The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging [Paperback]

As someone who has long been a blog reader and commenter and more recently, blogging on a small scale, I was naturally very interested in this book and whether it would live up to its name as a "complete guide to blogging." While like most books it is not 100% perfect it does come close and gives some great information. It is a great mix of practical advice as well as commentary from Huffington Post bloggers and other bloggers from around the web.

The book starts by giving the history of blogging and then in Chapter 2 goes into the basics of getting started. This chapter reads like a FAQ section giving the reader advice on everything from figuring out what to write about to mentioning the variety of software available to blogging to the issue of copyright.

Chapter 3 is all about getting your blog noticed which will be especially appreciated by those who have already started blogging but who may want more traffic. The tips are very practical and from my own experiences actually work. It also gives tips on monetizing your blog but is realistic about the fact that a blog isn't an instant ticket to riches.
Chapter 4, my personal favorite, is about finding your voice. Given how many blogs are already out on the internet I think for many new bloggers this chapter is helpful as it asks you to consider both what you will feel most passionate about and what you think your potential reader would want out of your blog.

Chapter 5 takes the notion of getting your blog noticed one step further by talking about how you can foster a community through your blog.

Chapter 6 is the history (albeit a brief one) of the Huffington Post and Chapter 7 talks about the impact of the blogosphere on mainstream media. These were honestly my two least favorite chapters as they were less practical in nature and particularly in the case of chapter 7, I have seem similar content covered in other books. (I work in communications so the impact of bloggers on mainstream media is something that is constantly up for discussion.) However, I imagine that if I were a bigger Huffington Post fan I probably would have enjoyed chearing more about the history. I imagine the same would be true for Chapter 7 if I had not already read so much about this.

The last section of the book features the blog roll, more blogging terms, website resource list, and also a 'best of' Huffington Blog posts.
Overall I think this was a pretty solid book and provided a good balance of giving tips, providing blogger commentary, and giving a lay of the land. I think the blogger quotes were especially interesting because it was intriguing to see their takes on things. I also loved when the book contrasted how a mainstream newspaper covered a particular even with how they thought a blogger would cover it. It did a good job of highlighting the difference in tone.

The only thing that I disliked about the book at times was the heavy use of sidebars. On one hand, I liked it because this content was interesting and calling it out as a sidebar made it easy to reference. At other times I found it distracted me from the main text because the side bars sometimes took up the majority of a page. I often had to flip back and reread content to remind myself of where I was which broke the my flow. In my opinion, this is only a minor complaint. I also think the book had a lot of perspectives of writers/actors/reporters turned bloggers and could have benefited from having more tips from more 'citizens turned bloggers' as they say. This isn't to say they don't have any, because they do, but given that I think many of those who read this book will fall into that camp I think having more can only be helpful.

Overall, I think this was a great book. I definitely walked away with ideas of how I could make my blog more successful and enjoyed reading some of the 'best of' content.

I don't know what I was expecting when I saw this book, but what I got certainly wasn't it. First of all, the book is extremely short, much shorter than it looks. That's because the text barely fills up the page. This is very common with these types of books, especially the "Dummy's Guide To" books, because they usually fill up the margins with tips or additional information on the articles. This book very rarely does that, so it's just wasted space. You can go 15 pages without seeing anything in the margins but wasted space. The real problem with it however, is that there is very little instructional information. If you want a biography on the web site "The Huffington Post," come here, because that's pretty much all it is. And advice from people like Jamie Lee Curtis and Steven Weber? When I think of great bloggers, I don't think of Steven Weber. He doesn't even have his own site. Do you know why these people are included? Because they all have written articles for "The Huffington Post." More advertising.

Sure, if you love The Huffington Post, or if you are friends with Arianna or Mike Drudge and they are planning to let you write articles on their sites, which already get huge amounts of traffic, you "may" find this book useful. For the other 99% of you, I suggest looking elsewhere, like Blogging For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)). Sure it is geared to a tech crowd, but the information in it is much more general and has actually useful topics, like "How to Build Your Audience."

I give this book three out of five stars, and while its good points have been covered by other reviewers, I'll air my three grievances. This book would be better if it were 2 inches smaller and about two-thirds the length, and if it was targeted more towards people who have something useful to say to a wider audience.

First, the book has extra large outside margins to accommodate occasional quotes, but a quick flip through the book shows that as just a lot of blank space padding out the book and giving it a more square shape that your average book. Seems like a waste of paper meant to make the book's uncommon shape stand out in physical book stores, and my little eco-gripe with the book.

While no one would deny that The Huffington Post is a successful and influential blog, and is therefor in a place to offer advice, the incessant talking about how great it is and the stories it broke, combined with a lot of "best of" selections is overkill. I suppose if one had never read or heard of blogs before, it would be useful to read so many examples of what gets written in blogs (anything!), but I would imagine most of the book's readers read blogs every day already. At least one-third of the book is about how the Huffington Post got started or excerpts from the site. Personally, I didn't find it all that relevant in a "how to blog" book. It's not as though a reader has no other way of finding out, if they wanted to, "What kind of things are on The Huffington Post?" The authors repeatedly entice potential bloggers with the fact that one of the great things about blogging is that there is no editor dictating a piece's length to you. It seems like this book could have used a cut-happy editor.

Lastly, there's a bunch of rally-the-troops, "Even YOU, a lil' stay-at-home mom, who wants to write about your boring and petty frustrations, CAN HAVE A BLOG!" stuff. Some of us, however, don't need to be sold on the concept of blogging. Some of us already have topics that interest us and experience writing about them. Some of us aim to reach wider audiences than sharing summaries of our daily lives on LiveJournal. I would have liked to see a chapter about fine-tuning one's messages and reaching target audiences for people who, pardon my snobbery, but actually have something of value to say to the world. I realize that most blogs are just tiny personal journals meant only to entertain the author and their friends, but I'd have liked to see a lot more from this book beyond the predominantly surface-level advice for people who are coming from a place of, "Golly, what could I write about? What are my interests? What are blogs?"

All in all, though, I do recommend the book for beginners, and cautiously recommend it for non-beginners. I wish it had less fluff and more intermediate-level advice. Many of the reviewers here praise the book for helping readers find their voice and a topic that interests them, and that's all good and well, but what about people who already had those two things covered long before picking up the book?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 42 reviews  3.6 out of 5 stars