Book Review - Creating a Blog Audience

Finding and building an audience for your blog can be both exciting and terrifying at the same time. New bloggers are usually either paralyzed by fear or tend to run around in dark rooms searching for the light switch, knocking over furniture as they go. A little guidance can go a long way in this area, and I can think of no better tour guide than Diane Gilleland.

Building on her first ebook, Making a Great Blog, Diane has now turned her attention to helping us find an audience for what we've created. Far from the usual "shock and awe" campaigns that you see being prescribed by internet marketeers (not a misspelling), Diane sets down a straightforward approach toward naturally and holistically drawing in readers and making the connections that are necessary for success in the blogosphere.

If you are allergic to the word "marketing", yet you want to build your following and be a bigger part of the community, Diane has the answer. Her step by step approach, complete with checklists and questionnaires, succeeds on several different levels. Not only will you undoubtedly gain more readers, but, using her techniques, you will build relationships with other bloggers, contribute to the community, and learn how to leverage your content in order to speak more directly to your readership.

By using a combination of internet tools and what Diane calls "engagement marketing", it's easy to get your marketing plan together quickly and to target the areas of the plan that will make the most impact (no knocking over of furniture necessary).

A few things are readily apparent as you read through this book. One, Diane cares. She wants you to be a successful blogger and to enjoy a wide and varied readership. Two, this effort is the result of hard won experience. Diane has distilled all the things she has learned into sixty-three, crisp pages of top notch information. And, finally, she "gets" how people work. So much blogging advice that I read is geared toward making money or search engine optimization, without any thought given to how people feel. Diane knows what works because she knows how people react to different techniques. She has watched people's triumphs and mistakes, has learned from it all, and has flourished in the noisy, crowded, and sometimes strange world of the crafting blog.

My only criticism is that this book didn't arrive sooner. I could have side-stepped a lot of furniture if I had known all this in the beginning.

You may purchase the book directly from Diane here.

Other titles by Diane:
Making a Great Blog
Weaving Unloomed
Kanzashi in Bloom

Diane's Blog

Diane's Podcast