Review: A Trio of eBooks on Blogs and RSS
‘Marketing Rampage With Blogs and RSS’, by Brandon Hong, is an interesting product. It’s actually part Acrobat PDF and part on line video (Flash), which you view on your web browser. With a background as a teacher, Brandon is well suited to narrate step by step how to do various blog functions. For example, how to set yourself up on Bloglines.com or Blogger.com, using AdSense and FeedBurner, even how to FTP – all are explained with tutorials.
The eBook itself complements the tutorials, providing a good grounding for beginners to get into blogging. The tutorials are quite a bit of help in this regard, and I think it’s this package’s strongest point (so much so, I think Brandon should put a sample video on his web page as a selling point). In fact, of the three eBooks here, I think this one is best targeted to newbies, especially those who don’t want to dig into blog internals, but just ‘get to it’.
Adrian Ling’s eBook ‘RSS Made Easy’ is a good intermediate discussion. It covers both blogs and RSS topics (for instance, with the chapter entitled ‘RSS and Blogs – What’s the difference?’). His focus is on Blogger.com, and examples refer to that site, which can be handy if you’re using that product (or planning to).
His middle section of the book is the real meat, with tips for quick writing of content (which I plan to use sometime soon). His discussion of RSS (as opposed to blogging) may prove useful for websites looking for the benefits of RSS, without the time investment of running a blog. And of course he mentions how to get seen on Yahoo through RSS feeds.
The package also includes other reports, such as RSS and Yahoo, using FTP, and the a discussion of the instant Blog tool in the Google toolbar. As a collection of writings about blogs and RSS, it is quite comprehensive, albeit a bit Blogger-centric.
Mani Sivasubramanian’s eBook ‘How to Profit From Blogs and RSS’ is a tips book rather than a tutorial. In about 35 pages, he gives 41 tips on benefiting more from your RSS feed and/or blog. For instance, in one tip he discusses the need for quality, pointing out that one bad post can lose you readers. This is important to remember (and have him remind us) – like a TV show, people can get bored and channel surf, so it’s important to focus on quality at all times.
His tips primarily focus on three areas: how to manage your blog, how to generate advertising for it, and different ways to make RSS feeds work (especially if you’re using them apart from a blog). I found a couple of tips that really grabbed me (and I’m going to look into further), so I consider the product well worth it. While this isn’t a book for a newbie, it can be a good tip guide for a veteran blogger, someone wondering ‘where do I go now’, and also for businesses that are wondering if an RSS feed (rather than a blog) could benefit them.
All in all, each package was informative in its own way. For beginners, I’d recommend checking our Brandon’s first; for those moving along in blogging, Adrian’s should fit the bill; and for those wondering how to monetize their site, Mani’s will give some unique ideas.
Of course, reading all these eBooks makes me itch to write my own on blogging – or at least co-author one. So if anyone’s interested….
