Customer Reviews

Blogging to Drive Business: Create and Maintain Valuable Customer Connections

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a blogger already, and I bought this book because I wanted to learn more about driving business with my blog.

Unfortunately, most of the book isn't about driving business. It's about how to blog - what blogging platforms are out there, how to choose your fonts, the length of your posts, etc.

There are some pieces about business that are useful. But they're sprinkled between so much other stuff that it took a lot of reading to find them.

Whether you are a small business owner or the member of a large corporate marketing team, "Blogging to Drive Business" covers all the bases from Blogging 101 to more in-depth blogging topics and techniques.

The book starts with blogging basics, blog terminology, explanations of different types of blogs, and how to create a blogging strategy. The authors cover the major blogging platforms currently on the market and offer suggestions on how to pick the best one for your needs. They also go into the importance of combining your blog with other forms of social networking and offer details about Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

An entire chapter is devoted to what to write about. It covers ideas for internal blogs, product blogs, industry resource blogs, and using your blog to create an online community. The technical aspects of writing a blog are discussed, including how long your blog posts should be, writing effectively, editing, and design. I was very happy to see the detail in which search engine optimization (SEO) of blog posts was covered, which detailed urls, keywords, tags, categories, images, and titles.

For larger companies, there is sound information to consider on who will write the blog in your organization, who will manage it, resources on where to find professional bloggers for hire, and how to hire a blogger. It also goes over associated tasks for an in-house position that would handle your corporate blog and how to write a job description.

The authors also covered promoting your blog and getting more viewers through a combination of efforts from how to submit to search engines to online press releases and other social networking.

Images, video, audio, podcasting, SlideShare, and screencasts were discussed with suggestions on how to use them in your blog and your blog posts and how to optimize the various formats for search engine visibility.

There are a ton of relevant resources throughout the book and an appendix. The book also offers a number of case studies that give real life examples on how these blogging techniques have been used.

I would highly suggest this book to anyone just starting out in blogging, for anyone looking to improve the visibility of their current blog, or for bloggers looking for ideas on how to add some fresh content to their posts. The techniques and suggestions in "Blogging to Drive Business" can be used by companies of all sizes. I'll be recommending this book to clients who are interested in the world of corporate blogging.

Yes, this is not a sophisticated book on blogging for business. But, there are those of us out there who need a rudimentary book on how to blog which covers enough of the basics to get us off to a quick start. I think that a better title for this book would be: Basics of Business Blogging for Small Business.

As a small business person, I need to know just enough to get started, maintain a blog and keep it going. A blog may be more of an adjunct to my business than a driver of my business. This little book gave me enough confidence to create a blog. Down the road, I'll be ready for other books which are more complicated, but this little outline of basics got me from blog phobic to blog present.

As other reviewers have already stated, this book is really a "how-to guide to blogging", rather than "how to best leverage a blog for business." This book is great for blogger want-to-be's -- those people with either an idea they want to develop and share or those that just want to be heard (you know the type).

The book is well organized for this purpose, providing both the basics of the internet and the basics of the blog-o-sphere for readers.

Probably the most relevant take-away for any blogger-to-be who is not a trained reporter or writer is that blogging is hard and is a significant responsibility and undertaking - this is covered in the, "Who will write the blog?" section.

Another section that was particularly interesting was "Getting Eyeballs to your Blog" or, as I interpret it - getting people to your blog, keeping them reading, and getting them to come back.

For the blogger-to-be who has marginal familiarity with the internet, this is a great read. For the more savvy interneter, then there are some worthwhile nuggets but nothing that will really make it worth the time\money.

*See my personal "Amazon" review scale at the end of the review*

This seems like a hastily cranked-out book on blogging to fill the publisher's roster of business books. Not much care has been given to visual presentation, which really hurts the book in my opinion.

If you are unable to learn about blogs and blogging by reading blogs about blogging, a book may be useful to you. The information is basic, which, if you are clueless about blogging, might still fit your needs. My real gripe is with the presentation, or lack thereof.

The presentation just isn't lively. You'll notice that good blogs are, but this book is not. I'm not saying the writing is bad, but as far as graphic design sensibilities, this book pretty much doesn't have them. It has small print and little variety to the typography. It has no sidebars or callouts to help us learn the information easier. It does have pictures, all screenshots in gray-scale. The book is printed in black and gray - single color printing.

Now you might argue that what matters is the content. But in today's over-communicated-to world you would be wrong. Especially with blogs graphic design is important because we are directing visitor attention. Mess it up and you lose your visitor. I would expect a book about engaging blog readers to be graphically well-presented like effective blogs are, but this book is not.

