Archive for April, 2011

Managers, Motivate!

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

This week we have two business books specifically aimed at managers. It’s said that the best companies are those with the best managers. The pressure put on managers to succeed is an unrelenting force making informative resources critical to progress. Former CEO and President of Verizon Wireless, Denny Strigl, and business coach, Brian Tracy, are two authors featured here that have compiled essential methods that promise to supercharge business performance in managers and their teams everywhere.

Managers, Can You Hear Me Now?: Hard-Hitting Lessons on How to Get Real Results by Denny Strigl and Frank Swiatek

For managers, behavior is the real key to achievement. In order to stop struggling and start delivering, you need to close the gap between what you know and what you do. That’s been Denny Strigl’s method, and now it can be yours, too.

Among the most prominent architects of the wireless communications industry, the former Verizon Wireless president and CEO has had one of the most remarkable careers in modern business. In Managers, Can You Hear Me Now?, Strigl shares all the skills and techniques he used to build Verizon into one of the greatest growth companies in any industry. You’ll learn how to:

  • Create a corporate culture where trust, respect, and integrity flourish — and employees and customers alike are appropriately served
  • “Eliminate the fluff,” get focused, and stop wasting time on things that don’t matter
  • Address issues proactively before they become problems — even employee performance issues
  • Get past your “blind spots,” reinforce priorities consistently, and communicate with clarity
  • Master the Four Fundamentals of Management: growing revenue, getting new customers, keeping the customers you already have, and eliminating costs

Managers, Can You Hear Me Now? includes additional suggestions for bringing the best of your energy and passion into your work, helpful anedcotes from Strigl’s career, simple self-assessment questions, and even a look at how your business day as a successful manager should play out.

Whether you’re the CEO of a large corporation or run your own small business, the lessons from Managers, Can You Hear Me Now? are sure to come through — loud and clear.

Managers, Can You Hear Me Now?: Hard-Hitting Lessons on How to Get Real Results from McGraw-Hill is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Full Engagement!: Inspire, Motivate, and Bring Out the Best in Your People by Brian Tracy

As a manager, it’s your role to achieve the highest possible return on the physical, emotional, and mental efforts your people put forth. It’s not a return on investment. . . it’s a return on energy. But how are you supposed to light a fire under each employee when studies find that most of them are working at only a fraction of their potential?

In this essential guide, Brian Tracy, the Master of Motivation, shows you how to unlock superstar performance from every single member of your work team. Based on decades of research and thousands of hours invested in maximizing personal and organizational performance, the hard and fast secrets of what you can do (and what you should stop doing) to inspire your employees to peak performance are now available. Packed with powerful, practical ideas and strategies, Full Engagement! shows you how to:

  • create a high-trust work environment
  • drive out the fears that hold people back
  • set clear goals and objectives
  • unlock the potential of each person
  • motivate and inspire employees to greater heights than they ever believed themselves capable of
  • trigger the “X Factor” that maximizes productivity
  • recognize, reward, and reinforce their efforts in a way that energizes each and every one of your people

Your ability to channel the human energies of your staff into higher levels of productivity and performance is the yardstick by which your ability as an executive will be measured.

The great news is that now you have everything you need right in your hands. In this eye-opening book, you’ll learn how to do and say the things that will make your people feel confident, happy, and motivated. . . and allow you to deliver consistently outstanding results for your company.

In these tough economic times, everyone is expected to produce more with less. The only way to succeed is to consistently inspire your people to perform at their absolute best. Full Engagement! provides you with the keys to unlocking not just the hidden drive and abilities that exist within every one of your people. . . but also your own.

Full Engagement!: Inspire, Motivate, and Bring Out the Best in Your People from AMACOM is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Twitter Tools for Tweeting

Monday, April 25th, 2011

by Ken Ishii

If you made the big step into the microblogging world of Twitter, then you deserve a good pat on the back.  News of Twitter’s utility as an information speedway during international crises and the platform’s ability to ignite publicity wildfire have made headlines worldwide.  It’s quite obvious that you’ve added an incredibly versatile and powerful instrument to your PR arsenal.

So your account is set. You uploaded your favorite profile picture, crafted a sharp bio, splashed your background with eye-catching graphics, added like-minded users to your following list, and even posted fully-loaded tweets complete with searchable hashtags, user handles, and shortened urls that link to your web site or blog. Well done.

By now you might have realized that Twitter, while fascinating, is a voracious time gobbler. Rummaging through streams of countless updates from your news stable and scrambling to respond to every retweet, reply, mention, greeting, and inquiry, you might notice the day pass before you even get to your direct message inbox. Add to this the chore of finding new people to add to your community and you’ll probably begin to wonder if your toe-dip into the social media pool hasn’t suddenly pulled you in above your head.

Fortunately for us, a bevy of tools has surfaced over the past couple of years to help cut down your maintenance time so you can get down to the business of perfecting that complex craft of writing catchy 140-character-confined copy.

Hootsuite

I’m putting our favorite one first. By far, if there’s one tool that will have the biggest impact on your social media productivity, control, and insight it would be an online brand management system. While there are a few on the market, we prefer Hootsuite because of its ease of use, features, and lack of software to install on your computer.

The free version of Hootsuite offers more than enough for most users out there. Hootsuite has an interface that puts you in full control of your account. The dashboard is made up of customizable columns that can display a variety of information streams such as your home feed, lists, trends, mentions, direct messages, retweets, schedules and more without having to change pages on the screen. There’s even an analytics tool to see how people are reacting to your tweets.

