FSB Associates Blog

Archive for March, 2011

Life Books For Finding Your..Self

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

So focused in our day to day work we often overlook the big picture that surrounds our lives. When it hits though, the realization of our existence conjures difficult questions. Who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing all of this for? This week we’re shining a light on four books that awaken sleeping souls to worlds both within and around the self in their own unique ways.

Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life by Abigail Brenner

Abigail Brenner, M.D., author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life, is a board certified psychiatrist currently in private practices as well as an ordained interfaith minister who helps people design, create, and perform personally meaningful rituals. She is also author of SHIFT: How to Deal When Life Changes, and the co-author of The Essential Guide To Baby’s First Year, to be released April 2011. Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life from CreateSpace is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry

From Brunonia Barry, the New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader, comes an emotionally compelling novel about finding your true place in the world.

A respected Boston psychotherapist, Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats. But the actions of a patient throw Zee into emotional chaos and take her back to places she thought she’d left behind.

The Map of True Places from HarperCollins is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Blessed: Living A Grateful Life by Ellen Michaud

Sometimes we just need to stop for a moment and absorb the quiet moments in the world around us–to take a deep breath and appreciate the things in life that make us thankful and bring us joy. Blessed: Living a Grateful Life is a call to do just that. In this heartfelt collection of her online columns from Diane, the flagship magazine of the Curves women’s fitness center organization, author Ellen Michaud reminds us of the everyday blessings that surround us, but we all tend to overlook.

Blessed: Living A Grateful Life from Reader’s Digest is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Into My Father’s Wake by Eric Best

From Eric Best, a solo sailing odyssey and journey of personal discovery in which the author, a former journalist and Wall street strategist, comes to terms with his dead father and learns the meaning of forgiveness.

Into My Father’s Wake from CreateSpace is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Tags: authors, blessed, books, branding, death, emotional, fsb associates, life, mental health, new release, psychiatrist, psychology, publicity, recovery, ritual, self, self help, spiritual
Posted in New Books | No Comments »

Developing Your Digital Marketing Blueprint

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

by Fauzia Burke

Here are seven steps to developing a digital marketing blueprint. Many people skip the first four, but these first few steps are the crucial difference between success and failure. I have also uploaded slide presentations to help you along.

Assess Your Situation – This first step is perhaps the most important. Before you can commit to doing more digital marketing, you need to know what’s working and what’s not. Take a snapshot of where you stand. Think of the following questions: how well is my website working for my goals? Do I have email addresses of my customers? How many fans or followers do I have on Facebook or Twitter?When you are assessing your website, look over the traffic numbers. How many people come to your site, which pages do they visit, how do they find you, and how long to they stay? These answers should give you an idea about the effectiveness of your site. If nobody is staying on your website for more than a few seconds, then something needs to be changed.Another element of assessing your situation requires an honest assessment of your resources. How much time, knowledge, technology or money do you have to devote to digital marketing? If you don’t have a lot of time you might need to hire somebody. If you don’t have a lot of money you might have to set aside some extra time to do this work on your on.
Know Your Customers – Understanding your target audience will help you devise the best digital marketing strategy for you. Digital marketing is customized and personalized so it is essential for you to know your customers so you can serve them best. Learn about their age group, their gender, their industries. It’s also important to know the tech savviness of your customers.
Designate a Storyteller – For any digital marketing strategy to be effective you need a designated storyteller, marketer, brand evangelist. If you skip this step, your digital marketing strategy will not be sustainable.
Set Goals and Timelines – Without setting realistic goals and timelines you will not know when you are achieving success and when you are missing the mark. Some realistic goals are: improve your website; build a mailing list; start a fan page on Facebook or get more fans on Facebook; start making videos and getting them distributed; start writing a blog, or syndicate your blog; look into twitter or grow your followers.
Implementing Digital Marketing – Once you’ve taken the first 4 steps you digital marketing strategy will become much more obvious to you. Then you can start implementation a plan. I find a lot of people jumping from new thing to new thing without really setting goals or having assessed their situations. In my opinion, the six essential elements of digital marketing are: website, enewsletter, blog, Facebook, video and Twitter. For more details on these elements you can read my blog on 6 Elements for Digital Marketing.
Monitor Your Progress – Although a lot has changed in marketing in the last few years, the most exciting change is the availability of free monitoring tools. You can set up email alerts for your name on either Google or Bing, and use Google Analytics for analyzing your website traffic. If you set up a fan page on Facebook, you can use Insights to gain valuable information. My favorite tool for monitoring Twitter is still TweetReach.
Be Flexible – Digital marketing is new to everybody and we’re all trying things out. It’s important that you just keep an open mind and experiment. Experiment with your time, and experiment with your money. If you succeed learn from it and try it again. If you fail, just smile. Take a deep breath, and try something else.

