Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging [Hardcover]

Andy Wibbels (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2006

The world seems to have gone blogwild. More and more personal blogs appear every day, and businesses large and small are realizing that blogging can be a dynamite sales, marketing, and communications tool. Blogs are cheap to set up and operate, and they can humanize a company’s image, start the buzz on a new product, and get instant customer feedback.

Do you have a blog? Does your business? It’s not too late to get started. Written by a well-known blogging expert and evangelist, Blogwild! walks would-be bloggers through the entire process and shows you just how easy it is to get up and running. More than just Blogging for Dummies, this humorous and indispensable book includes:
• a brief history of where blogs came from, where they are now, and where they’re going
• eight keys to a successful business blog
• everything you ever wanted to know about blog software
• the latest trends in multimedia blogging with audio and video
• five necessary elements of your blog’s persona
• and lots more!

With Blogwild! you’ll discover that wildly effective blogging is within the reach of every business.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary named blog the word of the year in 2004, undoubtedly because of the enormous impact on the presidential election that year. In case you've been asleep since then, blog is short for weblog, an online diary where the blogger shares her opinions with the world, discusses personal interests, rants on politics, or just logs in the events of the day. Creating a blog is extremely easy, and you don't need a web designer or any knowledge of HTML code. Wibbels compares the features of several popular bogging sites and provides a tutorial on creating and maintaining your blog. Of course, if there's a new technology out there, someone will figure out how to make money with it, and Wibbels shows businesses and entrepreneurs how to use the photosphere to effectively market and promote their enterprises. Wibbels describes it as "effortless marketing," and it's a friendly way to reach your target audience, as opposed to spam. Wibbels shares his knowledge of blogging at his Easy Bake Weblogs seminar at http://www.easybakeweblogs.com. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Back Cover

"Blogwild! is about the future-your future. If you're a small business owner and want to stay competitive, start blogging now. Wibbels has served up a user-friendly (and fun) guide that even my grandmother could follow! It's going to be the definitive book on blogging."
-Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (April 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841178
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841173
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #192,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a blogging evangelist and have helped hundreds of companies all over the world use blogs and related technologies to grow their business. Right now I work at Six Apart.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pros and Cons, June 22, 2006

By 

Brad Shorr "Brad Shorr" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging (Hardcover)

Pros:
1. Clearly written in an engaging style.
2. Easy to read and not overly technical. He does a good job of explaining fairly complex things like RSS feeds so beginners can understand.
3. A few very good pieces of blogging advice and some interesting blog citations.

Cons:
1. The bulk of the text is a "how-to" manual for TypePad. If you don't use that platform, well over half the book will be barely relevant.
2. No screen shots. When you're explaining, for instance, step-by-step posting mechanics, screen shots clear up a lot of confusion.
3. Although the book sings the praises of business blogging, I don't think it provides enough depth to get company leadership behind it. More detailed case studies might have helped.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Introduction to Blogging With TypePad, August 16, 2006

By 

O. Brown "Ms. O. Khannah-Brown" (Twopeas, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging (Hardcover)

***
This was a great book for newbies to blogging who don't know which blogging platform to select (and who would follow the author's recommendation to use TypePad) or who already use TypePad. So if you have a small business, or you're thinking of having just your own personal blog but have no idea where to start, this is the book for you.

For people with some blogging experience, this book is a little too introductory. I've had my own blog for a year, and I picked up a few somewhat useful ideas, but not enough to justify the price of the book. The book is very small (5" X 7") with a larger font, lots of white space, and is only 174 pages. This 174 pages includes the index, several brief success stories of small business people who have blogs, and over 50 pages just devoted to doing specific things in TypePad. I read the whole thing in under an hour, but I skimmed over the "how-to's" for TypePad since I use another platform and I'm not interested in learning about TypePad.

There also is not very much information here specific to small businesses. The book touches on small businesses as it covers various "how-to"s of blogging, but not nearly enough to call itself "A Guide for Small Business Blogging".

So if you're a beginner to the blogosphere, get this book and take off. I think it would be an easy way to quickly get up and going. If you have much experience at all, though, you may feel like me---disappointed and let down.
***

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beginners Only - Resources Questionable, December 21, 2006

By 

Christine M. Lekander "Self Help Junkie" (Cave Creek, Arizona 85331) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging (Hardcover)

I picked up Blogwild in the bookstore where it is very lonely with few alternatives for books on blogging for business. I bought it because I intend to learn how to make money with blogs and the book has a short chapter called How to Make Money Blogging. It turned out that a recent Wallstreet Journal Article I had read already told me everything in this chapter. "Oh well," I thought, "I might get some more information for the website resource that Andy Wibbels lists." But, when I checked out the website, I found it was an enrollment only course that Mr. Wibbel wrote himself and that costs $280.00. Well, sorry, but I didn't get enough for my $20.00 investment in this book to fork over another $280.00!!

I wasn't going to write this review because the other reviewers have covered what this book really is, an extremely basic and short book for those who really haven't yet got a blogging clue. But, when I found the one resource I checked out on the web belonged to the author and costs even more money, I had to write about it.