“How important do you think are the headlines of your blog articles?”
“What’s your biggest tip on writing a successful blog post ever?”
“What’s your best tip for writing a successful blog post?”
These are some interview questions that were asked to 40 top bloggers around the world by Stephane Grenier in his book, Blog Blazers.
Blog Blazers is a book specially suited for bloggers, especially to new bloggers in the blogosphere.
What Blog Blazers is all about
Blog Blazers starts by convincing you with statistics on how many new blogs being “born” in the blogosphere (based on fact figures from Technorati). It certainly made me wonder on how my blog can be any different than millions of blogs out there? There must be secrets in how these top bloggers can be successful and can keep on going no matter what happens to their blogs.
The book covers a series of questions that every blogger in the world wants to know from these successful bloggers. Each chapter of the book features a blogger (like Seth Godin), his/her short biography, and his/her answers to the series of questions. The questions being asked are all the same though, so the book may bore some readers who are looking for different flavors. Although the questions are the same, the answers may or may not be different from one blogger to another.
For example, the answer to this question,
“What makes a blog successful according to you?”
is definitely different from one blogger to another. Success is measured differently: money, fame, recognition, traffic, etc. So if you are only earning cents a day and you think that you are unsuccessful, think again. You may not be successful in one area but you may be successful in others.
Why you should or shouldn’t get the book
If you already know all the secrets to blogging and SEO techniques, you may not need this book any more. It doesn’t give you new advices or expert techniques that you haven’t heard of. It entirely depends on the answers from these bloggers and I’m pretty sure some secrets are still meant to be untold.
If you feel that you are unhappy with your blog (whatever it is), this book will give you lots of insights and encouragements. It certainly worth finding out why these bloggers are still around. Some of the questions really knocked me in the head and gave me a new commitment to do for my blog (for example, how every blogger in the book emphasizes how important your post title is. I already know about this, but reading the same thing on every chapter really got me going!). Not to mention how important it is to comment on other blogs.
You’ll also find a lot of great blogs in this book: the blog of the interviewees and also the blogs recommended by these bloggers. So make sure you have your highlighters or your bookmarks ready to visit these blogs later.
Blog Blazers is not a book that will tell you how to be a successful blogger but again, it relies on the answers of these bloggers.
Wishlist for the book
- I wish that I can find top bloggers that every blogger knows about: Darren Rowse, John Chow, etc. They are unfortunately not in the book.
- I wish that there is a quicker way to see the blog’s niche of these bloggers underneath their name and blog’s URL. It makes it easier to identify them and how their niche is affecting their answers.
- Probably worth a mention on how the author chooses these bloggers and what makes them “Top Bloggers”.
Final words
All in all, it’s a great book and worth a read if you want to know how these bloggers blog and how you should blog. You may have heard the tips somewhere else, but it still is fresh to know that even the simplest tip actually means something.
I enjoyed reading the book although it can be a bit tedious looking at the same questions over and over for the whole book. Some of the questions are interesting questions though and it definitely gives you ideas and things that you should pay more attention to when you are blogging.
You’ll also find lots of things to learn from these bloggers, especially from a question about their most successful post. You can pay the post a visit to find out why the post brought lots of traffic and learn from it!
If you are interested in getting this book, you can purchase it straight from here (will be handled & delivered by Amazon):
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