Blogging for Creatives: How designers, artists, crafters and writers can blog to make contacts, win business and build success [Paperback]

Although experienced in running multiple blogs on many different platforms, I still picked up this book because it looked so dang good. This book is simply beautiful!

So, what about the content?

It's refreshingly broad enough for pros to learn new things, yet simple enough for a newbie to jump right in (and leads your hand through setting up a Tumblr blog, for example). It's current as of summer 2012, because many new tools and sites are mentioned that lots of bloggers don't know about. This book offers a ton of great blogging examples on the web. It talks about everything from Google Analytics to using Aweber for sign-ups for your email newsletter. It has a "Top 10 blog widgets" section, which was very useful and spot-on.

It covers all the major blog platforms, with an emphasis on Tumblr, Wordpress, Typepad, and Google's Blogger.

A few web sites offered up that I was clueless about:

chartbeat.com
tastespotting.com
design-milk.com
soundcloud.com
feedly.com

Just too much to list, but here's another site I found helpful in getting inspiration for calls-to-action: marismith.com.

Perhaps the most useful part of the book for me was the two-page list called, "12 blog posts that work." One listing was, "create a top ten list or 'seven things you never know about...".

Overall the best book on getting started on your own blog, and an excellent resource for those of us who already have one. I read the entire book in one 3-hour sitting...

Blogging for Creatives is a helpful starting guide to blogging for those into art, crafting and design. Actually, the book is written in a manner that's applicable to general bloggers as well, just that most examples featured are of art and design, and sometimes cooking.

This book has many helpful tips on blogging and getting up to speed. It assumes no prior knowledge and the instructions are always clear and concise. So the book is great for beginners.

Here's the list of chapters:

+ Get Started
+ Blogging Tools and Technology
+ Step-by-Step Setup
+ Creating an Eye-catching Blog
+ Creating Great Content
+ Blogging on the Move
+ Promoting Your Blog
+ Being Social
+ How to turn Blog Visitors into Cash
+ PR and Your Blog
+ Monitoring Your Blog's Performance
+ Troubleshooting
+ Let's Blog

The book covers the basic setting up of the three main blogging platforms, namely Google's Blogger, Wordpress and Tumblr. There's a good comparison between the Wordpress blogging software and the Wordpress blog hosting platform that explains the difference well. It's quite important to know the differences because there are certain peculiar limitations to the Wordpress blog hosting.

After setting up, it talks about ideas generating content, marketing and measuring your blog's performance. Those are all essential skills. I've been blogging for several years and have learned from experience much of what's taught in the book. The book does a good job of covering the basics.

I like the many examples of blogs showcased. They are beautiful, inspiring and really shows the potential of blogging.

Highly recommended to beginner bloggers.

If you want more inspiration, I would also recommend the books Blogging Heroes and Clear Blogging. These two books are on case studies of successful blogs and provide more in depth blogging philosophy.

I recently started a blog for my creative business and this book was of great help for ideas and inspiration about what kind of posts works. I would highly recommend it for anyone starting out a new blog...