As mentioned in our “ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income Book Review” post, another book that Trish and I picked up to help us understand the buzz on blogging was Blogging for Dummies. You just can’t knock how the “For Dummies” series of books can help a novice get introduced to a new topic of interest. For blogging, it was a great place to continue my education after the ProBlogger book. However, if I was to do it again, I’d read Blogging for Dummies prior to ProBlogger.

Blogging for Dummies was written by Susannah Gardner, Author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, and Shane Birley, Blogger and Web Developer.  Both authors bring a wealth of knowledge and years of experience to the topic, however, they ensure the novice user can easily follow along and enjoy the experience with good natured humour. Our 2007 version was published by Wiley Publishing Inc. Not as recent as I would like, but it was published Dec of 2007 if that helps.

The Blogging for Dummies book has the following content:

• Part I: Getting Started with Blogs – provides information about blog basics, how to start your own, and the general expectations to keep your blog alive.
• Part II: Setting Up Your Blog – walks you through the choices of software and the pros/cons of free vs. self hosting.
• Part III: Fitting In and Feeling Good – talks about finding your place or “niche” and how to create great content. It also has a section about handling spam and comments.
• Part IV: Adding Bells and Whistles - let’s you “dress” up your blog with RSS, sidebars, photos, podcasts and more. Don’t know what these are? No worries, Susannah and Shane make sure will.
• Part V: Marketing and Promoting Your Blog – describes how to measure your blog’s presence, making money with your blog, or if you’re one of those people who really loves to research and write about your topic, how to write for a company.
• Part VI: The Part of Tens – is a collection of 10 ways to grow your blog community, cool tricks to make your blog shine and the blogs you should know as great examples.

Now I know the content may sound familiar to ProBlogger but don’t let this fool you.  I too was thinking Blogging for Dummies was going to be a “skim read” and then maybe reference back to it when I needed to. But it didn’t turn out that way and I found myself making sure I read most of the chapters. I passed by the one about free hosting as Trish and I had already decided to host ourselves. Also, the topic about “how to HTML your own code into the blog” was also ignored.  (Sorry, this is SOOO not my skill set. Thank goodness for Trish!)

The authors were great at presenting a different way to educate you about what a blog is, the many ways they are being used, how to generally set up a blog, interacting with comments and spam, updating/editing existing posts, interacting with your community, and more. Where ProBlogger primarily focuses on making money with blogging, Blogging for Dummies is definitely the “how to” resource of blogging itself.

This resource is now sitting beside my ProBlogger book as it has many examples that help trigger my own imagination of what I can do with my blog and helps keep me on the path of blogging to my passions.

I hope you find it as useful and remember to keep an eye out for the most recent version. Currently the version I’ve reviewed here, Blogging for Dummies, is just that.

Cheers