Publish & Prosper's focus is the business looking to improve their public relations and marketing through blogging. The book is concise and well written, and I read it in less than a day.

The book discusses the popularity of blogs to readers and search engines, issues important to large businesses such as employee involvement and liability, start-up costs and software, and determining your focus. Also covered are formatting concerns, conversational style, dealing with comments and customer interaction, syndication, monitoring traffic, and other basic blogging issues.

If you're new to blogging, or if you're a business looking to develop a web presence, I recommend Publish & Prosper as an excellent primer to the world of blogging for business success.

This is a great handbook for starting up a blog (corporate or private for that matter). There is a lot of great info backed into this little book. I would highly recommend getting it for your team if you are starting a blog that requires a lot of support and buy-in. Nice work Byron & Steve.

BTW: If you ever get a chance to hear them speak on the topic, take it.

I have already been blogging, but this book helped me focus my efforts in a way that may help my business. Lots of great insightful info, and common sense explanations in this book. I found it very helpful and easy to read.

DL Byron and Steve Broback have really done an excellent job in writing this very thorough primer on blogging for business. The book, actually, is more than a mere primer: its breadth is surprising. They've managed to cover virtually every aspect of business blogging in a mere 180 pages. Quite an accomplishment and one the authors can certainly take pride in.

The approach is linear, beginning with an explanation of what a blog is, determining the focus of your business blog, the varieties of blog, design, tools for blogging, writing the blog, getting noticed, monitoring and managing and ending chapter on syndication and other fine points they refer to as "beyond blogging".

What is impressive is how much solid information the authors manage to convey without overwhelming the reader. The writing style is comfortable and spare. They avoid technical language and do a good job of explaining each point.

Overall this is one of the best books on blogging I've seen. It is practical, not theoretical and the authors left dogma and cant at the door. They are clear that blogs are not miraculous but can certainly help a company advance toward its goals.

Well done and a worthwhile read that will serve as a quick reference after you've read it.

Jerry

Blogging isn't just for the chatty consumer: not with the appearance of PUBLISH & PROSPER: BLOGGING FOR YOUR BUSINESS. Here it turns into a viable approach for furthering business, coming from business owners who offer real-world techniques and ideas to blog to improve business. Learn how to start such a blog and build momentum and interest to promote a brand, products, or customer relations. The authors have extensive background in the blogging world and in business alike and have put their premises to the test, so this offers realistic ideas already applied to solid business pursuits.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch