Posted by Elena del Valle on September 24, 2010
Social Media Marketing book cover
Photos: Que Publishing
Although a recent IBM survey of 1,000 channel partners (see IBM Offers Channel Partners Guidance in Social Media Marketing by Rick Whiting, CRN.com) indicates that 45 percent of respondents said they are trying their luck with social media 74 percent of respondents said they seek more education and better understanding of the many social media outlets and tools like RSS, wikis, Facebook and Twitter. At the same time they said they sought ways to measure results. That mirrors in some ways what Liana “Li” Evans, a social media executive, says.
Social media is not easy, quick and cheap, says Evans in her recently published book Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media (Que Publishing, $24.99). Evans, director, Social media for Serengeti Communications, explains that although adding content to social media is quick and free making the added content worthwhile for the audience requires much work.
Often overnight successes are by accident rather than the result of planned efforts. Those who believe launching a page on a popular site is all that is required in social media marketing will likely find disappointment, according to the author.
Social media is about gaining trust which takes time, she says in the first chapter. She goes on to explain that social media is about having conversations and sharing experiences with others with common interests; and that conversation about a company can take place with or without that company’s participation. Successful marketing on social media, as any other type of marketing, requires that the executives understand the social media forum and develop a company strategy that includes an audience profile, goals and measurement, according to Evans.
Author Liana “Li” Evans
The 342-page softcover book is divided into five parts with several chapters each: The Basics of Social Media, It’s About Conversation, Social Media from the Inside Out, It’s Not About You, and How Social Media Fits into the Online Marketing Picture.
Since 1999 Evans, who has college degrees in public relations and information technology, has been active in social media and search marketing. Before working with Serengeti, she led search engine optimization efforts for an Internet Retailer 500 company. She also led the online efforts of the entertainment website of a Fortune 500 company.
Click here to buy Social Media Marketing
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Posted by Elena del Valle on September 22, 2010
Part four of a series
By Hilda Luisa Díaz-Perera
Hilda Luisa Díaz-Perera
So, the shirt that would become today’s guayabera was probably first made sometime in the XVIII Century. It then developed gradually over the XIX Century, not as a design made by one person, but rather as the result of the many shirt variations existing in the island and the efforts of several seamstresses and tailors who complied with shifts in taste and fashion by adding or deleting features to the original prototype.
Someone, we cannot identify who, added the collar. Someone else, who surely possessed very high sewing skills, must have thought of adding the narrow pleats with their minuscule stitches down the front and back of the shirt. Then, at some point during the Cuban wars for independence from 1868 to 1898, the design of the Cuban flag was incorporated onto the back of the guayabera.
Click here to read parts one through four of La Guayabera
Posted by Elena del Valle on September 20, 2010
Click to enlarge
Declining media coverage due to fewer and smaller media outlets has affected marketing and media relations, particularly in the last few years. Further evidence of that is the decline, partly because of the recession, of employment opportunities for journalism and communications university graduates. This may have a medium and long term effect on others who deal with and rely on journalists and communicators to make their living.
In addition to the many challenges resulting from the changes in media formats and workforce reduction in recent years journalism graduates, especially those from ethnic and racial backgrounds, are encountering difficulties finding gainful employment in their area of study. A new report by the University of Georgia resulting from a survey of 2,700 journalism and mass communication students who graduated in 2009 revealed the lowest level of full-time employment in the 24-year history of the study.
Of the 2009 journalism and communication bachelor degree holders who responded to the survey only 55.5 percent were able to find full-time work within a year of graduating. That represents 4.9 percentage points decline from the year before. It is also significantly different from the 2007 figures when 70.2 percent of graduates found employment. Graduates receiving a masters degree also had trouble finding work; the employment rate dropped from 65.4 percent in 2008 to 61.9 percent in 2009.
Ethnic and racial minorities, according to the survey results, suffered more than other graduates. Only 48.6 percent of 2009 minority graduates compared with 63.9 percent of non-minority graduates found full time work. The 15.3 percent difference was three times as large as the gap between minority and non-minority graduates of the previous year (5.9 percent), representing the largest difference in the history of the University’s survey.
Also, survey responses indicate an increase in the number of 2009 graduates working with the internet. More than half (58.2 percent) of 2009 bachelor graduates with communication jobs said their work involved Web writing and editing compared to 50.6 percent who said that the year before.
The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates is conducted each year in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia. This year’s report was written by Lee B. Becker, Ph.D. Tudor Vlad, Ph.D., Paris Desnoes and Devora Olin.
Posted by Elena del Valle on September 17, 2010
Life Unlocked book cover
Photo: Glenn Kulbako
Srini Pillay, MD, executive coach and chief executive officer of NeuroBusiness (NBG), a company that offers coaching services, believes the primitive part of our brain is constantly sending us messages of alert to warn us about possible danger in our environment. These messages, the rip current of human nature as he describes it, create a sense of anxiety that can prevent us from moving in the direction we truly want.
