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Measurement Books

Blogging Book Gets Mixed Review:
Some good things, some not-so-good things.

Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging, by John Cass, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007. Buy it here.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

I really like John Cass. I've hung out with him at numerous conferences and have been delighted to be part of the SNCR advisory board with him. Criticizing the work of a friend does not come easily, but I have to give his book a decidedly mixed review. Partly that comes from high expectations; John's a very smart guy and I expected something over the top from him. But while Strategies... is a useful book, it has definite limitations.

More full disclosure: Measuring social media is a specialty of mine. After I read the measurement sections of this book--which sound very much like an ad for BuzzMetrics (a competitor of mine) and include a list of measurement companies that does not mention KDPaine & Partners--I was not inclined to rave about the rest of it. In fact, I'll suggest that you ignore most of those sections and instead go to any of the blogs on my blog roll for better advice.

Some Good Things About This Book

Cass provides a good list of resources and tools for people just getting into the world of blogging. If you can find parallels between your world and the automotive industry, this book might be really useful. He uses automotive blogs as a case study and goes into great detail about how to analyze the blogosphere for what's important and what's not.

He offers a great how-to course in conducting a "blogging audit" that will be enormously useful to anyone just approaching the blogosphere. He goes into great detail and provides a useful list of tools and techniques to walk you through.

If you haven't a clue about writing, he offers great tips for blog writing. His general philosophy about the need for authenticity and transparency is dead on. I'd definitely give this book to anyone just getting into the world of corporate blogging.

Some Not-So-Good Things About This Book

There's something about the way this book is organized that left me feeling confused. It starts out logically enough with a history of consumer generated media and a chapter on "Determining if Your Organization Should Blog." But then it goes into an RSS feed search engine market overview, which seems like it ought to belong in the chapter on tools. There are writing tips in the chapter on blogging guidelines, and then a whole chapter on writing for blogger relations. By the time I was done I felt like I'd had eaten a full course meal backwards.

Of course, any book that lists social media resources is bound to be out of date moments after it's printed, and that is the case here. Strategies... gets around to talking about social networks like Flickr, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube in the last chapter. Facebook barely gets a mention, while MySpace gets a headline. A year ago these sites might have only rated a brief mention, but today the lack of coverage seems a bit anachronistic.

Finally, Strategies... has annoying little typos throughout. Don't get me wrong--I'm no Lynn Truss and I shudder to think how many typos occur in most things I've written. But the impression here is that the book was put together in a hurry to take advantage of the market. The publishers had the right idea, except that the market is moving too fast for any printed publication to keep up.

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