Posted by Elena del Valle on August 21, 2009
Twitter for Dummies book cover
As social media grow in popularity (see Which social networking site is right for you? and Businessmen outline social media basics) more people and businesses seem to join the Twitter ranks (see About Twitter and About Twitter II). Twitter offers easy to use social networking opportunities with postings limited to 140-characters. For aspiring Twitter users, the well known For Dummies series released a new 267-page paperback book published in 2009, Twitter For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, $21.99). Three people collaborated to make the book come to fruition, Laura Fitton, Michael E. Gruen and Leslie Poston.
Twitter For Dummies starts out with a foreword from Jack Dorsey, founder and chairman of Twitter, and a Cheat Sheet with do’s and don’ts, access points and shorthand commands. Dorsey mentions that Twitter is based on three concepts: “minimize thinking around communication, expose trends in local and global circles, and spark interaction.” The book is divided into five parts of between three and four chapters each: Twitter? Like Birds Do?, Joining Your Flock on Twitter, Twittering in High Gear, Knowing Why We Twitter, and The Part of Tens.
It was written for people wanting to start a Twitter account to build their network of contacts, locate similar minded people interested in following their brief Twitter postings, and leverage the social media site for business communication and networking. It also addresses Twitter terms, how to Twitter when you are not at your office or home, third party applications, and Twitter character use and meaning.
Fitton is a business consultant, blogger and Twitter fan with a following of more than 32,000 when the book was published. Gruen is a business adviser and chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Nom, a digital strategy agency. He is also the chief executive officer of a healtcare startup. Poston dedicates her time to social networking, new media, branding and business development. She has more than 200 books to her credit.
Click here to buy Twitter For Dummies
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Posted by Elena del Valle on August 7, 2009
The New Influencers book cover
Photos: Quill Driver Books
Paul Gillin makes his living advising marketing consultants and senior executives on social media. He believes one of the most remarkable aspects of the new media landscape is the emergence of people and media that influence others within “communities that have no rules, no governing structures, no standards and no hierarchy.” Toward that goal he wrote The New Influencers A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media (Quill Driver Books, $16.95).
Out of what should be chaos, he says, an informal structure is developing. Often those who command attention and lead the way online are individuals of authority in their own fields offline. He discusses Enthusiasts, a group of people who blog to express their opinions and share information. Although their motivations are difficult to pinpoint he believes they can be valuable to businesses and organizations as a sort of “global online focus group that works for free.”
He also refers to Influentials (from The Influentials, a book by Ed Keller and Jon Berry) who some believe play a major role in the decision making of the general market. According to the book authors, 10 percent of Americans influence the purchasing decisions of the remaining 90 percent of Americans. Gillin goes on to argue that many enthusiast bloggers see their role as one of commentary rather than original reporting. His advice: Businesses, such as Wal-Mart, which he refers to in an example, would be better served by addressing mainstream media for large focus issues and bloggers for personal issues.
The 236-page paperback book, published earlier this year, is divided into 11 chapters: The Origins of Social Media; From Chaos, Structure; Enthusiasts; Measures of Influence; Corporate Conversations; Small Is Beautiful; Putting “Public” Back Into Public Relations; The Talkers; Tools of the Trade; Going Viral; and Next Steps. He closes with two appendices: The Numbers and Leveraging Technology.
Author Paul Gillin
Prior to writing the book and offering his services as a social media consultant Gillin covered computer industry issues as a journalist for fifteen years. He was editor-in-chief of TechTarget and held the same title at Computerworld.
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Posted by Elena del Valle on July 31, 2009
Web Content RX book cover
Wayne English believes the quality of online content is important. He also believes that web content, design and keywords are equally important. That is why he included web development information in his recently published book Web Content Rx A Quick and Handy Guide for Writers, Webmasters, Ebayers and Business People (Career Press, $7.99). In the book, he includes insights on writing easy-to-understand content, choosing a good design, preparing eBay ads, making email addresses unreadable by spammers, and the abc’s of making a podcast and blogging.
The 240-page softcover book is divided into eleven chapters: Get Read or Get Lost – Your Content Decides; Writing Your Content; Content That Sells; Using Automated and Other People’s Content; E-mail; Your Blog; Getting Found: Content and Search Engines; User-Generated and User-Maintained Content; Communication; Podcasting; and Digital Photography.
