TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter

 

Blog Marketing
by Jeremy Wright
ISBN 0-07-226251-6
321 pages; hardcover; $24.95
McGraw-Hill, New York, 2006

 

What came first? Short attention spans or information delivered in soundbites? Like the chicken and egg conundrum, it may not matter, since both appear to be here to stay.

Blogs are here to stay, too, according to author and consultant Jeremy Wright. These interactive web sites are updated frequently with brief blasts of news and are designed to encourage comments from readers. Both characteristics appeal to today’s fretful, twitchy audiences.

The question is, does your business need a blog? Mr. Wright believes the answer is an emphatic YES. Why? According to the subtitle of Blog Marketing, blogs are “The Revolutionary New Way to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Get Exceptional Results”.

Sounds exciting. But by the end of Blog Marketing you may come to the more mundane conclusion that blogs are not so much revolutionary as evolutionary - the natural offshoot of e-mail and instant messaging.

Setting aside the hype, Blog Marketing is a basic, solid introductory text. Mr. Wright covers internal blogging, used to facilitate a company’s internal communications and knowledge, and external blogging, intended to let you connect to people outside the company. To round out the tutorial, a glossary of blogger jargon is included. There’s also an abundance of Internet links (useful) and screenshots of blogs (useless) that you’d be better off viewing on-line.

If you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive way to market your business, blogging may be an alternative. Just keep in mind that despite the huffing and puffing about the wonders of new technology, it’s merely an updated form of marketing, not a guaranteed road to attracting and retaining customers.

As with other business tools, the usual caution applies: However you choose to promote your company, to achieve success you’ll have to invest a considerable amount of time and effort. There are no shortcuts, even in a brave new world of attention-deficit disorder, information overload – and blogs.

 

Review originally published August 2006.