eBook Review: The Simple Web: A philosophy...

Grade: B- - Some useful tips and ideas, but not an ebook you'll want to print and highlight page by page.

Photo by Benoit Meunier @ Flickr

I've recently begun reading "free ebooks" on social media. I was rather surprised to discover that there are many e-publications masquerading as "ebooks" which would be better described as "white papers". "White paper", however, seems to have become an outdated term (and apparently overdone in email campaigns). In my opinion, if it's under 50 pages, it's a white paper, not an ebook. Nevertheless...

In "The Simple Web: A philosophy for getting what you want" by Skellie, I found a few helpful ideas and tips. Though the author nearly lost me on page one with the following:

As bloggers and webmasters, we want most or all of these things: more visitors, more subscribers,  more comments, more money.... It’s the how that gets us. It’s the how that has us reading a dozen  logs a day, trying to find the answer (or at least a little piece of it). You can stop searching, for now. The answer is in this eBook

Does it really say "The answer is in this book"?! Despite being turned off by the used car salesman tone, however, I decided to keep reading, just in case there was a good tidbit to come. I was surprised to find that there are some useful areas in the ebook, which I let percolate. I even acted upon a few. 

The concept that resonated with me most was that each element of your blog has a value, one that either adds to readability, usability and likeability, or detracts from it. You should aim to only have elements on your blog that increase value:

Ask yourself: is this element/action +1, or -1? If it’s not one, it’s the other. The belief in zero, in certain things being neither one nor the other, and therefore acceptable, causes us to waste time and visitor attention on actions and elements that simply don’t contribute to the growth of your site. A challenge, if you’d like to try it: Eliminate every zero or -1 action from yourself and your site.

The sections on building content (p.12) and interaction (p.17) were also interesting. These sections provide a useful overview of building or repairing a blog with the reader in mind, above all other motives such as self-promotion or generating ad revenue.

For a 27 page quick-read PDF, I would recommend a skim to new bloggers and those who want help finding a fresh way to look at their blog with the possibility of making improvements.

Coincidentally, just as I post this, I get an ad from Blogger saying:
Turn your blog into a book!
Blog2Print from SharedBook turns your blog into a soft cover or hard cover book. You pick the cover, add an optional dedication, then preview and you're done. Prices start at $14.95.