my eye:

"If you are new to blogging and want an idea to spread make sure you get community feedback early on such that market leaders in your industry have a vested interest in talking about your blog." Aaron Wall

"Everything I know about blogging is in this slideshow (http://www.slideshare.net/darmano/conversation-by-design) David Darmano

"A new blogger should start by reading at least one hundred other blogs for a month. After that, if you still think you have something new to say, then start writing." Eric Sink

"You should write selfishly, to satisfy only yourself, or you'll burn out instantly. But all writing is meant to be read. The true metric for success for any kind of writing is how many people are reading [it]. All other success factors derive from that." Jeff Atwood

"The best blog posts are usually the ones that are short and sweet. So when writing content make sure to remove the fluff and just get down to the meat of the content." Neil Patel

"A blog post is a product. It fills a need in the market, it has competitors, and the prospective customers for the product have virtually infinite choices among other products. Make sure that your blog post provides something of value which they can't get anywhere else, and they will have no choice but to fill that need from you." Patrick McKenzie

"I don't think people should look at blogging as a money making venture. Very few people make money off a blog. But blogging opens tons of doors - via networking, especially, because bloggers have access to people they would not otherwise get access to. Blogging is a great way to build a career if you know what you want from your career." Penelope Trunk

"Use lists. Be topical...write posts that need to be read right now. Learn enough to become the expert in your field. Break news. Be timeless...write posts that will be readable in a year. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you. Announce news. Write short, pithy posts. Write stuff that people want to read and share." Seth Godin

"Try to write something you'd like to read from a stranger. The key is `from a stranger.' This means no writing about your dog or cat. Write about what other people care about. Give them something of value. Share your knowledge in a way that benefits others." Stephane Grenier

In addition to the books previously cited, here are some others sources worth checking out: Debbie Weil's The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right, Robert W. Bly's Blog Schmog: The Truth About What Blogs Can (and Can't) Do for Your Business, Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett's ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, and Michael A. Banks's Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers.

Interviews with 40 bloggers reveal many similarities. They advise you to keep pace, write well, and promote yourself. 90% of the discussions are by marketers, software developers, and financial gurus, so this book will benefit professionals more than amateurs. However, as the latter, even I learned a lot.

Only one interviewee likes my Fionnchu-dot-Blogspot-dot-com as "Blogtrotter" host, Google's e-Blogger, for example; while WordPress is favored by a few for its plug-ins, most respondents lament that they did not start blogging under their own domain name. This reliance on Blogspot or WordPress may separate we amateur bloggers from the pros. They tend to dismiss "free" or "hosted" blogging sites. Unsurprisingly, they like us hate annoying ads, although most monetize, with varying degrees of success from a six-figure income to apparently not enough to pay for a video game with gift certificates earned from Amazon Affiliates.

Stephane Grenier asks each blogger what to read when learning about blogging. Darren Rowse's ProBlogger site overwhelmingly earns acclaim, with the book "Naked Conversations" and text "Cluetrain Manifesto" also frequently mentioned. Many bloggers, however, tend to dive in and link and comment on other blogs, forums, social networks, and websites. (Twitter is mentioned by only one person, however, and I failed to see Facebook's potential explored pro or con as it might have deserved.) Pursuing SEO (Search Engine Optimization: terms lack a glossary and this may baffle the newcomer that this book's intended to assist) remains a holy grail; pros scrutinize Google Analytics and stoke FeedBurner, being tech-savvier than the common web visitor, perhaps, and most know how to tweak network systems. They point you to sites and widgets, blogs and examples, throughout the text, but I suspect some of these may overwhelm newcomers.

As to writing, Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" keeps its favored status as an exemplar even among technorati. Pacing one's self as a writer, they urge, will gradually pay off in readers. Most post daily; some especially in the software and marketing fields encourage five daily posts, however brief. They all warn of the burnout that traps most novices into abandoning their efforts far too soon. Stephane tells himself and us in his own interview to avoid negative, scathing comments about others, and to concentrate upon asserting your own opinion rather than parroting other content done better by bloggers more famous.

One must build one's reputation with what one knows best. Instead of commenting on other content, they counsel you to mainly write about what inspires you. Not the cat, the girlfriend, or your own life, however. "Added value" may be our decade's buzzword, but it's good advice.

