In my opinion, blogging and book writing go hand-in-hand. All it takes to bridge the gap from blog to book is a bit more forethought, discipline, and structure, and of course a publisher, and BOOM! you’ve got a book. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. My experience co-authoring a book (The Art of SEO) was nothing like that. But still, it’s nice to romanticize the process — simply assemble your blog posts into a cohesive structure and send it off to a publisher. What could be simpler?

More often than not the author’s blog is an afterthought. The book came first. Then the blog came second as the book’s marketing vehicle, a complement/supplement. I’m not knocking it, but it’s great to see a high-quality blog turn into a high-quality book.

As both an author and a blogger, I can really appreciate when a blogger succeeds in transforming their blog into a book. It’s inspiring. One of my favorites is PostSecret, which was turned into a whole series of books. More prototypical examples of blog-to-book projects are The Long Tail (blog / book) and The Search (blog / book). Both are excellent blogs, and excellent books. Sometimes Twitter feeds turn into books too, like S*it My Dad Says. That’s some funny stuff. Now it looks like CEO blogger Steve Spangler is coming out with a book too. His is called Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes. A curious title. In actuality I think his book is more of an amalgamation of his video content than his blog posts, but nonetheless the finished book looks impressive. Congrats Steve!

Folks often ask me if I’m going to write another book. My answer: I doubt it. It’s too painful (like birthing a baby, though, as a man, I can’t truly appreciate the pain of childbirth), and it pays less than minimum wage if you work out the numbers. Folks will then chime in with “Yeah, and why bother with a physical book anyways when everybody’s migrating online!” That I don’t agree with. There are a very large group of holdouts — me included — who still prefer the feel of printed books, who enjoy the experience of curling up with a good book rather than a laptop or ebook reader. And yes I own an iPad, but I don’t read books on it. And I don’t plan to anytime soon. Call me a Luddite.

I already noted Judith Meskill’s personal blog earlier and referenced this Social Software Weblog property there. But now that I’ve been following this blog more closely in recent days, I think it’s good enough to call separate attention to. If you follow this trend of social networks much, it seems to be the go-to resource.

I am also looking forward to posting the results of her The ‘Perfect’ Corporate Weblogging ‘Elevator Pitch’ Competition, which I missed when the competition was still accepting entries. Judges are currently (as of this post) evaluating the results. Stay tuned.

Link

With this entry, I initiate a new category: “This Site Needs a Blog.” Please feel free to nominate others for the category.

If it works for Clip-n-Seal, a blog should work for Banana Guard.

“Protect your banana!” (Yes, it’s work safe.)

Link

I can now die a happy man, having achieved a lifelong goal: a position on DayPop Top 40, thanks to this blog.

(You love me. You really, really love me!)

The next-closest thrill that compares to this was when I Farked Robert.

Meanwhile, I come up with a lot more links on Technorati

Laura Schneider

About.com’s marketing maven Laura Schneider maintains a list of marketing-related weblogs.

Link

BizNetTravel is one of the business blogs I created and do much of the writing for on behalf of a client. The company is a travel agency, and the blog offers links to a mix of travel destination features, travel news for travelers, quirky travel items and more. We also maintain a Special Offers blog page for this client, featuring original travel packages for customers.

The main purpose of the blog is as a service to the agency’s existing customers, but it also does serve to attract lots of new prospective customers to the site.

Link

Cheskin, a marketing and market research consulting firm, does a great job with their blog. Their essays are thoughtful and frequent. Most impressive, however, is how effectively the blog reflects a true team spirit. I’ve seen other companies try to rally a group of managers to participate, and it’s hard to do. Normally, one person dominates the blog and others drag along occasionally at best. The Cheskin team, however, seems to have challenged one another to all stay involved, and a quick browse of the archive shows a healthy rotation of names and personal posting styles.

Link

Daniel Weintraub

It will be a long list of blogs if I try to note every traditional media blog here, so I plan to pick off just some of the more prominent ones. Such a list should include the Sacramento Bee’s political columnist Daniel Weintraub, who has been blogging for a year, as of this post. He offers this comment on “Why Blog?” and E-media Tidbits also quotes him with some advice for media bloggers.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/columns/weintraub/story/6414174p-7366437c.html

Link

Poynter Institute’s E-media Tidbits column has a blurb’s worth of advice from Daniel Weintraub, blogger and columnist for the Sacramento Bee. The Tidbits blurb offers advice for other traditional media bloggers, that includes this gem: “If journalism is the first draft of history, then the blog is the note pad that leads to it,” Weintraub said.

E-media Tidbits: Weintraub on Blogging

Debbie Weil published this article in her WordBiz newsletter as advice for business bloggers. Best of all, the main expert source for the article is…me!

WordBiz: 5 Tips for a ‘Useful Resource’ Blog

AdTech is the leading industry event for the online advertising and marketing industry. At the last occasion of the conference, last November in NYC, MarketingWonk and I helped AdTech create the AdTech Blog, where a team of bloggers provided coverage of the event.

AdTech has invited us to repeat this, as it was quite successful. I can offer free attendance to interestest parties in exchange for your blogging efforts. To be clear there is no payment involved, and travel and accommodation are not included. But the pass to the three days’ worth of the sessions is a $1,095 value. For anyone interested in the Internet marketing and media sector, this is a valuable opportunity, as AdTech is the best educational and networking event in the sector, in my professional opinion.

