Blogging To Drive Business: Book review

By on February 12th, 2010 In Weekend Reading

Here’s a good overview for anyone in business who wants to learn more about how to use a blog to create a relevant audience and drive more business.  As the authors point out, there are three parts to blogging:   1) the specific technical instructions to set up your blog and add information to it, 2) what you need to know to get eyeballs looking at it, and 3) how to leverage your blog with other marketing efforts.  

Even though I have been blogging for Valley PR Blog for 2 years, I found this book helpful and more practical than some other blogging books I’ve read.    There are plenty of factoids in the book to persuade even the most reluctant blogger, such as the news that online media is the only area of media currently growing.   Blogging helps people communicate with large numbers of people quickly and publicly.  Blogs have grown from 5 million in 2005 to 133 million in 2008.  If one of your competitors is continually blogging about your industry and you aren’t, search engines will find your competitor’s blog and place it, not yours, high on the list of search results when someone searches for one or more terms in your industry.  By learning how to engage the public through open online channels, you can truly connect with your customers.   A business blog not only gets the messaging out to customers, but enables you to bring your audience’s comments in, making your blog the home base for these online conversations.   [This is the benefit of blogging that I think many business executives fail to understand - the ability to centralize where the conversations about your company are taking place].

There are 9 chapters which cover everything from why blogging is important to how to get more readers (77% of bloggers attract readers by commenting on other blogs, according to Technorati), how to choose your particular blogging platform, how to engage with your readers, what to write about, how to deal with negative feedback, multimedia blogging, and creative commons licensing.   The case studies are helpful and not too long – just quick bites of information to help support the text.  There is also an appendix of important blogging sites.  

If you are looking for more tips on urls, tagging, keywords, YouTube channels, photo-sharing services, polls, contests, and other blogging components, you’ll find it in this guide.

The authors are Eric Butow and Rebecca Bollwitt.   Eric is CEO of Butow Communications Group, a web design and online marketing firm in Jackson, California.   He has written several computing books, including “How to Succeed in Business Using LinkedIn.”   Rebecca is the co-founder of sixty4media, which specializes in WordPress design and development as well as social media consulting in Vancouver, BC.   She has been blogging since 2004 on miss604.com, and in 2008 was listed within the top 10 “Most Influential in Canadian Social Media.”

Note:   From time to time I’m offered complimentary review books from Pearson/Que/Sams.  If I like the book concept, I’ll review it. 

 

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