Headlines draw attention, as many RSS feeds and search engines have barely more than this to dangle before the eyes of a potential visitor to one's blog. Pictorial elements, crediting other sites, and an attractive layout encourage the passerby, skimming the screen, to linger and become a regular customer, or a friend. Short paragraphs, bullet points, and catchy leads transfer journalistic trademarks to the DIY industry that has become, for 70 million blogs, a crowded field where less than one percent generate sufficient traffic, revenues, and word-of-mouth to sustain themselves. Even among these successful bloggers, nearly none make a living off blogs alone. They may, given the preponderance of financial wizards, not be satisfied with a modest income, on the other hand!

Key term matches tempt a reader further, and scannability as opposed to in-depth reading must also be elemental when creating an appealing entry. While the social networking aspect per se seems underexamined, StumbleUpon and cross-currents that flow from one entity to the other on the Net appear to be quite the norm for most bloggers here. No graphics are given, so the reader might want to visit the blogs mentioned, of course, to see how successful bloggers integrate words with graphics.

The book reads briskly, with a welcome index, but I would recommend pausing after a few interviews. They tend to run together otherwise, and you will see "ProBlogger" over and over. Given the stress by bloggers here to polish one's prose, quite a few typos remain, but these may have been silently "unedited" by Grenier, as with capturing Manolo Blahnik shoe-magnate's unique style of expression. The ESL did throw me off here, and I wondered why it was given in this manner without editorial comment. Perhaps the questions might have, after an initial exposition, been reduced to avoid repetition, as they are asked of each interviewer and after forty times, they do tire the "scanning reader." However, even if alphabetized by first rather than last name, the transcripts do manage to get the feel of a personality across now and then which speaks well for that blogger's own sense of style on his or her blog.

Steph interviews himself among the success stories, as Stephane, as well as 39 others. His own comments compare blogging to a New Year's resolution. Most give up after feeling ignored by the lack of readers or customers. He and his colleagues show how the one-percent of bloggers might include you.

As the author of 3 blogs and consultant to others, I'm always looking to learn more about blogging. So I was eager to dive into Blogging Blazers and learn some of the information promised on the back cover: the top things these blogs have in common and how to avoid the typical blog blunders.

Alas, this isn't the kind of book you dive into. Author Grenier asks 40 bloggers a series of questions. Because each blogger answers the same questions in the same order, I suspect Grenier distributed questionnaires and printed the responses, verbatim, as if they were interviews. There's no need to set them up as a dialogue. In fact, reading a series of dialogues gets exhausting.

I also suspect the author used the bios submitted by the bloggers almost verbatim. For instance, Ben Casnocha's bio refers to Casnocha's book as "full of specific and actionable advice for any and all entrepreneurs." Do we believe the author wrote this? Does any book on the planet contain advice that would benefit "any and all entrepreneurs?"

The Q&A format limits the reader to fairly shallow information. Bloggers give brief answers and of course are not asked any follow-up questions, as they would in a live interviewer with a professional, trained, experienced interviewer.

The best part of the book is that we get introduced to a number of potentially interesting and worthwhile blogs written and recommended by the interviewees. I also like the idea of asking each blogger for his or her favorite post, but tracking down those posts will be challenging. Unique URLs tend to be extremely long -- easy if you're clicking through, but impractical if you're reading a print book. Why didn't the author use tinyurl?

I agree with the reviewer who criticized the author for interviewing himself. But my biggest concern is, "What should we take away from this book?" I wish Grenier had presented some insight and analysis rather than straight reporting. (Some of those interviews could use a good editor, too.) As it is, we can't really come to conclusions about what makes an effective blog. The interviewees offer contradictory advice. Some bloggers follow practices that make sense in the context of their niches and goals, but aren't really relevant to anyone else.

I was trying to figure out who among my acquaintances might enjoy this book. And there's where I see the biggest difficulty. The advice is too elementary for an experienced blogger, yet too confusing for a newbie. The back cover promises we'll learn the difference between the 1% of blogs that "generate healthy buzz, traffic and revenues" and the 99% of blogs that don't. Instead, we get a summary of 40 blogs that are successful in 40 different ways.

I just came away with the feeling I'd read a stack of surveys and wondering who was going to integrate and analyze the data. It's not going to be me!

OK if you want to really be businesslike about your blog (or your companies blog), this is one meaty little book. If you have no ambitions/questions/ideas about blogging, skip this post.

Take my example, I read the book slowly, enjoying the nuggets that each of the bloggers shared. When I finished the book, I had a full day of work ahead to add the first five things to what I was already doing with this blog. My support guy wishes I had never read the book I am sure, since I have another ten things to do next update day.