Requirements:

• Should be reasonably knowledgeable about the Internet marketing and media industry

• Must commit to a minimum of five to seven short entries — mostly coverage of sessions, but we also plan to cover the (many) parties, the exhibit hall, and more. The blog posts can run on as long as you want, but you don’t really have to write more than about three paragraphs for any one entry.
• That’s about it. Good writing skills. Experience writing for a blog a plus. Your own laptop with WiFi is a plus, but you could alternatively take notes on paper and file reports from the press room.

If interested, email me. I am expecting to get more inquiries about this than I have passes for, so I’ll have to get back to you in a couple of days.

“Commentary on startups, small business, business planning and growth strategy” from the folks at Bplans.com, a business plan resource tool, and Palo Alto Software, a business plan software tool.

Link

This blog (by an anonymous author, as far as I can see) appears to have a media revenue model (i.e., ad support), as opposed to consulting. It just celebrated its one year birthday last week (Happy Birthday!). Various useful resources for business bloggers, which I will monitor regularly.

Link

Wayne Hurlbert has been blogging about the intersections of blogs and businesses on this site since October 2003. It doesn’t appear to be a business blog itself, in that I don’t see any About Us or consulting service links on the blog, but it is a useful resource for folks following this trend.

As usual, you can count on me to rip off all of his best links for this blog. (As either Stravinsky or Picasso is meant to have said, “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.” Probably Stravinsky said it first, then Picasso simply stole it.)

Link

John Rhodes, of WebWorld.com, writes what may as well be the business plan for Business Blog Consulting. Basically, he describes in some detail how blogs are a great opportunity for businesses, but most businesses are “blog ignorant,” and that therefore there is a good opportunity there for the taking to build a blog consulting company. He writes, ” I would set up this company myself but I have too much on my plate right now.” Well, the truth is, I’m too busy to do this, too, but it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, so I’m just foregoing sleep these days.

If this is my business plan, why do I bother linking to it? Well, for one thing, it’s not like John and I are the only ones who have thought of this so far. Griff Wigley is one such blog consultant, but he has thus far concentrated mostly on small businesses in his home state of Minnesota. There are some others also banging this drum who are maybe more direct competitors to me, enough that I don’t feel like linking to them just yet.

More to the point, however, if a significant part of this blog consulting opportunity is blogging for hire, and I think it is, there’s room for a network of blog consultants out there. I already do blog regularly for one client, BizNetTravel, and obviously if I’m doing so for 10 clients, I’ll need a lot of help. So, take a read of John’s essay and if you’re inspired, let’s talk.

Thanks to Rafat for the pointer.

WebWorld: Building a Blog Marketing and Media Company

Marketing resource for the pharmaceutical industry from pharma-specialized agency Greater Than One, with help from marketing and web design consultant Ari Paparo

Link

In addition to profiling business blogs, I plan to use this site to keep track of a number of useful resources for bloggers, especially those that advance the interest of business bloggers. So here’s one. The About Us page explains:

There a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. However it would be expensive for all the services crawl all the blogs in the world all the time. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you’ve updated so they can come check you out. They get the freshest data possible, you don’t get a thousand robots spidering your site all the time. Everybody wins.

So why would you want to be on these sites? One word: traffic.

Link

Ali Mohammad Abtahi

This is nothing short of mind-blowing: a blog by Ali Mohammad Abtahi, Vice President of Islamic Republic of Iran. In English, no less. Talk about blogs being revolutionary.

Blogs have actually become very popular in Iran, as this Wired story and this BCC story attest. But a senior politician in any country blogging is remarkable, particulary one that we, in the West anyway, think of as so restrictive as Iran. It will be interesting to watch what becomes of this remarkable site, which has been around since January, 2004.

Link

Seattle P.I. has set one of its reporters, Todd Bishop, to cover the region’s biggest corporation around the clock with this popular blog, founded in September 2003.

Link

This isn’t breaking news — it was first reported by the sources below a few weeks ago — but I’m still getting caught up with my backlogged notes for this blog.

Anyway, news is that Microsoft is readying something called Blogbot, a kind of search tool focused on weblogs for release in the next couple of months. The idea is likely to be something similar to its Newsbot search service, already in beta in the U.K., which is strikingly similar to Google News (at a glance, anyway). A U.S. version of Newsbot is also expected in the next few months. Makes me think the new blog aggregation service Kinja may have its work cut out for it.

Reports on Blogbot come from Seattle P.I.’s Microsoft Blog, the San Jose Merc and eWeek.

Microsoft has already demonstrated itself to be quite blog savvy, with a host of blogs of its own, including that of its corporate evangelist Robert Scoble, the round-table video blog of several of its product architects at Channel 9 and a large collection of other company-sanctioned bloggers.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/

Debbie Weil

Consultant Debbie Weil has been publishing an email newsletter called WordBiz about business copywriting online for more than two years (as of this writing). She makes money by running seminars, consulting and selling reports, as well as ads in her newsletter and on her blog. Her blog features the same kind of breezy writing and straight-forward advice that has made her newsletter so popular among small and large businesses.

Her blog also includes a category on Blogging for Business, which I’ll be sure to scrape for all interesting entries to plug into this directory in the coming weeks.

Link