When you read Twitter Power’s follow figures in screen shots used they look to be late 2008. By using them you can see how massively the followers have grown for the people Joel quotes.

However, I digress…

The book is subtitled “How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet At A Time.” It’s an ambitious plan, however I think that Joel has pulled it off.

Twitter Power Makes It Seem Easy

The book doesn’t rely on all the new tools that arrive, become fashionable then sink without trace. Instead in concentrates on the fundamental “how-tos” to successfully incorporate Twitter into your social media strategy and provides step by step instructions in its use, and notes how to avoid abuse.

It goes into the details you need to succeed in Twitter.for example Joel gives you ways of creating your own Twitter background – a key part of getting followed.

7 Killer Strategies For More Followers

Joel gives 7 ways of getting people to follow you. Although as Joel points out building a list of followers doesn’t happen overnight no matter what you do!

The easiest one to implement immediately is to add your Twitter name to your signature.

7 Tweet Types For Everyone To Use

Twitter Power breaks down the Tweets that Joel suggests you use into

1. Classic “this is what I’m doing” Tweets
2. Opinion Tweets
3. Mission Accomplished Tweets
4. Entertainment Tweets
5. Question Tweets
6. Picture Tweets
7. Tweet Sequences

Stuffed With Useful Powerful Content

The whole of Twitter Power is very useful for advanced Tweeters and new Tweeters alike. Joel shows how to use Twitter for customer support, to build your brand to find experts, how to track Tweets, using Twitter auto responders and much, much more that has the marketer in me salivating!

Crucially Joel also gives a highly experienced legal eagle a chapter to explain the niceties and dangers to be aware of when using Twitter. Look out for assumed contracts is all I’ll say on that subject!

In addition Joel has his business partner Ken Burge write a chapter on how you can extend Twitter to make it even more useful for your business and gives URLs to code you can use too.

One thing is very clear. That is that Twitter can help you get your message out in a way that doesn’t intrude in the same way that mass advertising does.

In conclusion if you’ve any thoughts of getting into Twitter for your business you must buy Twitter Power. In fact click here and get it now, remember whilst you’re thinking others are taking action!

The stats basically reveal the sentence complexity of each book. So Steven did a little more research and discovered that every writer has their own style or complexity finger print.

And guess what, this is something Jay Abraham has been saying for decades: short easily understood words and sentences are best.

In fact even before Jay Abraham.

The great World War II British Prime Minister Winston Churchill  put it best when he said, “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”

Scott Fox has written a useful book for the Internet marketing newbie. If you know about the Internet, affiliates, pay per click, search engine optimisation and email newsletters you’re more advanced and would be served better reading Dave Taylor’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Growing Your Business with Google

There is a lot of material both on and off-line in Internet Riches for the aspiring
Internet marketer. Having said that Fox’s book is designed to help you learn what many have spent months,even years discovering from the Internet, ebooks and “normal” books.

Internet Riches splits easily into 6 parts:

1. The Unlimited Opportunity of The Internet
2. Developing Your Own e-Business Model
3. Building Your Internet Millionaire e-Business
4. Internet Marketing Secrets For Your e-Business
5. Legal Issues and Admin
6. Graduation – Starting Your Own Dream Business

At the beginning of the book Fox explains the currently almost unlimited potential of the Internet and he introduces three types of Internet-created millionaires:

1. The Efficiency Millionaire
2. The Product Millionaire
3. The Niche Millionaire

Usefully he gives examples of each type so they can be looked up on the Internet.

Efficiency millionaires are those that have made life easier for lots of people. Think of Yahoo and Google, eBay, Amazon & YouTube.

The Product millionaire provides cheaper products, or greater ranges of products and is able to simply dominate the market for their products. Think of Amazon again and Walmart.com

Finally the Niche millionaire is one that sells to a tightly defined niche. Think of weddingfavors.com or bathboats.com

Dotted strategically throughout the book are little “bits” called Internet Millionaire secrets where Fox explains an example in more detail, or gives an aside or explains how to achieve something on the Internet.

The book continues through the next 4 parts explaining in quite a bit of helpful detail how to create and set-up your own internet business.

This is started with the identification of the best business model specifically for you using the ICICLE method. It leads into buying a domain name and web host service and continues into building a web site with shopping carts.

