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What to Do With Your Blog Over the Holidays

Posted: 22 Dec 2008 01:49 PM PST

Today I had a good discussion with my Twitter followers about what they were doing with their blogs over the Christmas break later this week.

Most of the answers came down to the strategies that I mention in this old post here at ProBlogger - 7 Things to Do with Your Blog when you take a Vacation.

What are you doing with your blog these holidays?

Tags: Reader Questions

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Blog Blazers - Get a Glimpse in the Mind of 40 Successful Bloggers

Posted: 22 Dec 2008 06:38 AM PST

One of the books that has hit my mailbox lately for review is Blog Blazers - a book of interviews with 40 top bloggers exploring how to create successful blogs.

The book is by Stephane Grenier from FollowSteph.com and it features some great bloggers (some who will be familiar with many and others who you’ll not know - but who’ve built great blogs).

Some of the bloggers featured included:

Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs)
Aaron Wall (SeoBook)
Steve Rubel (Micropersuasion)
Seth Godin (Marketing Guru)
Neil Patel (Quick Sprout)
JD Roth (Get Rich Slowly)
Manolo Blahnik (Monolo’s Shoe Blog)
Yaro Starak (Entrepreneurs Journey)
Plus 32 others!

The format of the book is interview style with Steph asking largely the same set of questions to all bloggers and the bloggers responding. Each interview makes a chapter of the book.

I’d be lying if I said I’d read the whole thing yet (I only got it two days ago) and I’m not likely to read it cover to cover in a sitting - but I am steadily making my way through it.

At first I was a little frustrated by the question and answer format of the book - it feels a little repetitive at times (there are only so many ways to answer some of the questions) but after a while the format actually grew on me.

It’s a book you don’t need to set aside lots of time to read - in fact most of the chapters are just a few pages long so you can set aside 10 minutes to read one and then put it down knowing you’ve just digest someone like Seth Godin’s approach to blogging in a few minutes.

The other thing I’ve enjoyed about this book so far are ‘meeting’ new bloggers that I’d not come across before. While I’d estimate I’ve read the blogs of around half of the bloggers featured there are a few others in the mix that I’m enjoying now.

How Am I Using This Blog To Improve My Blogging

Once I realized that this book had familiar and new bloggers AND it was in bite sized chunks I decided that I’m going to use this book over the next 40 days to give me a refresher course/a little inspiration on blogging.

I’ll read a chapter a day, look at the blogs of the blogger featured, see what they are doing well and see what in their advice I can implement. In this way each day for the next month and a half I’ll be actively looking at how another successful blogger is approaching their blogging - an exercise that I’m sure will have lots of benefits.

I’m only a couple of days in but I think it’s going to be a fun 40 days (or possibly a bit longer as I’ll take a few days off for Christmas).

Who is this book for?

Blog Blazers is not a book for bloggers who know it all.

Rather it is a book for people who want a quick glimpse into the minds of fellow bloggers who have had varying degrees of success. It seems to be a great blog for beginners but for more advanced bloggers with the right attitude and willing to use it as a refresher course (perhaps as I’ve described above) I think it could be a worthwhile read too.

Blog Blazers is currently $16.95 at Amazon and can currently be bundled with the ProBlogger book for $33.44.