This tool is highly recommended. It has a slight learning curve, but there are instructional videos and official Hootsuite help topics to guide you.

Twitter Search

While Twitter and Hootsuite both have search boxes and allow for some basic filtering, you’ll need a tool like Twitter Search to add precision to your searches. Click on the advanced search button to start targeting your search with filtering options that include words, people, places, dates, sentiment, and more.

Twittonary

With only 140 characters to convey thoughts into meaningful tweets, you’ll find users exercising some creative messaging.  The use of established acronyms and abbreviations, as a result, could come off as cryptic to the uninitiated. Twitter glossaries and dictionaries make it easy to decipher codes you run into as well as help you apply Twitter speak to your own messages.

Twellow

Finding the right people among the millions of users is no easy task. Thankfully the online world works much like the physical one. If you were looking for a doctor, plumber, or caterer in the real world, asking around on the streets probably won’t get you very far. You might, instead, look to your local Yellow Pages. Twello works the same way but for Twitter. Find users by category, area, or name just like you would with a phone book.

TweetStats

TweetStats acts like your Twitter account’s personal assistant. This Twitter statistics application will feed you information about your Twitter activity without judgement. Just the facts on the frequency of your messages by time, day, month, and year. Tweetstats can also tell you what your popular keywords are and the amount of time you spend engaging with other users.

Klout

At some point you may be interested in knowing how effective you are on Twitter. While Hootsuite and Tweetstats metrics can help you gain insight into your Twitter activity, a service like Klout will give you a Twitter assessment that will help you decide whether your social networking approach is working or not. Using a proprietary scale, Klout will compute a score based on your activity and networking that you can brag to your friends about or work on to bring up to par. Other assessment services exist, but Klout, for now, is the most widely used.

Friend or Follow

There are many reasons why your followers/following lists are important. Mainly, your concerns should be that your networks can become indicators of who you are to potential new followers and that a Twitter restriction on the number of followers in your allowance may prevent you from adding new people to your network if you let spammers in. Friend Or Follow is a useful tool that allows you to see the relationships between you and those you follow and those that follow you so that you know precisely what kind of users make up your community.

A little poking around online will lead you to a wide variety of Twitter tools and services aimed at enriching your tweeting experience. Since new products are always being added to the marketplace, it’s a good idea to ask around before spending too much time on any one application.

Home Run Food Fun

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

We have three new books on our shelves that will set you on an exploration of your home kitchen like never before. Save time and money by investing more in family and friends with Teen Cuisine and DIY Cocktails, turning your home into a playground of unforgettable experiences. At the same time, discover a revolutionary doable diet that encourages healthy wholesome foods without the restriction of those sinfully delectable delights in Carrots ‘N’ Cake. Together, these books will help you celebrate food, family, friends, and yourself without having to call for the check.

Teen Cuisine by Matthew Locricchio

Whether you’re a first-time or seasoned chef, you can prepare and take pride in the more than 50 mouthwatering recipes in this book for all times of day.

Here are just a few examples:

  • Sunrise Muffins
  • Grits and Cheddar Cheese Souffle
  • Pizza from California, Chicago, and New York
  • 4th of July Shortcake

And there are so many more flavorful dishes!  All the recipes feature organic ingredients and foods that are available in supermarkets from coast to coast.  No recipe is too hard for the beginning cook.  Just follow the step-by-step directions and enjoy making your favorite dishes from scratch.

With stunning photography by award-winner James Peterson, this one-of-a-kinda book will provide a show-stopping culinary experience!

Teen Cuisine from Marshall Cavendish Corp is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

DIY Cocktails: A Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Signature Drinks by Marcia Simmons and Jonas Halpern

Black Rose, Blood Orange Tequila and Soda, Kentucky Apple Sour: the newest trend in cocktails is creating your own! Now, the editors of DrinkoftheWeek.com have concocted the only guide that teaches you to create your own infallible thirst-quenchers. Using a simple system of basic ratios, you will learn to:

  • Mix new flavor combinations for the perfect new blend using the Flavor Profile Chart as a guide
  • Master advanced mixology techniques from infusing liquors at home to creating custom-flavored syrups
  • Serve the perfect drink every time, whether it kicks off a rowdy party or winds down a romantic evening!

With only ten ratios to master, you’ll shake, stir, roll, and build literally thousands of unique and exceptional cocktails. All you need is a good thirst, an active imagination — and DIY Cocktails!

DIY Cocktails: A Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Signature Drinks from Adams Media is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Carrots ‘N’ Cake: Healthy Living One Carrot and Cupcake At A Time by Tina Haupert

Let them eat cake! From one of the most popular blogs on the internet comes an innovative, even fun way to diet. Carrots ‘N’ Cake is all about eating your carrots. . .and savoring your cupcake, too.

For some people, losing weight means restrictive dieting, obsessive calorie counting, and constant hunger. Not Tina Haupert! She learned that it didn’t have to be that way. Tina shows how to drop the pounds and keep them off by adopting eating habits that are healthy, balanced, and above all, livable. She serves up easy-to-follow fitness routines, food tips, and her most popular feature: cookie Friday.

TINA TELLS HOW TO:

  • Hang with your friends on a Friday night without packing on the alcohol pounds
  • Navigate buffet tables at parties
  • Handle the holidays painlessly.
  • And more!

Carrots ‘N’ Cake: Healthy Living One Carrot and Cupcake At A Time from Sterling is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.