Fox explains about eBay, giving some of its pluses and minuses. A plus is you get sell cheaply. A minus your brand is swallowed up by the eBay selling machine.

He explains about using Craigslist to find people to do research ,or almost anything else for you.

Arriving at part 4 of the book Fox explains about the importance of search engine optimisation and how email newsletters are vital to your selling efforts.

He explains how pay per click advertising works and also how you can use this with affiliate marketing.
One part of Fox’s book that will appeal to newbies are his appendices. They include some service providers on the internet, how to research on the Internet and also a great glossary of terms.

The other star attraction of the book is that Fox uses a web site to keep the content up to date.

The book does give the grounding for newbies to begin to use the Internet to make money. Will it truly provide them with Internet riches? If they just rely on this book the answer is a simple no.

However, if they use the book as intended it can act as starting blocks in the Internet Millionaire marathon to get you going on raising cash the Internet way.

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The authors David Minter and Michael Reid have over 25 years
working in the innovation arena, particularly Blockbuster Video.
Dole and Einstein Bagles and run their own innovation company.

Their book is an easy one to read and explains in detail about
how companies can innovate to order.

The only slight irritation I found was they sometimes repeated
what they’d already said in a previous chapter. Get over that and
you’ll find some true gold in this book.

“Lightning in a Bottle” demolishes the central plank of belief
that so many companies have in any or all of:

• Focus groups
• Brainstorming
• Ivory tower R&D or Gee Whiz
• Rip Off
• Incoming

The Failures Of Focus Groups

They explain why focus groups return the wrong results or results
you want them to return. Unless you’re lucky putting out a new
product based on the focus groups feedback is destined to fail.

Badly Let Down By Brainstorming

Brainstorming is given short shrift too as it is compared to
giving a group of scientists in different disciplines random
unlabeled chemicals and instruments and asking them to come up
with lots and lots of compounds. Rhetorically they ask, “Does
this sound like a way to cure polio or develop the next
breakthrough in interstellar space exploration?”

Gee Whiz, Incoming and Rip Off are similarly examined and found
wanting.

Maybe you think Quantative Research and Market Segmentation are
important? Minter and Reid suggest that whilst these are good
tools they’re inevitably used wrongly for innovation.

10 Points Why New Ideas Fail

To help you understand why new ideas fail they list and consider
10 points that are not usually addressed during the idea creation
approach.

They give excellent examples of why businessmen like Ted Turner
and Rupert Murdoch are creative geniuses who innovated and kept
true to the vision they believed in but nobody else did.

The 7 Step Idea Engineering Method

So having effectively demolished the “normal approach” to
generating new products or services the book puts forward the
authors own 7 Step Idea Engineering approach.

I should probably declare that this book fits right in with my
own thoughts on focus groups and the way innovation is usually
handled. And the interesting thing about it is the examples they
give and the logical way they construct a better way to innovate.

Believe me by the end of this book I was hooked. And the most
interesting thing I found from their book was that rather than
focus groups they use one on one interviews to seek feedback.

I’d not realised before but it suddenly hit me. I’d started to
use one on one interviews to create new processes and systems in
companies because I found that group dynamics meant a process
would be skewed according to the most vocal in the group.

If you’re in market research or you’re a business owner you need
to read, understand and use Idea Engineering because Minter and
Reid have produced a short easily read book that has the potential to change your whole world, for the better.

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As Wheeler says ” the underlying philosophy of this book: that single sentences can be so constructed as to make a majority of people buy.”

When you read it you can certainly see exactly what he means. He goes from selling any and all of:

• vacuum cleaners
• clothe pegs
• restaurant desserts
• Getting a job
• Oil

You’ll have to forgive me as it’s difficult to be even handed about this when Wheeler has written such a practical, useful and profit inducing book for almost any business owner.

This book along with those by Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy and others really set the approach to marketing and sales.

The reason? As Wheeler says human psychology never changes.

Remember the phrase “Sell the sizzle not the steak?” that comes from the title of Wheelers first chapter – “Don’t Sell The Steak – Sell the Sizzle!”

This is the first of 5 Wheelerpoints. Each one building on the first to produce near unstoppable sales approaches.