This book reinforced and dramatically increased my utility and usage of Twitter, Stumbledupon and de.lic.ious . I updated my Digg account and picked up that RSS feed to Google Reader - awesome. I have new ideas about trackbacks, retweets and commenting.

This book is likely the leadng best practises on blogging repository at the moment. If this is something you care about, you need this book.

When you sit down in front of your computer do you ever feel like everyone in the world has a blog? Everyone that is except for you. (We're told there are more than 70,000,000 blogs on the Internet and a new one comes on line every 1.4 seconds) Perhaps you'd really like to join the throng and write a blog but have no idea how to go about it, too timid, not knowledgeable enough?

Here's Stephane Grenier, a recognized expert in web business; he's built and promoted blogs and with the help of 40 friends he shares the secrets of the online trade with you. Please note that those 40 friends are among the world's most successful bloggers. These are folks who aren't surprised to have 500,000 unique visitors per year. A statistic that truly boggles my mind!

Some of these bloggers do it to earn money, to personalize a company, to become established as an authority figure, others simply blog because they enjoy it. Whatever the case, it's a big world out there and it would be quite a kick to be a part of it.

Much of the advice offered by the top bloggers is common sense, a greater portion falls into the "Why didn't I think of that?" variety. Advice comes under such headings as

What's your best tip for writing a successful blog post?
What's the most common mistake new bloggers make? (My personal favorite)
Which books and websites do you recommend to new bloggers?
What's the best way to make money from your blog?

All agreed that it takes persistence and patience to garner a good number of hits - each agreed that it was more than worth the effort.

Have a look at Blog Blazers - it'll help you decide whether or not blogging's for you.

- Gail Cooke

One thing I have to make clear is that these are 40 "top" bloggers, not the Top 40 bloggers - there is a big difference, but nothing serious. The 'Top 40' bloggers is subjective and changes as often as the wind. If you need to know, Technorati does have a top 100 by popularity at technorati[dot]com/pop/blogs/ Seth Godin, a contributor to this book, ranks 13 as of this review posting.

The 40 bloggers in this book are diverse in experience, topic, age, career, nationality, and sex, to name a few. The responses you get are also diverse, but have a common theme. It's this common theme that is what you are paying for. In the end, you will look at the PostIt flags or highlights and collect it all to help you create a winning blog, or at least start your research.

I was interested in what some of the well-known bloggers had to say, but found more inspiration (at least for me) from some of the lesser-known bloggers. JD Roth, whom I think is well-known, wrote "I don't know" for multiple answers; whereas Asha Dornfest gave longer answers that really matched my style. To each their own, I guess, which makes this book interesting and flexible enough for all types of bloggers and wanna-be bloggers.

I have to share the comment with a previous reviewer in that the Q&A style should have been dropped for a summary of their responses. It appears that this was an email to bloggers, and many, if not all of the answers to the questions was simply cut and paste into the book's format. Note that this book is page after page of question, then answer, question, then answer, for nearly 200 pages. A couple good things came of this: after reading all of Steph's questions, it was easy to just read the answers (which cuts the book by at least a third); the 5 fave' blogs and 5 tips are easy to spot on each page since they are in list format and stand out, not buried in some long paragraph.

ProBlogger is by far the most-sited educational blog by these bloggers. If you choose not to buy this book, I would cruise on over there (where they have also reviewed this book.)

You will be surprised by some of the answers from bloggers. One answer (that seemed to repeat itself) to the question of "Which book(s) would you recommend for new bloggers..." was 'none'. Abdylas Tynyshov answered "I personally think you don't need to buy a book to learn how to blog." Another said that the blogging books "lagged behind" the info found online. I can't say that I would have printed those answers in a book on blogging.

With that said, this book is 40 interviews from 40 bloggers (one being the author - which I found strange that he answered his own questions instead of writing a summary of his blogging experiences) that will give you dozens of resources to start your research, about 5-10 common themes/tips to follow, and the inspiration to know that others are doing it 100+ different ways - but are doing it nonetheless.

This is no step-by-step hand holding manual here; this is a look at how others have done it and are continuing to do it. It is up to you to pull out of the book the ideas that you feel will work for you. When I look back at all of the PostIt flags, I have a primer for my attempt at a winning blog.

I would recommend this book as a great resource for beginning bloggers and wanna-be bloggers that need guidance for that winning blog.