Digital marketing is a very innovative field right now and everybody is trying different things in different combinations. You just have to find the right combination for you and your customers.

Tags: analytics, authors, books, branding, facebook, fauzia burke, fsb associates, marketing, online, PR, publicity, publishing, seo, social media, twitter
Posted in Social Media Tips | No Comments »

Author Spotlight: Lewis Richmond

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

From the constant push and pull in our personal and work lives, it’s a disappointing fact that many people find well-being and happiness far from reach. Through Buddhism and Zen meditation, Lewis Richmond aims to educate people and encourage sufferers of daily life to discover what healthy awakenings await those who take bold steps and traverse new spiritual terrain.

Lewis Richmond is a Buddhist teacher, Aging and Elderhood author, and Blogger. Lewis leads a Zen meditation group, Vimala Sangha, and teaches at workshops and retreats throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. He has published three books, including the national bestseller Work as a Spiritual Practice. Lewis also leads a discussion on aging as a spiritual practice at Tricycle magazine’s online community site and is the author of the blog, Aging As A Spiritual Practice, where he regularly writes on topics such as aging, fear, beauty, spiritual practice, gratitude, and kinds of Buddhism to name a few.

Work as a Spiritual Practice by Lewis Richmond manages to complete the task of incorporating spiritual practice within the workplace. As a veteran corporate executive and former Zen Buddhist priest, Lewis is in an authoritative position to claim that not only is work and meditation a partnership made possible in the office, but through recognizing four characteristics of human thought and emotion, an opportunity for inner growth is completely within grasp. Work as a Spiritual Practice from Broadway is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and IndieBound.

“leaving the house without one or the other of Lewis’s practices in mind is like venturing into the wilderness without my boots.”

–Peter Coyote, movie actor and author of Sleeping Where I Fall

“This book on utilizing the workplace as a place for spiritual growth comes straight from the workshop of the heart”

–Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within

“An exquisite guide to finding happiness and health in one’s work.”

–NAPRA ReView

“an accessible, personal, witty, and poetic book that will be helpful, even transformative, for anyone who works for a living.”

–Sylvia Boorstein, author of It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

Read Lewis Richmond:

Everything is aging, all the time. We age from our first breath.

Lewis Richmond:

was the Executive Vice President of Smith & Hawken, Ltd.

the founder and owner of Forerunner Systems, Inc., the leading provider of inventory management software to the catalog industry.

is a musician and composer with a solo piano album, Lake of No Shore, released by Artifex Records.

is an ordained disciple of Buddhist master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

Connect with Lewis Richmond:

Tags: aging, authors, books, branding, Buddhism, Buddhist, fear, happiness, health, illness, lewis richmond, meditation, mind, shambhala sun, spiritual, stress, work, zen
Posted in New Books | No Comments »

Making It In America

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

What does it take to make it in America? There are so many business, economic, social, and cultural conditions to consider and arguments to be settled to know where to even begin. But the following books will get you on the path to understanding what makes this nation tick and who’s tugging at what ropes so that you can decide for yourself how you’re going to live within one of the most colorful nations in the world.

Divinity of Doubt: The God Question by Vincent Bugliosi

Vincent Bugliosi, whom many view as the nation’s foremost prosecutor, has successfully taken on, in court or on the pages of his books, the most notorious murderers of the last half century – Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Destined to be a classic, Bugliosi’s Divinity of Doubt sets a new course amid the explosion of bestselling books on atheism and theism – the middle path of agnosticism. In recognizing the limits of what we know, Bugliosi demonstrates that agnosticism is the most intelligent and responsible position to take the eternal question of God’s existence.

Divinity of Doubt from Vanguard Press is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Where Does the Money Go? Rev Ed: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson

Now revised and updated to include current predictions about the effects of the Great Recession and President Obama’s healthcare overhaul, this guide to deciphering the jargon of the country’s budget problem covers everything from the country’s $12 trillion and growing debt to the fact that, for 31 out of the last 35 years, the country has spent more on government programs and services than it has collected in taxes. It also explores why elected leaders on every side of the fence have so far failed to effectively address this issue and explains what you can do to protect YOUR future.

Where Does the Money Go? Revised Edition from Harper is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking In Your Organization by Daniel Forrester

There’s an intangible and invisible marketplace within our lives today where the products traded are four fold: attention, distraction, data and meaning. The stories and examples within Consider demonstrate that the best decisions, insights, ideas and outcomes result when we take sufficient time to think and reflect. Including interviews with leaders such as General David Petraeus, attorney Brooksley Born and global investor Kyle Bass, Daniel Forrester shows us that taking time and giving ourselves the mental space for reflection can mean the difference between total success and total failure.

Consider from Palgrave Macmillan is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst by Vikram Mansharamani

With the increased complexity and volatility surrounding financial bubbles, we need a more effective way to spot and understand these events. Based on his popular seminar at Yale University, Boombustology presents Vikram Mansharamani’s multi-lens framework for evaluating the extremely elaborate social phenomenon of financial market booms and busts.