The other 5 Wheelerpoints are

1. Don’t Sell the Steak – Sell the Sizzle!
2. “Don’t Write – Telegraph.”
3. “Say It with Flowers.”
4. Don’t Ask If – Ask Which?
5. Watch Your Bark!

Wheeler also notes a number of modern phrases that have completely outlived their usefulness in selling situations. Do you think everyone knows them? Given the sales people who ring me I suspect not…

And as he says the “Tested Sentences That Sell” are not canned sales pitches. They’re planned and are made up of several components that work together to get the sale.

This book is written with the businessperson in mind. It helps you construct “Tested Sentences That Sell” by giving you lots of worked examples.

This is a book that repays getting and reading and re-reading.

I did find things I already knew in the book but they were more than compensated by the useful things I discovered, such as “say it with flowers”. I also found the reasons why certain things work and why others just completely fail miserably now. Using the principles clearly laid out you could confidently construct your own “Tested Sentences That Sell” and start converting more prospects. Although it’s an old book you can still buy it now at Tested Sentences That Sell.

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Would you be happy getting a gift that people on Amazon had said the following about?

• “After reading this, you really believe you can do it!” (Tony Gough)
• “Truly Inspirational – You will not want to put it down!” (Craig Parks)
• “Brilliant, Fantastic, Unbelivable and a great read!” (A. Moss)
  

I’ll tell you which business book they’re talking about in a moment.

Remember your average business person is busy almost the entire rest of the year and probably don’t have much time to spare.

At Christmas they usually have the luxury of being able to sit down with a good book. But…

That book had better be worth their while. This one is.

Obviously I recommend a number of books through my “Recommended” button at the bottom of each post. This is now my first and top recommendation.

The one book that I think every person in business must read, and profit from, is Duncan Bannatyne’s autobiography called “Anyone Can Do It: The Autobiography“.

I’ve enjoyed seeing and speaking to Duncan at a couple of seminars I attended in London and he had plenty of commonsense things to say.

And as they say commonsense is really not that common, so it was very refreshing.

“Anyone Can Do It: The Autobiography” explains how Duncan Bannatyne went from 30 year old drifter without a penny to his name living in a council house to a multi-millionaire. During that explanation Duncan throws light on business and how to look at it with the right attitude.

You can click on my “Recommendations” button or you can click on the book title here: “Anyone Can Do It: The Autobiography” to check out the reviews and a little more about the book. Then I urge you to buy it, you’ll be very pleased you did.

Enjoy!

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Dave Taylor’s book The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Growing Your Business with Google has a very clever title.

If you checked the searches made for the keyword “Google” on the 2nd October 2006 you’d have found 17,651,063 searches. That compares to 4,503,871 for the keyword “Yahoo”.

As Dave Taylor says in this book it’s all about visibility on the web. As he points out “companies with high visibility invariably are more successful…”.

Using Google as a keyword in his book title makes him several times more visible on searches compared to people searching with Yahoo as a keyword.

Dave doesn’t assume a level of knowledge with his book and starts every reader off with the basics. Firstly he challenges the reader to check their current Internet strategy.

Then he moves on to offer the reasons why you shouldn’t be trying to get more and more traffic. Instead you should be aiming to get more and more customers.

He points out there are some businesses that, contrary to popular thought, are just not cut out for the Internet.

Throughout this thoughtful book Dave encourages you to take action and even has a section called “The Least You Need to Know” where he highlights the key messages and actions you need to take from a chapter.

True to his word Dave talks about all the different aspects of Google, including Google Labs, Froogle and Blogger.

Helpfully he explains exactly how to conduct a useful basic search for something using Google. Then he goes into the slightly more complex multiple term searching and the notation you can use for quite specific searches.

And of course these approaches work equally as well with other search engines.

Part way through the book he asks “What’s Your Core Business”. A question that has stopped many an entrepreneur in their tracks. He then helps you understand that an Internet business, or a business that is online and offline require the same approach. That is asking who your customers are and the need to focus on core values, knowing your competitors and setting measurable goals.

Afterwards he dives into ways of getting good content for your web site, checking your competitors web sites, how to use Google Alerts and using forums, blogs and bulletin boards to educate yourself on your own business and your competitors.

