An intriguing glimpse into how to thrive among Instagram Goliaths.
A bodybuilder and personal trainer who leveraged Instagram for promotion and profit shares tips and tricks on using the tool in this debut how-to guide.
A “nobody without any startup money at all,” Titan now has “one of the most active and real personal fitness accounts on IG [Instagram], with thousands of comments on many of my posts.” A key word for Titan is “real,” with the author spending the early part of this primer decrying the practice, deployed by many users, including celebrities, of buying quantities of “fake” followers via “click farms,” an industry that he admits he used to make his living in. Instead, he recommends achieving real growth and engagement with target audiences by building an Instagram presence and pages “organically.” His suggestions include crafting clear, keyword-rich copy for your page; following other real Instagram pages that are aligned to your audience objectives to gain authentic return followers (a common Instagram courtesy); practicing “purposeful posting,” including creating content that will generate comments and repostings (funny videos, a hashtag to clue you in to what’s trending at the moment, etc.); and bartering as well as buying strategic “shoutouts” for your endeavor that others will execute on their pages. Titan notes that his approach has generated growth and revenue for his business, with “approximately 40 to 50 people inquiring about my coaching and diet plans for each shoutout. The shout paid for itself bringing me new clients.” Titan, who now also offers consulting services, provides readers a fascinating and actually quite inspiring peek into how even a “nobody” can make a splash—and of course, most important, earn some money—by keeping it real in the high-profile world of Instagram. His jabs at celebrities regarding their purchases of fake popularity are both entertaining and enlightening, and his suggested tactics provide genuine help on how to compete and pop out amid such inflated yet powerful hype. A key drawback of this narrative remains its length (only 42 pages), and Titan would do well to expand on his tips in a more fully fleshed-out book.
An intriguing glimpse into how to thrive among Instagram Goliaths.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 42
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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