There are also 10 appendices: Grammar, A Writer’s Checklist, Web Design and HTML, Your Business, A Short Style Guide and Confused Words, Online Tools, HTML Characters and Special Characters; Unspammable E-mail Code, An Almost Foolproof Data Backup Scheme, and Site Search with Google.
Author Wayne English
English, formerly a professional photographer, is the founder of WebContentRx.com. He makes his living writing online oriented content; doing website analysis; launching e-mail campaigns; and marketing websites for clients.
Click here to buy Web Content Rx
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Posted by Elena del Valle on July 17, 2009
The Social Media Bible book cover
The Social Media Bible Tactics, Tools and Strategies for Business Success (Wiley, $29.94), a 821-page tome from Lon Safko and David K. Brake published earlier this year, outlines basic social media issues in 43 chapters. The soft cover book is divided into three parts: Background Basics and Tactics (chapters 1-23), Tools (chapters 24-38) and Strategy (chapters 38-43). The authors believe that readers who successfully implement the strategies they outline in the book may increase revenues, improve profitability and remain relevant in their industry.
The two authors relied on 48 experts and authors from companies such as Wiley & Sons, Inc., Publishing, Flicker, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, and MySpace, among others, to enhance their contribution to the book and its partner website. The book project required almost two years of planning and about six months to write.
“The most challenging aspect of writing a 43 chapter, 844 page book on social media was the wrapping my brain around the extensive landscape of social media. I took months to gather information about the hundreds of companies and tools then creating the 15 basic categories of social media applications,” said Safko by email when asked what were the most challenging and rewarding aspects of the project. “Then the real work began; researching each of these technologies and compiling all of their histories, features, benefits, and interviewing nearly 50 of the world leaders on social media; Biz Stone, Twitter, Matt Mullenweg, WordPress, SVP YouTube, SVP, Flickr, VP MySpace, and even Peter Wiley, chairman of the Board for John Wiley & Sons, and Vint Cerf, the inventor of the Internet.
The most rewarding aspect of creating this work is the testimonials and stories I hear on a daily basis about how this book is answering so many peoples questions about social media and where they do they begin. Business people are both excited and stressed about social media. They all know social media is changing the way we all do business, but they don’t know how they should be applying it. The hear that this book is helping so many people is the most valuable reward I could have hoped for.”
The first section is designed to serve as an introduction on social media and its varied applications; they delve deeper in the second part where they address 100 social media tools and applications in 15 categories; in the last section, they share exercises for readers to determine their individual needs to facilitate their efforts at crafting and developing social media strategies for their business or company.
Safko, the founder of eight companies including Paper Models, Inc and LonSafko.com, dedicates his time to public speaking and developing innovative ideas. He has 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, training and e-commerce. Brake is the chief executive officer of Content Connections, a social media strategies company.
Click here to buy The Social Media Bible
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Posted by Elena del Valle on July 10, 2009
Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Life book cover
The work of 17 years of research and dedication, Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Life (Knof, $37.50) by Gerald Martin, is the first official biography of the famous Colombian Nobel Prize winner. The 642-page hardcover book is divided into three sections and 24 chapters that follow the author’s life in chronological order to the time of publication. The book, published in 2008, includes 16 pages of photographs and three maps. A Spanish edition is due out this year.
To complete his task Martin interviewed Garcia Marquez, the author best known for his magical realism writing style, extensively as well as 300 other individuals; including family members (wife, children and siblings), political figures such as Fidel Castro and Felipe Gonzalez, fellow authors and even self described detractors. Martin summarized his findings in order to publish the current title, down from more than two thousand pages which he plans to publish as an extensive work in future years.
A resident of England, Martin is Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and senior research professor at London Metropolitan University. Past publications include Journeys Through a Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century; and a translation and critical edition of Men of Maize, a work of Miguel Angel Asturia.
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Posted by Elena del Valle on June 26, 2009
The Whuffie Factor book cover
While millions of people have online profiles and are active in well known social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, reaping measurable advantages from the profiles does not necessarily follow. Some companies and individuals are convinced these networks are the future and that for those who know what to do and how to do it all the coveted goals will become a reality. As the social networking craze continues a wave of new experts is stepping up to the plate to share their insights with amateurs who want to build a business, develop their presence online or generate business benefits.
In The Whuffie Factor Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business (Crown Business, $25), a 312-page hardcover book published in 2009, Tara Hunt, who has spent the past 15 years participating in or building online communities addresses how-to and best practices issues. She titled the book for the word “whuffie” which refers to the social capital of a person based on his or her actions and contributions to a community and what other people think of him or her.
