|
That was the premise behind Stephane Grenier's book, Blog Blazers. Grenier created a list of questions ranging from what makes a blog successful to you all the way to what are the most common pitfalls new bloggers fall into and several in between.
Each blogger's chapter ranges about 4-5 pages, depending on how verbose they were. I asked Stephane what his criteria was for the top 40 and his response was "I first tried to vary it as much as possible, but obviously some types of bloggers are more common than others. That and I had certain minimum criterias I wanted everyone to meet. Than I also had to coordinate with who was interested and who had the time. It was a pretty big job."
After reading the book, I was left with a few impressions.
- Seth Godin is a master at dodging questions when he doesn't want to be pinned down or doesn't believe in the core of the question.
- There's no magic or even consistent answer to any of the questions — which reminds us that blogging, even business blogging, is about being genuinely you. There's no one size fits all answers. You need to blog from your organization's heart.
- Everyone seems to agree that ProBlogger is where newbies should start learning about blogging.
Beyond that…the answers are very interesting to read but if you are looking for clear-cut direction, you won't find it. Lots of opinions but no definitive answers.
Probably as it should be. One blogger's must is another's never!
If nothing else, you'll get a good insight into some very successful bloggers and find a new read or two.
- Aaron Wall – SEO Book
- Abdylas Tynyshov – AdesBlog.com
- Al Carlton – Coolest-Gadgets.com
- Alex Papadimoulis – The Daily WTF
- Andy Brice – Successful Software
- Anita Campbell – Small Business Trends
- Asha Dornfesh – Parent Hacks
- Ben Casnocha – My Startup Life
- Benjamin Yoskovitz – Instigator Blog
- Bob Walsh – 47 Hats
- Dan Lyons – The Secret Diaries of Steve Jobs
- Dane Carlson – Business Opportunities Weblog
- David Armano – Logic + Emotion
- David Seah – David Seah
- Derek Semmler – Derek Semmler
- Dharmesh Shaw – On Startups: A Community for Entrepreneurs
- Eric Sink – Erik.Weblog()
- Ian Landsman – UserScape
- James & Alex – Google SightSeeing
- J.D. Roth – Get Rich Slowly
- Jeff Atwood – Coding Horror
- Jeff Clavier – Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
- Jennette Fulda – Half of Me
- Jennifer Perry – 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat
- Jessamyn West – Librarian.net
- Joel Cheesman – Cheezhead
- Jonathan Snook – Snook.ca
- Manolo Blahnik – Manolo’s Shoe Blog
- Neil Patel – Quick Sprout
- Pamela Slim – Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Patrick McKenzie – MicroISV on a Showstring
- Penelope Trunk – Brazen Careerist
- Ramit Sethi – I Will Teach You To Be Rich
- Rob Walling – Software By Rob
- Rohin Bhargava – Influential Marketing Blog
- Seth Godin – Seth Godin
- Stephane Grenier – Follow Steph
- Steve Rubel – Micro Persuasion
- Trent Hamm – The Simple Dollar
- Yaro Starak – Entrepreneur’s Journey