Internet Marketing Tips from Denise Wakeman

Social Marketing Books: Which Ones are Must-Reads?

Today I was checking out a book about YouTube (YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts) recommended by Chris Brogan. As usual when I hit the Amazon site, one thing lead to another and I was following all kinds of paths to more books on social marketing. Which got me thinking.

There are SO MANY books on social marketing. How do you know which are the best...which are worth the investment..which ones are really must-reads and will provide the best,usable information for you to build your business?

Here's a sampling of what I found on Amazon and kept getting "recommended" to me:

• Facebook Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Plug Your Business with Web 2.0
• MySpace Marketing
• YouTube for Business
• Twitter Revolution (I own this - highly recommended!)
• World Wide Rave (I was lucky enough to get a review copy from David Meerman Scott; in my opinion anything DSM writes is worth your time to read and study)
• Tribes (I own this too; anything by Seth Godin is worth reading IMHO)

This is a tiny, tiny list of what I saw available on Amazon. I'd love to know from you which social marketing books you've found to be useful-absolutely-must-read books.

Please share your faves in the comments and let me know why you think your recommended book is worth the investment of time and money. I'd like to know what books I need to add to my library and study. Thanks! 

Manage Email with Gmail Task Lists

A couple of days ago, via Twitter, I learned that Gmail had introduced a new featured called Tasks.

Essentially this is a task list that floats at the bottom of your screen and is integrated with Gmail.  I use Gmail exclusively for my email management and love the filtering, labels, themes, and other features.

Loving to experiment, I immediately enabled Tasks. Click on Settings (at the top right of your Gmail home page) and then click on Labs. Select "Enable" then scroll down and save your changes.  You can have the list visible or minimize it.

What's cool is that you can add an email to your Task list. I don't know about you, but most of my action items are generated by email! You can also add non-email related action items.

If you enable Keyboard shortcuts (under Settings), then all you have to do is hit Shift T to quickly add an email to your task list. Sweet!

I'm also using the Task list to quickly add ideas for blog posts. I think of stuff to write about all day long but if I don't write my ideas down, they're gone. Now I have a running list of ideas. Whether they get written and posted is another story...

If you use Gmail, I highly recommend checking out Tasks and then let me know what you think.

Personal Leadership in Uncertain Times

So many people seem to be feeling anxiety about the current economic situation in the U.S. and around the world. So how do you move out of anxiety into confidence and a place of success despite what's going on around you? 

You've got to take the bull by the horns and be proactive about your business and life vs. reacting to all the doom and gloom around you. Personally, I choose not to participate in the so-called "economic crisis" and business has never been better. You can do this too.

A formula for breaking through your limits...by choice?

If you're attracted by the idea of going beyond your comfort zone at will, then you owe it to yourself to check out Dr. Larina Kase's new book, The Confident Leader: How the Most Successful People Go from Effective to Exceptional.

She combines cutting-edge research with on-the-ground results to give you a groundbreaking, step-by-step formula for consistently rising above your fears and anxieties...and achieving more than you think is possible. To learn more and get access to a world-class telesummit on confident leadership, click here.

This is the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom. I'm a big fan of Larina Kase and her work around leadership. She's put together an amazing group of world-class speakers to address how you can be a leader in your own life. And it's all free when you purchase her new book for only $12.89.

Some of my favorite leaders are speaking at Larina Kase's telesummit:

Joe Vitale
Dan Pink
Joe Nunziata
David Meerman Scott
Dr. Kevin Hogan

I personally cannot think of a better return on a $12.89 investment.

Membership Site Development - One Two Punch

Membership sites are all the rage and there's good reason. If you operate a web-based business...if you're a service professional...if you have expertise you want to deliver...then what's the most cost effective way to reach and transform the most people?

From the points of view of delivering content and income generation, a membership program is one of the best education systems around.  We've been operating Blogging & Beyond for nearly two years.  It's not optimized as well as it could be and will be going through a radical change soon.

Not long ago an amazing training site was launched call Teaching Sells. It's an awesome collection of content - video, screencasts, audio, transcripts, discussion forum - that walks you through the set up, launch and marketing of a membership program. As Brian Clark, founder of the program say, "Teaching Sells."

I've studied a lot of the material in Teaching Sells and it is impeccable. It is details, step by step content. It is thorough and new content and modules are frequently added.

My stumbling block to implementing their strategies was the actual site --

Business Book Reviews on BizBook Nuggets

Recently, Patsi has resurrected her blog, BizBook Nuggets. This is the space where she is posting reviews of the many, many books she reads and reviews for colleagues and clients.

We also get contacted at least once a week to participate in Amazon book launch campaigns. Our policy now for these campaigns is that if the book is relevant to our audience, we will post a review on BizBook Nuggets, but we will not send a notice out to our list.  We need to protect our list and use it to keep our audience informed about our own programs, news and products.

List burnout is a real problem and with the number of requests we get, we've had to change our policy to "just say no". It's usually no reflection on the quality or relevance of the product or book.  Just got to draw the line somewhere.

We always want to support our colleagues in any way we can so our compromise is posting on BizBook Nuggets.  What does that mean for you? If you want to know about the latest and greatest books being published, all you have to do is subscribe to BizBook Nuggets blog and you'll get a notice when we have a new review.  They don't happen too frequently so you won't be bombarded with updates.

If you are getting requests to participate in Amazon book launches, what's your policy for accepting?  How do you say "no"? And, what are your current thoughts about the effectiveness of these campaigns?