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
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“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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