As the title suggests, this book is concerned with helping you improve your blog. Written by Darren Rowse, founder of Problogger, it started life as a series of daily blog posts and, latterly, a daily email task if you signed up to the course.
So, how good is it, and does it represent value for money – especially if you have already read all the posts?
Before looking at the book itself, let’s examine why this might be of interest to you in the first place. I think there are two potential ‘hooks’ for a book of this nature.
Firstly, many educationalists have a blog these days, or have an interest in an online presence of some description (for example, their school’s website or blog).
Secondly, I get the impression that a lot of people have a ‘build it and they will come’ mentality when talking about setting up blogs for their students. For most people this is not the case, and they will have to be more active and proactive than that.
Having said that, it’s important to bear in mind, I think, that these posts were not written with education in mind. In one sense, the target audience is generally anyone who wants to increase the popularity of their blog. Personally, I think it’s a good thing because it’s not simply about attracting more readers, but keeping them, and encouraging them to interact with you, such as by making comments on your posts.
Note that the purpose of ‘31 Days…’ is to help you become a better blogger, which is not the same thing as becoming a better writer. It will help you get your blog read more, perhaps, but it won’t do a lot to help you improve the way you express things – but it will almost certainly assist you in generating ideas for topics.
There is much to recommend this publication, which comes in electronic format as a PDF. It is filled to the brim with ideas and, crucially, has been written by someone who has successfully implemented the techniques himself. It is always somewhat disconcerting, not to say unconvincing, to pick up a book which has been written by a person whose understanding of the subject is entirely theoretical (a theme I touch upon in a discussion of Stephen Potter’s observations for his ‘One Upmanship’ books).
What I especially like about the book is the preponderance of lists. My view is, if I want to read ‘literature’ I can pick up a Jane Austen novel; if I want to work on my blog, I need something I can dip into very quickly.
The content is presented in manageable chunks, and is well-written with plenty of links. Reasons for the activities are given and explained well.
The ideas themselves are interesting. For example, I like the one about grabbing a pencil and notepad and sitting in a shopping mall for a couple of hours watching the world go by, garnering ideas for future blog posts. I’ve been doing a variation of that for years: I tend to get quite a lot of stuff ‘written’ in my head just by heading down to a nice coffee bar and wasting time in a Zen-like fashion (the Zen expert Suzuki once said that a Zen student must learn to waste time conscientiously).
You could easily adapt this for an educational context because the underlying message is that you don’t always need a computer in order to do computer-related work. In fact, sometimes you can get more done, of a higher quality, if you switch the computer off and play around with ideas on paper or in discussion with others.
Another message that comes through loud and clear is that it’s not all about being self-centred. Well, it is, but there’s an element of enlightened self-interest in the sections about focusing on other people, be they readers or ‘rival’ bloggers.
If I were to level any criticism against the book, it is that there is, perhaps, an implicit assumption that you can actually write. The world is full of people whose writing is about as interesting as the list of ingredients on the side of a packet of cornflakes. They would be better off investing time and energy into improving their writing, such as through a creative writing course or following blogs in that area, before getting stuck into ‘31 Days’. Following the latter course of action may help them gain more readers, but I doubt that it will help them retain these new readers if the writing itself is wooden.
In other words, you can’t get away from the fact that, as Rowse himself has said in writing and on video, the key thing you need is great content. This is implicit in ‘31 Days’, of course. Many so-called ‘marketing’ books concentrate on techniques (search engine optimisation, for example), forgetting that decent content needs to be there too! If you put some of the ‘31 Days’ ideas into practice, you will most likely generate lots of interesting ideas; the challenge will be to write about them in an interesting manner.
So, bottom line: is this worth buying? I found that it contained little that I didn’t already know about. However, I have to say that I had forgotten some of what I knew, and found the ideas very inspirational. Also, having all of them in one place rather than having to trawl through emails or a website is very convenient.
It costs 19:95 US dollars. However, if you get your skates on, you can get it free of charge if you buy a copy of Sitepoint’s Online Marketing Inside Out, which I shall be reviewing soon. You can also purchase direct from Problogger, where you will also find the same Sitepoint deal until around the end of this week.
Bottom line:
Not perfect, but what is? Buy it!
If you found this review useful, you will also enjoy a forthcoming issue of Computers in Classrooms in which a number of books will be reviewed. Why not sign up now to this free newsletter?
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