Archive for July, 2010

New Influencer: A Social Media and Blogging Classic



This month, our team read Paul Gillin’s book, The New Influencer: A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media. We wanted to share some of the key points that make this book a social media and blogging classic.

Total Rating

4.5 out of 5

Who Should Read the Book

Thinking about writing a blog for your small business or are you a marketer looking to dial-up your clients presence on the web? Paul Gillin’s book, The New Influencer: A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media, offers practical advice for anyone, whether you’re a seasoned marketer or digital novice, to increase brand presence and capture new audiences in the online space. Nearly four years after its publication, it remains relevant and useful to industry professionals and greenhorns alike.

What is the Book About

The New Influencer takes a serious examination of social media and blogging in the digital transition of business to the web. It is digestible in its simplicity yet alive with rich examples, case studies and anecdotes. Gillin provides sensible information on how to increase market share through blogging and social media while building a community of engaged users. He pulls insights from successful small auto blogs to corporate missteps in the blogosphere to guide readers on how to avoid common pitfalls.

Why is the Book Important

There are many books that have followed in Paul Gillin’s path; however, The New Influencer remains an essential tool for marketers and non-marketers alike. Gillin is a forerunner in his exploration of digital influencers, and though the web is fast-paced, Gillin still captures the fundamentals of blogging and social media. The New Influencers has won accolades from industry professionals, such as Seth Godin and mainstream media, such as The Wall Street Journal.

Why is this Book Unique

Though there are a lot of on and offline publications that examine blogging, podcasting and social media, the scope of Gillin’s in-depth analysis, research and insights remain strong and reliable to this day. Gillin spent the extra time interviewing industry professionals, such as Jeff Jarvis (author of BuzzMachine) and Michael Arrington (creator of TechCrunch). By doing his homework and exploring many the facets of blogging and social media, The New Influencer is a credible resource for experienced bloggers and those breaking into the blogosphere.

Similar Books

To add further credibility to The New Influencer, Paul Gillin practices what he…

To read more about New Influencers, go to Sparxoo, a digitla marketing, branding and business development.

An Executive Summary Example: Attract Potential Investors



You can spend hours writing, checking, and rechecking a perfect business plan; however, no matter how good it sounds, no busy potential investor will bother reading it, at least not before reviewing your executive summary first. An appealing, professional executive summary dramatically increases your chances of grabbing the attention of a potential investor.

Like it sounds, an executive summary is a document that summarizes your entire business plan into key points, so that a potential investor or partner can easily understand in a few minutes what your business plan is all about, and more importantly why s/he should be interested in your offer.

A good executive summary example summarizes your key points on the one hand, and appeals to your readers on the other, it is doable if you follow these guidelines:

(1) Keep it short (1-2 pages).

(2) Use legible font (Verdana is pleasing on-screen; Times New Roman is easy on the eye on the printed page).

(3) Keep headers brief (5-6 words), and write them in boldface, one point size larger than your body text (body text should be 11 or 12).

(4) Place your most important information at the beginning; think of it as a newspaper front page that contains a ‘killer headline”, then sub-headlines, and finally the rest of the story.

(5) Write short, easy-to-read paragraphs (4-5 lines each) and make sure they contain only relevant information. Don’t go in deep; if your readers need more details, they’ll go straight to your business plan?or contact you.

Professional and Attractive Business English Writing

In our online world of communication, your English writing level reflects how professional, intelligent, and persuasive you are. In many cases, you’ll never even meet with potential investors before they read your executive summary. For that reason, it’s critical that your English writing reflects confidence and professionalism, while at the same time sounding appealing.

If you were an investor, would you do business with someone who delivered you a boring executive summary written in bad English containing grammar or spelling mistakes? That would naturally constitute a bad executive summary example.

Fortunately, there are innovative products on the market that will enable you to transform your executive summary into a rich and appealing document. These products analyze your executive summary by using sophisticated online grammar and spell-check dictionaries, to ensure that your content is free of grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors.

Moreover, these products provide an online thesaurus and professional vocabulary list that enable you to enrich your sentences and transform them into appealing and persuasive messages. Some of these products automatically proofread your business writing, and even provide effective templates that teach you how to write executive summaries and other business documents.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Joint Venture



Smart entrepreneurs and business owners know that Joint Ventures are the fastest and most effective way to radically increase sales and profits with virtually no money and no risk, as long as its done correctly.

The Advantages of Joint Ventures are speed, access, sharing of resources and the leveraging of underutilized resources, high profits, back end income, low or no risk opportunities and massive leverage.

The Disadvantages of Joint Ventures are the possibility of being ripped off or disappointed by unscrupulous and unprofessional JV partners, and hurting your reputation and/or customers and associates by associating with the wrong people, even unknowingly.

There is a way to locate and contact really solid JV partners, however. The DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum might be the solution for you. We carefully screen Members and the support and education provided are very effective. For more information on the advantages and disadvantages of joint venture read below.