Blogging as a business strategy

Start your own
blogging business

Start your own blogging business is filled with helpful information. For entrepreneurs looking to profit from a blog or those looking to find a more engaging way to reach an audience and or customers this book will guide you step by step. You will learn the key ways in which to draw an audience to your blog and generate engagement. In the book are interviews with successful blog owners and tips on how they did it.
Strategies to be successful include:

1. What to put in your business blogging plan
2. What should be in your media kit
3. Successful marketing and advertising ideas

Finally, “The #1 goal is to build and maintain a growing audience/following which is the requirement for generating revenue.”

The startup series of books are great guides for entrepreneurs looking for information just starting out. You don’t necessarily have to buy the book(s) because many of them are available at your local library. I didn’t borrow my copy because I wanted my own to mark up and write notes in the pages!
I highly recommend this book for its high level of resource material inside.

The Robots of Christmas Past, Present and Future

Rise of the Robots: Technology
and the threat of a jobless future

We have all seen the self checkout lines at the big retailers growing in number every year and the number of cashiers shrinking in number too.  

 Question:  What happens when there are no more cashiers and only self checkout?  Will there be lower prices?  Will cashiers still work for the company or will they be out of a job?

This book is an eye opener! It raises the questions and forces us to think about the relentless march of technology from Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology to Nanotechnology and Environmental Tech.   

The social impact of technology is already being felt in many ways and "Rise of the robots" explores these impacts into the future.  It is very well worth the time and I highly recommend reading it.   

Does anybody know what time it is?...

First things first by Steven Covey

This is an old book but a timeless classic.  Based on principles that remain true today as they did when covey wrote it back in 1994.
  
Covey’s book changed the way we looked at time management.  He made a comparison between a clock and a compass.

Traditional time management was similar to a clock.  Write a list, check things off when done and that is it.  Success!  The faster you check things off the better because the clock is ticking.  But a clock tells time and that’s all it does.

Covey says, instead, time management is more like a compass.  A compass tells the direction.  In the book he talks more about the importance of direction versus time.

This book is more than highly recommended.

 

Working Hard or Working Smart?

Work Smarts by Betty Liu

Betty Liu's book covers a lot of ground.  We go from thinking about the company of one to being likable, networking, asking for a raise, negotiating, fear and finances.

The best thing about it though is the advise is coming from people who have been there and done that.  She talks with the CEO's from around the country about the questions we all have about work and life.

If you ever wanted to be CEO, Betty also writes about that too. 

I really enjoyed the introduction to this book.  Often times it is the first thing we skip. Don’t.  

I learned many things in this book, company of one, simplicity, hard work, focus, and optimism form some of the basics in working smart!  I highly recommend this book.

To Focus or not to focus that is the question...

FOCUS by Daniel Goleman

When we think of focus we tend to think of only one thing. Success then is defined as narrowly thinking about a single action, plan, or person, with intense focus.   

In the book Goleman tells us that at times it is better not to focus at all! Drifting minds are creative minds because the mind is allowed to flow in any direction it chooses.

Why is any of this important?  The better we are at focusing the better our chances are at improving our life. 

The examples in this book are crystal clear.  I really enjoyed reading this book. I highly recommend it.  The only difficulty I found was sometimes in presenting the advances in brain research it became at times technical.

Here are a few examples:

Self-Awareness Focus

Empathy Focus

Big Thinking Focus

Organizing Complex Systems Focus

Long Term Focus or Future Focus

Practice Focus