Being aware of these potential dangers and overcoming the fear they provoke may allow us to function more effectively than heeding the danger signals. In his recently published book Life Unlocked 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear (Rodale Books, $25.99) he talks about how to overcome fears to live better and more fulfilling lives.
The 294-page hardcover book is divided into seven chapters: What you don’t know can hurt you; The science of overcoming dread; Fear of success; If it’s hard to change, it’s not unchangeable; Unlocking a caged heart; Fear and prejudice; and How to develop emotional superglue.
He begins by exploring the idea that everyone suffers from fear of some kind. He then proposes that it is possible to shift the way we view things in order to feel less fearful and anxious. He discusses the fear of success and eight possible causes: loneliness, disorientation, responsibility, the unknown, being unable to maintain success, losing our drive, becoming prey, and losing our identity.
Author Srini Pillay, MD
He goes on to discuss the idea that fear can be the result of conditioning. Once we understand how we are conditioned, he says, we can begin to change our conditioning. He also discusses attachment related fears and his belief that as with other fears, we can change them once we understand them. Prejudice and fear and closely linked, he says.
In Chapter 6, he explains that prejudice may indicate guilt and fear and that finding a productive way to address these feelings may lead to a solution and improve our ability to be successful. In the final chapter he examines the impact that trauma has in our lives and proposes a way to overcome its damage.
In addition to his work as a Certified Master Coach, the author is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. This is his first book.
Click here to buy Life Unlocked
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Posted by Elena del Valle on September 15, 2010
Part three of a series
By Hilda Luisa Díaz-Perera
Hilda Luisa Díaz-Perera
Ciro Bianchi Ross, writing in the Cuban government-sponsored magazine Juventud Rebelde, points out that this early, and from his point of view questionable story about the Sancti Spiritus origins of the guayabera, if nothing else, marks the recognition of the existence of this special shirt and places it within the Cuban historical timetable. He explains that a description of the guayabera is not even present in Cuban literature of the XIX Century, until the 1890’s when author Nicolás Heredia writes about it in his Cuban novel, Leonela. Furthermore, Bianchi Ross says that the Cuban peasant did not wear the guayabera, but rather normally donned a loose blue or striped shirt over his trousers, a straw hat or sombrero de yarey, boots, a neckerchief to wipe off his sweat and his machete.
When the Countess of Merlin, (Havana 1789– Paris 1852), a Cuban aristocrat married to a French count, who is considered the first female Cuban writer, visited Havana in 1840, the guayabera was either not popular yet among the Cuban peasantry around the capital, or it did not go by that name. She does not mention it in any of her well-known writings or in the copious journal she kept of the trip. However, the fact that she does not mention the guayabera, does not mean it did not exist, at least as a prototype.
Click here to read parts, one, two and three of La Guayabera.
Posted by Elena del Valle on September 13, 2010
Jose Azel, Ph.D., author, Mañana in Cuba
Photo: Jose Azel, Ph.D.
A podcast interview with Jose Azel, Ph.D., author, Manana in Cuba (see University of Miami scholar discusses possible Cuba future) is available in the Podcast Section of Hispanic Marketing & Public Relations, HispanicMPR.com. During the podcast, José discusses his recently published book with Elena del Valle, host of the HispanicMPR.com podcast.
José is dedicated to the in-depth analysis of Cuba’s economic, social, and political state, with special interest in post-Castro-Cuba strategies. He is a senior scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami.
A native of Cuba he left the island in 1961 when he was 13 years old as part of Operation Pedro Pan, a child refugee program. He has been a guest on programs on Mega TV, PBS, America TeVe, GenTV, France 24 TV, and Al Jazeera among others.
José is dedicated to the in-depth analysis of Cuba’s economic, social, and political state, with special interest in post-Castro-Cuba strategies. He is a senior scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami.
To listen to the interview, scroll down until you see “Podcast” on the right hand side, then select “HMPR Jose Azel, Ph.D.” click on the play button below or download the MP3 file to your iPod or MP3 player to listen on the go, in your car or at home. To download it, click on the arrow of the recording you wish to copy and save it to disk. The podcast will remain listed in the September 2010 section of the podcast archive.
Click here to buy Mañana In Cuba
Posted by Elena del Valle on September 10, 2010
Racism without Racists book cover
Photos: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
In the first edition of Racism without Racists Color-Blind Racism and Racial Inequality in Contemporary America (Rowman and Littlefield) Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Duke University, shared his concerns about what he describes as “the new racial ideology,” how he believes the new system has replaced the old system and is as effective. In the second edition of the book, he expanded on the issue by addressing his views of a growing fissure of race stratification similar to the one he believes exists in Latin America’s pluralistic societies.
In the third edition of the book, published earlier this year, he added a section about what he calls the Obama Phenomenon. He also discusses conservative minorities that make their living (or their fortune) defending what some consider views unfavorable to the minority group or groups they should identify with because of their race and cultural background.
