No Bullshit Social Media

The In-Your-Face, Results-Focused, No-“Kumbaya” Guide to Social Media for Business! Detailed techniques for increasing sales, profits, market share, and efficiency Specific solutions for brand-building, customer service, R&D, and reputation management Facts, statistics, real-world case studies, and rock-solid metrics Stop hiding from social media--or treating it as if it’s a playground. Start using it strategically. Identify specific, actionable goals. Apply business discipline and proven best practices. Stop fearing risks. Start mitigating them. Measure performance. Get results. You can. This book shows you how. Jason Falls and Erik Deckers serve up practical social media techniques and metrics for building brands, strengthening awareness, improving service, optimizing R&D, driving better leads--and closing more sales. “Conversations” and “communities” are wonderful, but they’re not enough. Get this book and get what you really want from social media: profits. Think social media’s a passing fad? Too risky? Just a toy? Too soft and fuzzy? Not for your business? Wake up! It’s where your customers are. And it ain’t going away. Does that suck? No. It doesn’t. Do social media right, and all those great business buzzwords come true. Actionable. Measurable. And...wait for it...here comes the big one. Profitable. Damn profitable. Want to know how to do it right? We’ll show you. And, yeah, we know how because we’ve done it. This is the bullshit-free, lie-free, fluff-free, blessedly non-New-Age real deal. You’re going to learn how to use social media to deliver absolutely killer customer service. How to R&D stuff people actually want. Develop scads of seriously qualified leads. You’ll figure out what you want. You know, the little things like profits, market share, loyalty, and brand power. You’ll figure out how to measure it. And then you’ll go get it. One more thing. We know what scares you about social media. Screwing up (a.k.a., your mug on the front page of The Wall Street Journal). So we’ll tell you what to do so that won’t happen. Ever. No B.S. in this book. Just facts. Metrics. Best practices. Stuff to warm the hearts of your CFO, CEO, all your C-whatevers. And, yeah, you. So get your head out from under the pillow. Get your butt in gear. Let’s go make some money.

A provocative look at social media that dispels the hype and tells you all you need to know about using the Web to expand your business If you listen to the pundits, Internet gurus, marketing consultants, and even the mainstream media, you could think social media was the second coming. When it comes to business, they declare that it's revolutionizing advertising, PR, customer relations—everything. And they all agree: it is here to stay. In this lively, insightful guide, journalist and social critic B.J. Mendelson skillfully debunks the myths of social media. He illustrates how the notion of "social media" first came to prominence, why it has become such a powerful presence in the marketing field, and who stands to benefit each time it's touted in the press. He shows you why all the Facebook friends and Twitter followers in the world mean nothing to you and your business without old-fashioned, real-world connections. He examines popular tales of social media "success," and reveals some unsettling truths behind the surface. And he tells you how to best harness the potential of the Internet—without spending a fortune in the process. Social media is bullshit. This book gives the knowledge and tools you really need to connect with customers and grow your brand.

This is the first no-holds-barred, no B.S., no "Kumbaya" guide to social media marketing for business. It's the perfect book for every decision-maker who's ready to move beyond soft platitudes about social media "conversations," and achieve results: measurable improvements in sales, profitability, efficiency, and brand value. Top social media marketing consultants Jason Fells and Eric Decker take a relentlessly practical business value of social marketing, focusing on business drivers and effective metrics. They systematically address common executive objections to social media, offer realistic guidance on reducing its risks, and present up-to-date statistics and case studies demonstrating its business value. You will find the expert help you need to apply social media to drive business, achieve quantifiable improvements in brand value, deliver superior customer service, improve R and D, strengthen corporate reputation and customer communication, and much more.

Kennedy dares marketers to dramatically simplify their marketing, refocusing on what works. Updated to address the newest media and marketing methods, this marketing master plan — from marketing master Kennedy—delivers a short list of radically different, little-known, profit-proven direct mail strategies for ANY business. Strategies are illustrated by case history examples from an elite team of consultants—all phenomenally successful at borrowing direct marketing strategies from the world of mail-order, TV infomercials, etc., to use in ’ordinary’ businesses including retail stores, restaurants, and sales.

WINNER OF BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020: LEADERSHIP FOR THE FUTURE A Financial Times Business Book of the Month 'A brilliant set of leadership tools that will help you succeed whatever your goal' - Sir Clive Woodward 'A punchy, plainly written guide, offering a readable and enlightened view of what leaders do and how they should do it' - Financial Times 'A new rubric on leadership' - Evening Standard Inspiration behind the No Bullsh*t Leadership Intelligence Squared podcast Leadership is not some special club, open only to elites. It's not a gold star given only to those with expensive degrees. Leadership is for everyone. Based on the author's hard-won experience as a Global CEO, this smart, fun book delivers a step-by-step working manual on how to lead - for anyone. Full of simple and direct approaches, it demystifies an over-analysed subject to get to the heart of modern leadership: the life-changing, career-transforming power to get stuff done. These principles and actionable steps apply to every field, from small businesses to community initiatives, from schools to sports teams to global enterprises. No matter your goal, this book will show you how to: - make effective decisions - build a world-class team - take care of yourself and others - achieve results

Joining the ranks of classics like The Elements of Style and On Writing Well, Writing Without Bullshit helps professionals get to the point to get ahead. It’s time for Writing Without Bullshit. Writing Without Bullshit is the first comprehensive guide to writing for today’s world: a noisy environment where everyone reads what you write on a screen. The average news story now gets only 36 seconds of attention. Unless you change how you write, your emails, reports, and Web copy don’t stand a chance. In this practical and witty book, you’ll learn to front-load your writing with pithy titles, subject lines, and opening sentences. You’ll acquire the courage and skill to purge weak and meaningless jargon, wimpy passive voice, and cowardly weasel words. And you’ll get used to writing directly to the reader to make every word count. At the center of it all is the Iron Imperative: treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. Embrace that, and your customers, your boss, and your colleagues will recognize the power and boldness of your thinking. Transcend the fear that makes your writing weak. Plan and execute writing projects with confidence. Manage edits and reviews flawlessly. And master every modern format from emails and social media to reports and press releases. Stop writing to fit in. Start writing to stand out. Boost your career by writing without bullshit.

Everyone’s Talking About It. But Nobody Knows What They’re Talking About. Social Media Examiner’s 2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report found that only 10% of respondents strongly agree that they can measure ROI—yet half of them will dedicate increased time and money to social media marketing instead of cutting back. Millionaire maker Dan S. Kennedy, joined by marketing strategist Kim Walsh Phillips, tells it like it is: If you’re not focusing on converting traffic into sales, you might as well set your money on fire. Kennedy and Walsh Phillips open up their playbook and show you how to stop being a social media victim and accepting non-monetizable “likes” and “shares” as a return on your time, money, and energy and start using your platform for its true purpose—as another channel to reach customers, gain leads and make sales. Learn how to: Turn passive content into an active conversion tool Become a lead magnet with social media profiles that focus on the needs of ideal prospects (not the product or service) Create raving fans who introduce you to their networks Turn niches into riches, laser in on your perfect prospects and ignore the “tire kickers” Harness the biggest secret in social media—offline Discover the principles behind successful marketing campaigns and start making dollars and cents out of your social media strategy.

Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data. “A modern classic . . . a straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic.”—Wired Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don’t feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics. In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data. You don’t need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Bergstrom and West exuberantly unpack examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern bullshit. We have always needed people who call bullshit when necessary, whether within a circle of friends, a community of scholars, or the citizenry of a nation. Now that bullshit has evolved, we need to relearn the art of skepticism.