I communicate for a living and I use the internet to do a lot of it. Dry presentation usually doesn't cut the mustard in today's marketplace. If you want to know why and how to fix it, buy and read Your Attention Please: How to Appeal to Today's Distracted, Disinterested, Disengaged, Disenchanted, and Busy Consumer

I recently reviewed another book on blogging, which was mostly basic information on the topic, but lovingly designed and printed in 2-colors with lots of sidebars and callouts to help you learn the material. That book is Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro

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Loren's review scale:
1 star: Waste of time and paper
2 stars: Not very useful or enjoyable reading
3 stars: Average. Has moments
4 stars: Enjoyable, thought-provoking
5 stars: Excellent resource or highly enjoyable
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This was a basic book on how to blog. It was a beginner level book on how to create a blog, what font to use, what platform to use, etc. Since I have been blogging for a while now, I did not find anything too new or exciting in this book. i was looking for a book that would show me how to bring more customers in and drive up my business levels. I did not find that in this book. The main focus is on how to create a beautiful blog, which in itself does not drive up business, create or maintain valuable customer connections.

Blogging to Drive Business is a good guide for absolute beginners. The text explores basics of what a blog actually is, what to write within it, how to use it to create and maintain customer connections (as the title suggests), and most importantly, how to integrate it with other online and offline marketing programs and social network sites.

We found this book to be a valuable resource, as it also provided examples and links to other bloggers to see what (and what not) to do.

I almost did not pick up this book as the title suggests it's only for business. However, I found it's a decent introduction to both business and personal blogging.

This is not a "step-by-step" for blog creation. It goes more into using blogs to attract and retain viewers. Blogging basics, terms, blog classifications, platforms and basic blogging strategies are all covered.

One thing I liked was the coverage of advanced topics and offered information a beginner would not consider. Topics such as getting your blog noticed by search engine submission, search engine optimization, using keywords, urls and tags. Using your blog with social networking, hiring a professional blogger and using services for sound, podcasts, and screencasts.

There are good examples and supporting links for how people designed and used their blogs. I checked all links and only one would not load.

Overall, I found this book to be very useful especially if you are starting out in the blogging world. If you are an advanced blogger, you might find much of the information already known.

This book has some good content. I especially enjoyed reading Chapter 8 entitled "Getting Interactive with Multimedia Blogging." But I found the book was more geared toward blogging in general rather than how to specifically blog to drive business. Buried in the text is the content, but the outline of the book prevents the newbie from really getting what the title of the book promises.

I suppose after reading the title I hoped the book's chapters would have read something like the following:

0. Introduction
1. A blog is a marketing tool and why
2. People have to have a reason to visit your company blog
3. Blogs work well with a company Web site, an ezine list, photosharing sites, and videosharing sites
4. Text as content
5. Images as content
6. Video as content
7. Links to Web sites as content
8. Posting of comments on the Internet
9. Responding to comments posted on your company blog
10. You need to be able to regularly update the blog with fresh content
11. You will have to find time to regularly update your company blog
12. The blog will market your company, but your company must market your blog, too

If the content in the book were to be rearranged to fit into the above chapters, then the book would have been really good. Unfortunately the outline of the book was as follows:

0. Introduction
1. Why are blogs so important?
2. Leveraging your blog with marketing tools
3. Creating a blogging strategy
4. Blogging responsibly
5. Finding topics to write about
6. Who will write the blog?
7. Getting eyeballs to your blog
8. Getting interactive with multimedia blogging
9. Taking advantage of Web 3.0 blogs
A. Important blogging sites

Seemed to me chapters 2 and 7 covered the same ground. And Chapter 5 seemed to relate to the appendix. I didn't see the need for chapters 4 or 9. The book would definitely have been better without them. And obviously the blog will not exist straight from thin air. Someone has to figure out what to post and find time to do it. But I didn't find Chapter 6 to be all that well done. Some posts will be written, but captivating blog posts will usually have pictures and video clips included. So the chapter on writing definitely should have included more on who will take the pictures and videos, and then who will edit the pictures and videos. Create an amateur blog and you will not get a professional following. 2 stars!

Anyone with a background in web development will not gain much from this book, as it gives only a cursory level overview of currently available technologies, but does not adequately compare their capabilities. I would have liked to see clear checklists of what someone needs to do to create an effective business-based blog.

The case studies at the end of each chapter seem haphazard in terms of business size, type, and goals related to their blogs. They would have benefited from categorization that would allow business owners to easily identify similar situations.

I would have liked to see lists like: how to prepare a business for blogging, how to link your blog to other sites, and the relationship between blogs and other forms of social networking.