The 301-page softcover book is divided into 10 chapters: The Strange Enigma of Race in Contemporary America, The Central Frames of Color-Blind Racism, The Style of Color Blindness: How to Talk Nasty About Minorities without Sounding Racist, “I Didn’t Get That Job Because of a Black Man”: Color Blind Racism’s Racial Stories, Peeking Inside the (White) House of Color Blindness: The Significance of Whites’ Segregation, Are All Whites Refined Archie Bunkers? An Examination of White Racial Progressives, Are Blacks Color Blind, Too?, E Pluribus Unum or The Same Old Perfume in a New Bottle? On the Future of Racial Stratification in the United States, Will Racism Disappear in Obamerica? The Sweet (but Deadly) Enchantment of Color Blindness in Black Face, and Conclusion: “The (Color-Blind) Emperor Has No Clothes:” Exposing the Whitness of Color Blindness.
One chapter from the previous edition, Chapter 10, the appendix with the interview schedule for the 1998 DAS and the postscript for the text were removed. They are available on the publisher’s website, according to the author’s Preface.
Author Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Bonilla-Silva believes President Barack Obama and his regime represent the “new racism” and that his policies represent the color-blind ideology he outlines in his book. In addition, Bonilla-Silva outlines his belief in the book in the idea that the President’s policies and the way others are framing his government may further precipitate what the author sees as the country’s Latin America like racial stratification.
In addition to this book Bonilla-Silva is the author or co-author of White Supremacy and Racism in the Post Civil Rights Era, White Out, and White Logic White Methods: Racism and Methodology. His next book is titled The Invisible Weight of Whiteness: The Racial Grammar of Everyday Life in the U.S.A.
Click here to buy Racism without Racists
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Posted by Elena del Valle on September 8, 2010
Part two of a series
By Hilda Luisa Díaz-Perera
Hilda Luisa Díaz-Perera
Where did the guayabera come from and is there a history behind it? Most of the time, where it concerns popular history, those who have made a difference in the lives of millions of people were never aware of it, and therefore the facts of whatever they contributed to mankind is lost in the jumble of reality, fiction and, in the case of the guayabera, in the fantasy of romance.
According to research conducted by Cuban journalist Pedro Carballo Bernal, several Andalusian and later Canary Island families who settled in Cuba around the Yayabo River, in Sancti Spiritus, began making shirts that would eventually become the precursors or prototypes of today’s guayaberas. More precisely, as the story goes, the first guayabera was made in 1709, by Encarnación Núñez García, an Andalusian wife from the town of Granada, hoping to please her husband, José Pérez Rodríguez, a potter by trade, who requested that she make him comfortable, loose shirts from a bolt of fine Belgian linen they had received from Spain.
Click here to read parts one and two of La Guayabera, a multi-part series
Posted by Elena del Valle on September 3, 2010
The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature
Photo: Sam Masinter
A compendium of the Latino literary tradition, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (W. W. Norton; $59.95) is due to be published in hardcover September 13, 2010. The heavy hardcover book has 2,489 pages plus 177 appendix pages. The book features the work of 201 Latino writers from Chicano, Cuban-American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican-American traditions, and writing from other Spanish-speaking countries. Works from writers of Brazil, Portugal and the Philippines were excluded.
Ilan Stavans, a cultural critic and Lewis Sebring Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, was the general editor of the title which traces five centuries of writing, from letters to the Spanish crown by sixteenth-century conquistadors to the expressions of twenty-first-century cartoonists and artists of reggaeton. It took 13 years to gather the information and make the book a reality.
The book is divided into six chronological sections: Colonization, Annexation, Acculturation, Upheaval, Into the Mainstream, and Popular Tradition and includes samples of the work of José Martí, William Carlos Williams, Julia Alvarez, Oscar Hijuelos, Cristina García, Piri Thomas, Esmeralda Santiago, and Junot Díaz. Three appendices, Chronology-Literature and History; Treaties, Acts and Propositions; and Influential Essays by Latin American Writers precede a Selected Biography section.
The selection was based on four thematic emphases: identifying Latinos for purposes of the book as those writers from Spanish speaking countries living in the United States regardless of the length of time they resided in the country or their race while taking into account that the events and circumstances of more than one nation may have influenced some of the authors.
Ilan Stavans, general editor, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature
Mexico City born Stavans, a writer and public television host, authored Growing Up Latino and Spanglish. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Other editors listed at the beginning of the book are: Edna Acosta-Belén, a Distinguished Professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies and Women’s Studies, University of Albany, State University of New York; Harold Augenbraum, executive director, National Book Foundation; María Herrera-Sobek, associate vice chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Academic Policy and professor in the Department of Chicana and Chino Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; Rolando Hinojosa, Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of Creative Writing, University of Texas at Austin; and Gustavo Pérez Firmat, David Feinson Professor of Humanities, Columbia University.
Click here to buy The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature
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