The book is divided into 10 chapters: How to Be a Social Capitalist, The Power of Community Marketing, Turn the Bullhorn Around and Create Continuous Conversations with Customers, Building Whuffie by Listening to and Integrating Feedback, Become Part of the Community You Serve, Depositing into and Withdrawing from Your Whuffie Account, Be Notable: Eleven Ways to Create Amazing Customer Experiences, Embrace the Chaos, Find Your Higher Purpose, and Whuffie IRL.
Hunt, also known as Miss Rogue, co-founded Citizen Agency, a San Francisco community marketing consulting firm. She now leads the marketing efforts of Intuit’s partner platform.
Click here to buy The Whuffie Factor
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Posted by Elena del Valle on June 19, 2009
The Social Network Business Plan book cover
In spite of the popularity of social networks in the last years, from a business perspective the question many investors are asking is whether they make business sense. Since social networks are free to users in order to become financially viable they must generate revenue from another source. Many believe the traditional media model that offers advertising space to support editorial content is the key. Others question the effectiveness of ads in the social network pages. In The Social Network Business Plan 18 Strategies That Will Create Great Wealth (Wiley, $24.95), a 191-page hardcover book published this year, David Silver says there is another way.
According to him social networks are the biggest thing since the development of bread 6,000 years ago; and the social networks that prompt consumers to try out, rank and recommend products and services are a revolutionary marketing tool that will create a huge disruption in the way we do business today. He promises readers that through his book they will discover how to create an online recommender community, a new way to launch products and services; how to show their value to vendors; operate several online recommender communities; create a loyal following and make money.
He talks about oligopsony, a shift in power from the producer to the consumer that will benefit consumers by allowing them to receive services that are provided truthfully and efficiently; provide them products that do what they are said to do; and drive prices down noticeably by reducing the need for advertising.
The book is divided into eight chapters: Eighteen Sustainable Revenue Channels, Your Recommender Community as a Theater, Mimic the Bakers and Copy Starbucks, Why Not Start Five Simultaneously? Loyalty and Passion Builders, Disruption: The Sumptuous Impertinence, Should You Sell, or Are You Having Too Much Fun? and Wrap Up.
Silver is the founder of a dozen social networks including onesite.com, iboats.com, and collarfree.com. He provided the seed capital for ActMedia, Cognition Technologies, Frontier Telecommunications, and Intelepeer.
The Social Network Business Plan
Click here to buy The Social Network Business Plan
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Posted by Elena del Valle on June 5, 2009
Twitter Power book cover
When a US Airways airplane landed safely in the Hudson River earlier this year many people first heard about it on Twitter, the popular social networking site known for its short postings. In his most recent book Author Joe Comm, a social media enthusiast, points out that the first medium in which news of the recent India terrorist attacks appeared was Twitter. Only several hours later did broadcast media begin coverage. It would appear Twitter is well established as a medium and method to communicate news quickly and efficiently internationally. But does it play a business role?
Comm and Ken Burge, his business partner, argue that it does. In the recently published book, Twitter Power How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time (Wiley, $24.95) Comm, with Burge’s help and a foreword by Author Anthony Robbins, dedicates 245-pages to the discussion. It took him two months to write the book, according to a representative from his publisher. Comm’s expertise in the area was born from his business experience online. He made a business, started in his bedroom, of providing advice and promoting products online. This in turn led to the seven figure company he now owns, he says in the Introduction of the book.
Unlike Facebook and MySpace Twitter’s usefulness wasn’t obvious to him from the beginning. Over time, the micro blogging website has revealed itself as an “important and easy” way of networking, unearthing new information and finding new customers for him. Twitter also has helped expand the reach of his brand and allowed him to connect with experts and receive advice from people he believes he would have never met otherwise. Most importantly for businesses considering whether to spend their time following and being followed on the 140-character-per-posting site he says Twitter drives traffic to his portal.
Comm argues that to get the most out of Twitter it is best to use it in combination with other social networking sites. In the book, he dedicates time to outlining the basics of social media before discussing Twitter and what makes it special. Next, he explains how to get started on Twitter and, what many readers are likely to be most interested in, how to get a following on the website.
He believes getting followers is easy but keeping them is a challenge. According to him it takes only a few followers to make it to the top 10 percent of people on Twitter. He includes a 30-day step-by-step outline for newbies who want to make inroads on Twitter.