The framework found within these pages offers a robust understanding of the dynamics that precede, fuel, and ultimately reverse financial market extremes. Regardless of your economic or financial background, Boombustology will put you in a better position to spot financial bubbles before they burst.

Boombustology from Wiley is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

What Could Happen If You Do Nothing? A Manager’s Handbook for Coaching Conversations by Jane Murphy

“What could happen if you do nothing?” offers managers clear, usable tools to enhance the way they listen and engage their people. Mini-dialogues, sample questions, listening tips, and suggestions use familiar situations to show how to transform business challenges into coaching opportunities. This is an essential resource for developing employees to their full potential and for fostering better working relationships for individuals, teams, and the business itself.

What Could Happen If You Do Nothing? from Giraffe Business Publishing is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Tags: america, atheism, authors, books, business, communication, culture, economy, federal budget, finance, god, law, management, marketing, publicity, publishing, recession, religion, strategy, theism, think
Posted in New Books | No Comments »

Social Networking Importance

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

By Fauzia Burke

We recently posted a Twitter basics blog post that covered the fundamental parts of tweeting that many beginners find confusing. Well, the response has been quite positive and a few of our clients have expressed an interest in knowing whether or not social networking was really worth the extra effort for authors. The overall answer is yes. We’re getting to a point today where authors are thought to be behind the curve if social media tools are not being equipped. Does that mean it’s too late for those who haven’t taken their campaigns online? To that we say no. And to help those who have not adopted social media skills yet, we have decided to share why an online outreach is so important.

The Importance of Social Networking

Social media has given us great ways to protect and build our digital reputations. Today we have the ease of searching conversations, the ability to set alerts to help us monitor our names, the constant availability of learning opportunities and more ways to communicate and interact with others. All of these tools, which were not available just a few years ago, now make it possible for us to be proactive in maintaining, building and protecting your personal brand and help spread word-of-mouth about our books.

Here is also an inspiring video about the importance of social networking.

Developing a personal brand takes time, but the good news is that the tools are free and you already have the expertise in your field. Social media now allows you to share your knowledge and build a following. Once you “know” your readers you’ll have a lot more control over your career and will be able to promote not just your books but also your apps, conferences, videos, webinars, websites and more. Your personal brand will make you more valuable to your publisher and agent as well.

Some Resources

How to Create Your Social Media Presence
How To Make Your Personal Brand Visible With Social Media
5 Easy Ways to Build Your Digital Reputation
10 Golden Rules of Social Media

FSB also provides clients with regular updates on social media. We recommend that you sign up for our newsletter, visit our blog and follow the tweets on two handles that provide resources and tips for digital marketing.

Newsletter: http://www.fsbassociates.com/company_newsletters.php

Blog: http://www.fsbassociates.com/blog/
HuffPo Blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fauzia-burke

Twitter: http://twitter.com/FSBAssociates / http://twitter.com/websnapshot

Facebook

Do I need to be on Facebook? Quick answer is yes. Facebook has 500 million users worldwide. Together they are creating a community of savvy consumers, connecting with friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances to share advice, information and yes, recommendations. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month.

People on Facebook read books and tell their friends and colleagues about books. Engaging on Facebook also allows you to be closer to your fans and prospective readers.

Instructions are provided at the end of this post.

You may want to start by watching this video on Howcast to get oriented and get step-by-step instructions.

An excellent place to start is the Mashable Facebook Guide.

For general questions and step-by-step instruction, please visit Facebook’s help center.

Some Resources

5 Things That Don’t Work on Facebook Pages (and 5 That Do) by Aliza Sherman
Facebook 101 Business Guide on Social Media Examiner by Mari Smith

Everyone on the FSB staff is available on Facebook and you can find us all there. You can also “like” the FSB Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/FSBAssociates

Twitter

If you are hesitant to join Twitter, you are not alone. However, we want to encourage you to give it a shot. Set up an account, follow some people and learn some things. People on Twitter are very generous with their time and knowledge. Yes, you will spend time on Twitter that you already don’t have, but you will also learn things that will make you more valuable, smarter and “in the know.”

Even if you don’t plan to be very active, it is important to get a handle and follow others. It is also a good way for your publisher and friends to discuss your book by referencing you. You can use Twitter to provide links to your blog posts, media events and reviews. However, no one enjoys a 24/7 advertisement. A good rule of thumb is to have a 4 to 1 ratio for self promotion. One self-promotional tweet to 4 that will help others or engaging in the community through reply or retweet.

The best advice is to spend time just observing and seeing what others are doing before posting much yourself. There are people you already follow (favorite authors, must-read columnists, magazines, newspapers, influential friends) and now you can follow them on Twitter.

Some Resources

Best first step is to watch this video for starting with Twitter