The book advises on ways of building a better, more visible site by explaining the key elements of a web site, using the Internet to “stretch” your marketing dollars and discussing a few of the secrets of the online masters.

He also explains the “dark side” of the search engine optimisation methods or the “black hat” techniques that would get you banned from Google if they were discovered. And some high profile names were discovered and banned for using these techniques.

And of course he explains about how to advertise your wares with Google Adwords and how to make money from other companies adverts using Google Adsense.

Overall this is a well-written book that provides enough information for business newbies to get started on the right track. It also helps those people who have a web site but are currently leaving money on the table because they’re not as visible as they should be.

Internet marketing aces will know most of what Dave describes but they too would benefit from reading it because you can bet that just like me they’ll still learn a thing or two.

If you enjoyed “Rich Dad, Poor Dad“ or The Millionaire Maker you should check out Felix Dennis’s “How To Get Rich”.

The author certainly knows what he’s talking about. Read the almost universal 5 star reviews on Amazon and check out an extract The Times serialised with the provocative title “If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened“.

There are no end of books on “how to become a millionaire” but if you look at Felix Dennis’s definition of The Wealthy you can see that few can actually talk from experience:

This list shows the total assets for each category of person:

• The comfortable poor – £1m-£2m
• The comfortably off – £2m-£5m
• The comfortably wealthy -£5m-£15m
• The lesser rich – £15m-£40m
• The comfortably rich – £40m-£75m
• The rich – £75m-£100m
• The seriously rich – £100m-£200m
• The truly rich – £200m-£400m
• The filthy rich – £400m-£999m
• The super rich – More than £999m

From the list it’s clear that the only people who should write “how to” books on becoming millionaires are the “truly rich” because, of course they’re truly rich.

PS Yesterday I posted about Chris Cardell’s Webinar and said that he’d made an apology.

What he also did was say that when he re-does the webinar he’s providing a Freephone number for us all.

Hurrah!

Table of contents for Olgivly Predictions 1

1. Ogilvy’s Predicted Advertising Changes
2. Ogilvy’s Advertising Crystal Ball – Part II
3. Ogilvy’s Advertising Crystal Ball – Part III

Having read David Ogilvy’s book “Ogilvy on Advertising” again I thought it would be useful to review his predictions on the future of advertising.

As he says “I’ve never been a futurist” and his publisher insisted that he have a go at predicting change. I’ve used his original bullet points (shortened) as the headings.

As he had a number of points to make I’ll split this over 3 or 4 posts so that neither of us gets fed up.

So here we go…

Quality of Research Will Improve

I think that there is no doubt that with the Internet the amount of research that can be done has increased exponentially. That means that data can be cross-checked which in itself improves data quality.

I’ve posted before on focus groups and my opinion is that they don’t really help with discovering whether your market is buying what you sell.

So that quality (i.e. reliability of the data) is suspect.

There Will Be A Renaissance in Print Advertising

The Internet has encouraged people to advertise more online. In fact print, TV and radio adverts have been diverted onto the Internet.

With good reason…

The Internet now allows us to do micro advertising where we can target very, very small sub-markets of a major market, such as insurance buyers.

That means the cost of advertising to sales drops significantly.

Advertising Will Contain More
Information And Less Hot Air

I’d like to believe that is the case but if you look at advertising today there is a lot of “brand awareness” hot air that doesn’t sell products.

Ogilvy himself said, “”Research has demonstrated that a shocking percentage of viewers remember your commercial, but forget the name of your product”.

And worse than than that he says, “All too often they attribute
your commercial to a competing brand.”

Human nature doesn’t change so what’s the chance of that view changing now?

Zero to nil I suspect.

So much for advertising for branding purposes!

Billboards Will Be Abolished

No, and thrice times no!

In fact billboards have become ever more inventive. Now you find several different variants, including:

• Ones that rotate through a series of adverts
• Ones that use LCD screens as part of the billboard
• Ones that temporarily cover complete sides of buildings

Sport stadium billboards are big business, particularly with a country’s most popular sport. In the UK that’s football, rugby and cricket.

And given the vast number of anglers I wouldn’t be surprised to see hoardings along famous fishing rivers.

In the next post I’ll talk about TV, Radio and government advertising.