My Honest Review of “ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business”

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ATTENTION!

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Darren Rowse, aka ProBlogger, is one of the few bloggers that I follow and learn a lot from. I have been a loyal follower of his blog and I can say that I have learned many things from him and his guest bloggers, that helped me improve my blogging.

Today, I was really happy to get an email from Darren, talking about their latest eBook, ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business, written by Mark Hayward, which was to be launched in a few hours. Hopefully, I will be among the first ones to get the eBook as I believe it will be another gold nugget from ProBlogger. And once I do that I will post my review below.

At this point all I can say from what I see on the sales page is that this eBook targets Business Owners who want to use blogs in the most effective way. It is 140+ pages packed with high quality content from successful business owner, blogger and blog coach – Mark Hayward. You can see all the details here.

ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business
by Mark Hayward from ProBlogger

My Review of ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business

I was able to grab a copy of “ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business” today and below, you will read my honest review about it. Just before I start, let me mention that as I do in all my reviews, my purpose with this review is not to help the eBook sell, but to help you better understand it before you make your decision.

I will start with showing proof that I actually purchased the eBook myself, as I will never promote a product that I haven’t personally bought and tried.

Ok, now let me continue with my review.

When I completed the purchase, I was taken to a page with a download link to ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business in .pdf format and an Unannounced Bonus about an invitation to join to a special bonus newsletter just for the buyers of this eBook. I must admit that getting unexpected bonuses is a great thing to have and I will be looking forward to it.

I downloaded the eBook quickly, as I was pretty curious to read it to all the details as quickly as possible to see what’s inside. And below, I will try to summarize what I found.

First of all, this is a 143-page, very nicely designed eBook and I like to read nicely-designed eBooks very much. I have to mention that although I would like to do it very much, I cannot share any specific parts or screenshots from the eBook as this will be unfair.

After the brief background stories of Darren Rowse -the man behind ProBlogger- and Mark Hayward -the author of this eBook-, Mark starts with talking about the most important reasons why a business or individual should have a blog. Mark then lists all the possible excuses a blogging newbie could have and explains how he was able to get rid of them in a short time.

The eBook consists of 12 comprehensive chapters, detailing every aspect of blogging  for businesses and blogging in general, and I will briefly talk about each chapter without revealing too much information since it will not be fair for the ones who already purchased it.

1. Defining Blogging and How It will Benefit You

In the first chapter, Mark talks about the many different purposes of using a blog and how building a blog for the right purpose can benefit you and your business. He explains how you create solid relationships and gain trust of your visitors/followers and customers by blogging. He also emphasizes the power of blogs as a marketing tool, if used properly.

As for the tutorial of the first chapter, you will be going through a step by step action plan from competition research to conceptualizing the focus of your blog.

2. Defining Your Goals

Mark clearly emphasizes the importance of defining some goals for your blog before taking any further action. He lists a number of possible goals you might want to achieve with your blog and helps you decide on the ones that will help you/your business the most.

In the second chapter’s tutorial, Mark tries to help you set your goals by asking the most important questions you should ask to yourself before getting started.

3. Getting Started with Blogging

After the preliminary research, brainstorming and focusing on the concept of your blog, in this chapter Mark goes through every important step of starting a blog for your business, in detail. He discusses the options for integrating your blog to your existing website and some important factors you should take into account. He closes this chapter by a very detailed section about choosing a blogging platform for your blog.

The tutorial part of this chapter will be your first major steps for building your blog.

4. Deciding on and Registering a Domain Name

For me, one of the most important parts of building a blog is deciding on its name and finding a suitable domain name. Start with the right name and your blog might work wonders, start with the wrong name and your blog might get lost in the dust.

Mark shares his own methodology on deciding on a name by providing his reasons and then he talks about the important aspects of choosing and registering a domain name and getting web hosting.

By the end of the 4th tutorial, you will have decided on your blog’s name, registered a nice domain name for it and hosted it.

5 & 6. Installing WordPress - WordPress Plugins

As someone who has a lot of experience with WordPress (the best blogging platform in my opinion), I skipped chapter 5 and 6 quickly, but I will give you an idea here. Mark demonstrates installing WordPress, optimizing it for search engines, choosing a theme and configuring all the necessary plugins for security, tracking, SEO and other things step by step in detail.

7. Developing a Content Strategy and Editorial Calendar

Now you have your blog ready to go and here comes the most crucial part: Content Strategy. Mark explains in detail how you will establish your content strategy for the most effective way of blogging. Starting with your goals, Mark points out each important part of a blog and a blog post and gives examples for the best practices.

Honestly, I never thought of having a content strategy like Mark is suggesting in his eBook. After going over this chapter, now I better understand the importance of it.

The tutorial of this chapter is the most important part of the whole eBook and I highly suggest you absorb it to the fullest extent.

8. Developing Content Ideas and Fighting Blogging Frustration

Developing content ideas was one of the fields that I had the most difficulty with when I first started blogging. Mark provides a nice way for this and explains how you should form your posts to get the most out of your blog. He splits the blog content to a number of categories and gives many ideas about what to write in each category. He also provides a list of 52 creative blog post ideas and even if you made one post a week, this would be enough for a year!

9. Publishing Your First Blog Post

Your first blog post is the vital part and mostly it will be the determining factor whether you will continue or quit. Mark goes over each step in detail from crafting the post title to optimizing images for SEO.

10. Finding Readers and Traffic for Your Blog

Now that you have your blog and published the first post, it is time for you to attract visitors to it. Making your blog visible and getting traffic is the most difficult part of blogging when you first start. Mark provides a lot of solid ways to generate traffic to your blog and following his advice, you will soon start to get visitors to your blog.

11. Optimizing Flickr and YouTube for Your Blog’s Online Presence

In fact, I haven’t used Flickr and YouTube in my blogging projects until now but thanks to Mark now I better understand the power of them and I will certainly start using them. He demonstrates how to use Flickr and YouTube in connection to your blogging in detail with some very nice tips.

12. Creating Your Social Media Footprint and Measuring Your Blogging ROI

The final chapter focuses on establishing a proper social media presence for yourself/your business and evaluating your blogging so that you can improve it to get better results. Take this chapter seriously as it will be very helpful to growing your blog and business.

At the end of his eBook, Mark provides a list of most successful bloggers around the world and their key posts related to blogging and I am sure that I will bookmark them all myself!

What I liked the most about the ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business is that while explaining all the related concepts and strategies in detail, it also provides tutorials so that you can follow key tasks while you learn from the eBook, and examples to better understand each concept. This is something you will not easily find in all the eBooks around the market today.

Another point that I liked is that Mark provides external free resources such as related blog posts or videos as necessary so that you will have a better grasp of the topic.

In conclusion, I am glad that I purchased this eBook and as an intermediate blogger, I can say that by reading it I added a lot of important points to my knowledge base. Hopefully, you have a better idea about this eBook now and I highly recommend it to all business owners, all internet marketers and anyone who wants to start a new blog.

You can buy the ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business by following this link.

I hope that my review will help in your decision, thanks for reading and please let me know if you have any questions.

Disclaimer: This review of ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business, consists of my own personal opinions and no compensation was provided to me to write this review. Some of the links on this page are affiliate links and I will get a commission if you make a purchase through them.

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