Are you considering blogging as a hobby or part time/full time professional career and aren’t sure whether or not to add Blogger to your shortlist of blogging platforms? Well, I suggest you take a look at a recently published booked by Lee Jordan titled, “Blogger: Beyond the Basics.” Jordan touches on every aspect of Blogger including customized templates, integrating RSS/Social bookmarking, working with your blog’s HTML code, linking and adding widgets. In addition to the step by step by examples mentioned in all the chapters, the book comes with a CD so you can easily try out the examples on your own blog.

Blogger: Beyond the Basics, actually starts out by discussing how you can leverage blogs and how to predefine the goals for your blog – which really helps ads some focus before you dive in head first. Coming from a search marketing background, I really appreciated how Jordan took this book to the next level and clearly explained how to apply search engine optimization strategies to improve the performance of your blog and how to use Google Analytics to measure all aspects of your blog. Get your copy of the book here.

I got an opportunity to catch up with the author, Lee Jordan, to get her thoughts on why she wrote the book, who the book is targeted towards, and the benefits of using Blogger.

[Manoj]: What was the inspiration behind writing “Blogger – Beyond the Basics”

[Lee Jordan]: I fell into writing this book. Dave, the acquisitions editor at Packt asked what I thought about an advanced book about Blogger. After looking around I realized it had been about a year (a long time in blogging years) since a book covering advanced topics for Blogger had come out. There had been so many changes too. Blogger had moved to a “new” XML based template structure and was rapidly adding new social media features. I subscribe to the Blogger help list on Google Groups and saw many frustrated people having problems with the same topics over and over. It was a great opportunity to give back to the blogging community and learn more myself.

[Manoj]: Who is the book targeted towards?

[Lee Jordan]: The book is targeted towards people who already know the basics of blogging with Blogger and are now ready to do more advanced work on their blog. Popular advanced topics include transforming a basic template into the three column one, adding custom colors and graphics to the template, adding customized modules, and search engine optimization.

[Manoj]: Is Blogger a legitimate platform for people to use for business?

[Lee Jordan]: You do not have to be a programmer or a web designer to use Blogger successfully. Features include multiple users, customizable templates, podcast and videocast support, and an easy to use administration area.Blogger has a custom domain feature which allows well known corporations such as GirlScouts.org to host the backend of their blog on Blogger and customize it to match the rest of their site. The integration of Blogger with Feedburner, Google Analytics, and YouTube means a business can quickly set up a social media blog. The developers of Blogger are constantly working on improvements and new features. Add in the vibrant help community on Google Groups and you have an active support system for businesses and entrepreneurs who blog.

[Manoj]: How does Blogger compare against other platforms such as WordPress/Typepad

[Lee Jordan]: All three make it easy to post. The real differences come with features, administration, and templates. Blogger is best for those who want someone else to deal with keeping the blog software updated and are looking for an inexpensive way to start blogging. WordPress and Typepad are better for people who have a technical resource or the time to keep up with software patches.

Blogger does not come with a wide range of templates for businesses that can be customized, but makes it very easy to manage modules and other features. The WordPress interface has an extensive number of templates, but managing the blog requires multiple administration dashboards, some hidden where the beginner would have difficulty finding them. It also does not give hosted users the option to use a rich text editor for text modules. Typepad has great commenting features, but I haven’t seen many new things happening with it feature wise.

[Manoj]: The biggest advantages Blogger has is ease of administration and flexibility. Another advantage is Blogger blogs are free. You can easily add modules and do not have to pay additional fees to edit the CSS or perform other customizations. WordPress users who want to customize or add modules are better off downloading a copy of the WordPress platform and hosting it themselves to avoid paying for the right to edit the CSS files or install modules. This will require paying for a domain name and a hosting provider, but it may cost less in the long run.

[Manoj]: If you could pick out 3 or 4 main objectives or lessons readers should get from this book, what should they be?

[Lee Jordan]: