Daring Fireball is a blog, but there are no comments.

Post Secret is a blog, but every entry is by someone different.

Stephen’s Web is a blog although it largely eschews the chronological structure thing.

There are conventions – reverse chronology, comments and authorship – but not so many rules.

So is there no difference between a blog and a website?

It’s the typical genre question. Does awkward example X belong in genre Y? Are Coldplay rock or pop? Indie, MOR or mainstream?

Obviously, it doesn’t really matter whether your somewhat-journally-website is a proper blog or not. All that matters is that is that it’s a good read and/or you enjoy doing it.

So maybe that’s what distinguishes the blog. That the people/person behind it cares about the content, not its context.

Since, as you’ll have noticed, I’ve already created my own blog, I’m not exactly the target audience for this book. Nonetheless, this puts me in a good position to tell you whether the information it contains is useful or not. (Short version: it is).

This is a book of two halves. The opening chapters describe what blogs are, how to set one up, choose a name and what sorts of things you might write about. That sounds a bit vague, but actually Tris goes into a lot of detail on how to choose between different platforms and the intricacies of which settings to use. The emphasis is on a self-hosted WordPress platform, which is not the simplest choice but it is one of the most versatile, while remaining intelligible to normal people. That may well be a show-stopper for confirmed Drupal addicts and so forth, but then, they aren’t the target reader either.

The second half of the book runs through the aforementioned six projects. These are a personal blog, a business blog, podcast blog, photoblog, videoblog and lifestream. In each case, he runs through a content strategy – including employee and comment policies in the case of business blogs – and the specifics of what settings, themes and plugins you should get hold of to make a good fist of what you’re doing. There’s also plenty of examples of good (and bad) practise. Despite the broad scope, there’s plenty of detail for each of these case studies. I learned a lot about the areas that I haven’t spent much time on, and picked up useful tips for those I have.

Tris’ writing style is light and airy and – well – bloggy. That makes for an easy read, even when he’s describing which particular set of plugins work well for podcasting and how you should set them up. If you’re a corporate suit, then you might find it too casual – but let’s face it: you won’t read this review and you probably shouldn’t set up a blog. The structure of the chapters is blog-like as well, with lots of sidebars and boxouts with asides going into detail on some particular point of interest. A well-constructed index and table of contents means that these don’t get lost when you try to find them again. Tris also ‘links out’ a lot from the book, introducing me to a number of blogs that I hadn’t  come across before that represent ‘best-of-class’ examples for a particular format.

When you buy the book, you get access to the complete e-book text online — which seems to have become the norm for technical books. I approve of this trend — it’s hard to follow the text in a book and type at the same time. Apparently, there was a companion blog to the book, but this now redirects to the appropriate section of Tris’ site – which remains a good source for blogging tips.

So a thumbs-up from me: it’s comprehensive and very readable and even very experienced bloggers will learn something useful or re-think some of their opinions.

Oh, and you can check out the opening chapter below to see if you like the style.

Sample Chapter from Create Your Own Blog (chapter 3)

picture credit: Mike Licht

This is a slim volume – 162 pages which includes a lot of pictures, in the form of greyscale screengrabs. It currently costs just £7.99 on Amazon UK, though it’s £15.99 if you buy it in a shop. The book is aimed at both senior executives thinking about what a company’s strategy ought to be for a blog and those tasked with managing the execution. It would also be useful for sole-owners and small businesses looking to expand their online offering, though the text assumes that you’re part of a larger organisation.

It’s well-written and contains lots of examples. Unusually for a book about the Internet, it’s also pretty-much up-to-date, appearing to have been finished late last Autumn. The case-studies, while uniformly North American, are mainly fresh and the authors aren’t afraid of criticising companies and organisations whose blogging strategies seem to have gone awry. The information and advice it gives is sound and practical and is careful to remain focused on meeting business objectives like more sales, better customer relations and reduced support costs.

So an overall recommendation from me, if you are interested in the idea of having a blog for your business but are not entirely sure why or how to start. But I do have a caveat…

The book is trying to do two things at once: provide a strategic direction and management information for corporate blogging and give a practical guide to choosing platforms, deciding policies and creating content. It’s already really thin, so this means that it doesn’t provide much detail on any particular aspect. For example, it talks about some of the pros and cons between different platforms such as Moveable Type and WordPress, and hosted solutions such as WordPress.com, blogger and typepad. But since it can only spend 50 words on any particular platform, and there’s a redundant half-page picture of each of these, you’re left with ‘there are lots of different platforms, each of which have some advantages’ as the overall message. There’s also some misinformation in this section, such as: “[because it owns the platform] Google place[s] Blogger blogs higher in Google search results.” See, for example, Andy Beard countering this. The sections on business strategy are similarly starved of detail or any theoretical underpinning for some of the assertions made.

In fairness, most business books are a bit like this: thin. They aim to give executives enough information to make some reasonable decisions, but not so much that they get bogged down in the minutiae or put off by the bulk. IMHO, though, readers would have been better served by choosing between two books: one for executives about strategy and one for the person managing the blog.

To give you an overview, this is my two-minute version of the book:

Ch1: blogs are a rising media force and they can bring customers and potential customers to your website. Also good for search.

Ch2: get people to read your blog through integrated marketing, tools like RSS, other social media platforms and by providing useful information and good service.

Ch3: there are lots of different types of blog – so choose one that best serves your business. It might end up being a tumble-log or podcast, for example.

Ch4: be useful to your readers and responsive to comments. Take comments on board and deal with criticism fairly and calmly.

Ch5: use your business’ expertise to find topics to write about. And why you might want an internal blog for staff as well.

Ch6: get people who are enthusiastic about the subject matter to do the content. This will probably involve the Marketing department, but also others like R&D and freelancers. Make it sound authentic.

Ch7: get eyeballs [sic] for your blog with good writing and content, a readable design, SEO and conventional marketing techniques.

Ch8: getting multimedia content onto your blog isn’t that hard. You can use other people’s – if you get permission or it’s CC licensed – or you can create your own. [This chapter is one that particularly suffers from the word limits: making a podcast – get audacity – open source music here – put it up on iTunes.]

Ch9: get ready for the future by using semantic features and maybe mash-ups. Oh, and mobile. Oops — we’ve run out of words.

The second book is Tris Hussey’s Create Your Own Blog. It’s a bit thicker, so expect that review in a week or so.