Mom Blogging for Dummies Part 1: A review

In our last post we talked about the advice for mom bloggers that was freely available online and it was mentioned that there have been entire books devoted to the topic as well. MomBlogging for Dummies from the ever-expanding For Dummies guide book series is a popular resource for people to turn to when attempting to begin or better their own blogging practice, making it a valuable text for study.

Image retrieved from http://www.dummies.com/store/product/Mom-Blogging-For-Dummies.productCd-1118038436.html

                Mom Blogging for Dummies was published in 2011 and written by author (and well known mom blogger herself) WendyPiersall. It is available in print and e-book format, 384 pages long, and its content is broken up into five parts with 18 total chapters. What follows is a brief summary of each main section to get a general idea of the book’s subject matter:

Part 1: “Discovering the Fun and Advantages of Mom Blogging”

                Interestingly, I found that these introductory chapters (1-3) contained most of the commentary about privacy and personal sharing, which was rarely addressed throughout the rest of the book. In this section Piersall also introduces the concept of focusing on a particular niche which is something she periodically returns to throughout the rest of the book.

Part 2: “Building Your Blogging Empire”

                Chapters 4-8 touch on some of the more technical aspects of blogging and advice on business practices like branding and attracting advertisers/sponsors.  This is the section that begins to explore relationships between bloggers, viewers, advertisers, and other brands in more depth which is a continued thread throughout the guide.

Part 3: “Working With Advertisers and Brands”

                Piersall describes this section as “the real meat of the book” (Part III, Pg 2) indicative of the importance being placed on utilizing a blog to gain capital rather than other more intrinsic motivations. This section also covers blogging ethics from a legal perspective (something I will return to in a following post), tips for self-promotion, and the ins and outs of partnering with external companies.

Part 4: “Expanding Your Blogging Empire”

                Chapters 15 and 16 cover other opportunities that can come out of having a successful blog (book deals and related career fields for example) as well as planning for future blog growth over time, such as taking on guest writers or creating a blog network.

Part 5: “The Part of Tens”

                The final “tens” section is a signature of the For Dummies franchise, each book ends with ten item lists pertaining to the subject matter, often useful as a source for further research. In this case there are two lists; “Ten Blogging Mistakes to Avoid” and “Ten Successful Mom Bloggers”

                Overall, I have a lot of positive things to say about Mom Blogging for Dummies despite the obvious drawbacks in the limited handling of privacy concerns and risks that come with personal sharing (or over-sharing). In the subsequent posts I’ll go into detail about the ways in which they were addressed in the opening chapters and a discussion on Chapter 9 “Mastering Blogging Ethics”.

 Although focusing on an approach to mom blogging from a business perspective wasn’t balanced with considerations to the often very personal nature of mommy blogs, I found the technical explanations to be extremely helpful. Piersall walked her readers through the processes of installing plug-ins/themes, the use of Widgets, and setting up Google Analytics/Feed Burner among others step by step in a clear and concise way. However, the book was not overladen with instructions which can make for a less enjoyable read. Piersall includes anecdotes from her own experiences in the blogger-sphere and real life examples of other blogs to illustrate most of her points which not only made things more interesting but also served as a form of evidence for the validity of her advice. She offers her take on what to do along with the reasons behind her opinion, which is something I can appreciate.

I found that much of what is discussed in Mom Blogging for Dummies relates to blogging practices in general regardless of the type or blog scope (and in particular profiting off of these practices). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps the generalizability of the advice took away from discussion on practices more specific to many mom bloggers such as sharing stories about themselves, their family and their children in a public and permanent way. The For Dummies series has other books dedicated to blogging (79 other titles are tagged under “blogging” in their online catalogue) including titles such as Professional Blogging for Dummies and WordPress for Dummies. The advice and information that would apply to any blog is likely already adequately covered in those other sources so this would have been a great opportunity to explore at length some of the concerns specific to mommy blogging.

In a post about the launch of the book on her own site, Wendy Piersall says that:

…mom bloggers can learn a ton about blogging from any regular blogging book. But in my book, I’ll be paying special attention to working with brands, finding sponsorships, dealing with PR pitch overload, and the nuts and bolts of reviews and giveaways. 54% of moms who blog have been approached by a brand compared to only 33% of the general blogging population. I aim to write a toolbook to arm these women with the knowledge they need to leverage these brand opportunities to their advantage!

Given her intentions stated above I think she achieved what she set out to do, but it would have been nice to attend a bit more to the business/personal life balance that I can imagine is difficult for many mom bloggers to attain. Especially when so much of a blogs marketability is based upon popularity which seems to have an underlying and unwritten correlation to privacy that I will explore in Mom Blogging for Dummies part 2.