Ultimately, he argues, tweeting is a tool that can lead dedicated users to build beneficial relationships and a loyal following. To accomplish that they have to do more than just post information or comments; they have to connect with customers, problem solve, win referrals, and provide support. If they are successful they will develop a loyal following which may generate visitors, traffic and income. He also mentions Twitter add-on tools and applications and their role and benefits.
Comm describes Twitter as a “virtual giant water cooler” and emphasizes that sales oriented messages are not appropriate. At the same time, he believes many good things can result from the relationships born there for those willing to spend the time and energy to build them.
Comm is also author of The AdSense Code and Click Here to Order. In researching Comm for this article the author also found several websites listing complaints relating to Comm and his online businesses as well as questions regarding his methods. According to a spokesperson for the publishing company, “When you do business with tens of thousands of customers you are bound to have customer service issues. Please note that the BBB page says all issues have been resolved satisfactorily.” Comm did not reply directly. Burge is president of InfoMedia Inc. An eight year veteran of Microsoft, he is responsible for the management of 50 profitable online properties, according to promotional materials.
Joel Comm, author, Twitter Power
Twitter Power book cover
Click here to buy Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
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Posted by Elena del Valle on May 29, 2009
Celebritize Yourself book cover
Marsha Friedman, a public relations practitioner and self promotion enthusiast, believes that the public gives more credibility to the things celebrities say than to the same comments from a regular person. In her recently published book, Celebritize Yourself The Three Step Method To Increase Your Visibility And Explode Your Business (Warren Publishing, $19.95) she explains why and how readers can develop their reputation for good advantage.
“The term celebrity isn’t just reserved for the stars we read about in the tabloids, but rather, it also refers to experts who are known for being the tops in their chosen fields, many times removed from movie and TV stars,” said Friedman. “Whether you’re a doctor, financial advisor, real estate broker, used car sales person, or even a waiter, you can celebritize yourself in any field.
“Celebrity is a powerful commodity; doors that were once closed can suddenly open. People listen to what they ignored before. New business and money flows to you – not away from you. Most of all, people thank you for sharing your wisdom.”
In the 175-page paperback book Friedman stresses that before becoming famous celebrities were regular people. As examples she cites Julia Child and Erma Bombeck. Child’s background was in publicity and advertising before she followed her passion for French cooking and turned it into a thriving business. Bombeck was a reporter turned homemaker who converted a $3 per column job and into a nationally-syndicated revenue generating idea.
The book is divided into 11 chapters: Everyone Has a Celebrity Within Them! Isn’t It Time You Walked into the Limelight? The Joys of Becoming the Celebrity in Your Field; Why Do You Want to Become a Celebrity? First, Know Thyself; It All Starts with A Book; From Community Celebrity to National Celebrity; How to Be a Great Radio or TV Guest and Quoted in the News! The Celebritize Yourself Quiz; Find Your Media Niche? Now Let’s Get Started! and The Big Payoff.
Marsha Friedman, author, Celebritize Yourself
Friedman, a business woman, publicity expert, radio show host and public speaker, owns Event Management Services, Inc. (EMSI), a national public relations firm she established in 1990. Every week she appears on the nationally syndicated talk radio show “The Family Roundtable” on XM.
Celebritize Yourself book cover
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Posted by Elena del Valle on May 8, 2009
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire book cover
Photos: Teresa Castracane
C.M. Mayo, a resident of Mexico for many years, recently published The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books, $26.95) a historical novel set in that country during the reign of Emperor Maximilian von Hapsburg. While the Civil War was tearing the United States apart, Louis Napoleon invaded Mexico and installed Austrian Archduke Maximilian von Hapsburg as emperor. Mayo’s story is set against this post war background. Her debut novel, the result of extensive research, is based in fact.
In the 430-page hardcover book she sets the tale of ambition, heart break, intrigue and politics. A year after becoming emperor the childless monarch took custody of a two-year old half American boy, Prince Agustin Iturbide y Green, making him the Heir Presumptive. The boy was the son of a Mexican diplomat and an American woman; and the grandson of Mexico’s first emperor, who fought for independence from Spain and was executed before a firing squad. Maximilian’s refusal to return the toddler to its saddened parents even while his empire crumbled and the empress toyed with madness catapulted the country into scandal.
Author C.M. Mayo
The author, a part time resident of Washington, D.C., is a translator of contemporary Mexican literature and founding editor of Tameme Chapbooks Cuadernos. Mayo’s other books include Sky Over El Nido, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico, a travel memoir and Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion.
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
Click here to buy The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
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