What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting: Real-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere [Paperback]

Yesterday I read Blogging for Business (ISBN: 1419536451) also written by Mr. Demopoulos. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to read the instant book being reviewed that he just had published. Let me tell you, I wasn't disappointed to read two books in two days by the same author on the same subject. I highly recommend both to people who run their own small consulting practices and are comfortable using Internet tools to help market their practices. If you use article writing, book writing, seminar/workshop presentations, public speaking, and Web sites to promote yourself, then do yourself a favor and get these two books to help you incorporate blogs and blogging into your marketing repertoire.

Between the two books I actually liked the instant book being reviewed better. Both books seemed to cover the same material, but from a different perspective. I regularly tell my clients to read three books on any subject they want to become expert on. Usually that means they need to get three books on writing business plans, but if someone wants to become an expert on blogs and blogging for business these two books will fit two-thirds of the reading requirement.

The "blog entries" in this book are grouped into 8 topics:

1. The basics

2. Some business uses of blogs & podcasts

3. Planning your blog

4. Making money

5. Promoting your blog & tracking statistics

6. Podcast specific topics

7. Other blog & podcast considerations

8. The future

My favorite topics were 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8. I especially loved Topic 3 regarding how to plan your blog or blogs. It's very difficult to just throw together a blog and expect it to help your business get and retain paying clients. You have to write content for your blog that your clients and prospects will like and value. If you do, then those people are more likely to seek your services that you sell for a fee. If you don't, then chances are your blog won't benefit you financially. Of course, it takes planning to be able to hit your targets with your blog(s).

I was happy to not see a topic on building a blog in this book. I would have liked this book more if it had included more stories on how bloggers get their content AND THE INS AND OUTS OF WRITING THEIR BLOGS. Just think, if this author were to write a book just on that subject, then I could recommend THREE books on blogging for someone to read who wants to become an expert on blogging. Writing three great books on the same subject would be quite a feat. 5 stars!

This guy can gather text from a webpage, throw it together with a few glowing reviews from the self-publishing circuit and make a pile of money from nothing.

Save yours (money). There's very little in this book of value. It's not even a handy guide or a time saver---you'll get more infomation from a single Google search than you will from this book.

Unfortunately, this book is like so many books on blogging and other Web ventures:

1. It promises "insider information."
2. It's a thrown together compendium of the writings of Web marketing "gurus," most of whose only real experience is in marketing their own purported expertise in Web marketing.
3. From reading it, one does glean a few good ideas.

... and like all the others, it will be useful to those who are new to the field. To use an old saying, it's like a Texas longhorn: a point here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 18 reviews  3.9 out of 5 stars