For more in-depth reading on blogs and their impact on politics, I highly recommend The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics in addition to Steph's book.

Have you ever wanted to pick the brain of some of the world's top bloggers? How about having the opportunity to talk to 40 of them and ask them to tell you their top tips and pointers on how to build a successful blog?

Stephane Grenier has already done that for you in this book. The price is a bargain considering the wealth of information that these blogging pros share with you throughout the book.

Read it with a highlighter handy to mark out all the tips that resonate with you. Think about this: if you get just one good tip per blogger, you will have forty specific, actionable steps that you can follow to improve your blogging.

I liked this book a lot. It was informative on the subject. And I found it to be fairly well written. I say "fairly" because this book is little more than a compilation of 40 questionnaires completed by real life bloggers who arguably have been successful at blogging. The questionnaire included the following 24 questions:

1. What makes a blog successful according to you? Is it traffic, reach, revenue, etc.?
2. When did you decide you finally reached success with your blog?
3. How long does it take to become a successful blogger?
4. Who do you think are the most successful bloggers on the Internet today?
5. Which five blogs do you regularly read?
6. Which websites would you recommend for new bloggers starting a blog?
7. Which book(s) would you recommend for new bloggers (these can range from marketing books, blogging books, etc.)?
8. What is your most successful blog post ever?
9. What is your biggest tip on writing a successful blog post?
10. What is your best advice in regards to content and writing for bloggers?
11. How important do you think are the deadlines of your blog articles?
12. Do you spend any money and time on marketing?
13. What are your main methods of marketing your blog?
14. Which marketing tactic has surprised you the most in terms of its effectiveness?
15. What are your quick and short five best tips for blogging?
16. What is the common pitfall new bloggers generally fall into?
17. If you knew what you know now when you first started, what is the one biggest tip you'd give yourself today?
18. What repels you the most from a blog (animations, in your face advertising, etc.)?
19. Do you make any direct money from your blog through advertising, product placements, etc.?
20. What is your best monetized method (Ads, affiliate marketing, etc.)?
21. Do you find you get more from direct monetization of your blog or from opportunities that come because of the existence of your blog?
22. What's your most interesting story related to your blog and blogging experience?
23. What is the biggest opportunity that came to you because of your blog?
24. Any other comments or thoughts you'd like to share?

The very first book I reviewed on Amazon, and this dates back to early 2006, was a book similar to the instant one. It was based primarlily on questionnaires. I complained then, and I'm going to complain now, that an author often times should resort to questionnaires to create the UNDERLYING content for a book. But the author is kind of wimping out by merely publishing the answers to the questionnaires rather than organizing the data from the questionnaires into sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters. I cannot tell you how much more I would have liked this book if the author had gone the extra step and really made this tome into a book rather than a mere compilation. 4 stars!

Blog Blazers features editor Stephane Grenier's interviews with 40 top bloggers culled largely from the technical end but also some other bloggers, including weight loss blogger Jeannette Fulda of Half of Me (a friend who gave me a copy of this book). The powerful part of this book is not the design or the editing, both of which could have used some help. The powerful part is that by turning most of the meat of the book over to the bloggers by asking each of them the exact same questions, Greneier lets these powerful voices speak for themselves.

What's fascinating is how many of them cited the same bloggers and similar ideas about what makes a blog work, and what "success" means in terms of blogging. It's not just about money; most of them said that their blogs aren't huge moneymakers, but nevertheless led to book deals, speaking gigs, and other accomplishments they wouldn't have gotten without their blogs. As David Armano of Logic + Emotion says, "Influence s the most important way I can think to gauge a blog. It's not easy to measure influence, but popularity has something to do with it. The broader a blog's reach, the more influence it has. The more people a blog influences, the more successful it is. It's not about size--you can influence people in niche groups."

While many of the bloggers here are from the tech field, there are others like Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks, Jessamyn West of Librarian.net, Manolo Blahnik of Manolo's Shoe BlogPamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation, Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist, who offer some other perspectives.

The cumulative effect of reading this book was, for me, an urge to get out there and simply blog more, and to read some of these bloggers' posts. I found that much of what I have been doing on my group blog Cupcakes Take the Cake (http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com) is already in keeping with what these bloggers suggest, but there are many things I can fine tune. This is a good book for both beginning bloggers as well as those who've been doing it a while but are looking to move to the next level, whether that means a book deal, advertising, or simply gaining a wider readership.