A straightforward guide to building and keeping an audience through authenticity, perseverance, and generosity.

REACH

CREATE THE BIGGEST POSSIBLE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MESSAGE, BOOK, OR CAUSE

A debut guide that offers tips and tricks for expanding the reach of one’s brand.

In an age of ever increasing connectivity, getting one’s message to your target audience can be a big challenge. As the founder and CEO of digital marketing agency Weaving Influence, Robinson wants to help everyone with a book, message, cause, or another endeavor expand and strengthen their audience. She defines reachas “expanding your audience plus having a lasting impact” and promotes the “commitments” that one needs to gain a larger audience. In a nutshell: Expanding one’s reach, she says, depends on regularly delivering valuable content over an extended period of time and in a manner that focuses on others’ needs instead of one’s own. The body of the book offers detailed suggestions and provides answers to issues commonly faced by those wanting to build, expand, or hold onto online readership. Robinson discusses options for content creation and addresses questions about when, why, and how to write a book. There’s also advice about how to manage a permission-based email list. She aims to help people find clarity about their goals in order to improve their messaging, which should reflect one’s “authentic self.” The tone of this book is highly encouraging and advises readers not to give up “because creating reach may take a long time.” Robinson effectively offers case studies to support her suggestions and also draws on her own personal experiences. The book’s structure is consistently clear and enables readers to consider the author’s strategies in a logical manner. For those looking for an explicit how-to manual for building an online presence, this is a good beginning; however, some readers may have to look elsewhere for more specifics. In essence, this is more of a why-to manual on the need for strong marketing and valuable content.

A straightforward guide to building and keeping an audience through authenticity, perseverance, and generosity.

Pub Date: April 19, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-5230-0087-6

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Review Posted Online: April 27, 2022

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Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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Even if they're pie-in-the-sky exercises, Sanders’ pitched arguments bear consideration by nonbillionaires.

IT'S OK TO BE ANGRY ABOUT CAPITALISM

Everyone’s favorite avuncular socialist sends up a rousing call to remake the American way of doing business.

“In the twenty-first century we can end the vicious dog-eat-dog economy in which the vast majority struggle to survive,” writes Sanders, “while a handful of billionaires have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.” With that statement, the author updates an argument as old as Marx and Proudhon. In a nice play on words, he condemns “the uber-capitalist system under which we live,” showing how it benefits only the slimmest slice of the few while imposing undue burdens on everyone else. Along the way, Sanders notes that resentment over this inequality was powerful fuel for the disastrous Trump administration, since the Democratic Party thoughtlessly largely abandoned underprivileged voters in favor of “wealthy campaign contributors and the ‘beautiful people.’ ” The author looks squarely at Jeff Bezos, whose company “paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.” Indeed, writes Sanders, “Bezos is the embodiment of the extreme corporate greed that shapes our times.” Aside from a few passages putting a face to avarice, Sanders lays forth a well-reasoned platform of programs to retool the American economy for greater equity, including investment in education and taking seriously a progressive (in all senses) corporate and personal taxation system to make the rich pay their fair share. In the end, he urges, “We must stop being afraid to call out capitalism and demand fundamental change to a corrupt and rigged system.” One wonders if this firebrand of a manifesto is the opening gambit in still another Sanders run for the presidency. If it is, well, the plutocrats might want to take cover for the duration.

Even if they're pie-in-the-sky exercises, Sanders’ pitched arguments bear consideration by nonbillionaires.

Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023

ISBN: 9780593238714

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023

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