The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check In Wherever They Are

Thanks to the internet, we now live—more and more—in public. More than 750 million people (and half of all Americans) use Facebook, where we share a billion times a day. The collective voice of Twitter echoes instantly 100 million times daily, from Tahrir Square to the Mall of America, on subjects that range from democratic reform to unfolding natural disasters to celebrity gossip. New tools let us share our photos, videos, purchases, knowledge, friendships, locations, and lives.

Yet change brings fear, and many people—nostalgic for a more homogeneous mass culture and provoked by well-meaning advocates for privacy—despair that the internet and how we share there is making us dumber, crasser, distracted, and vulnerable to threats of all kinds. But not Jeff Jarvis.

In this shibboleth-destroying book, Public Parts argues persuasively and personally that the internet and our new sense of publicness are, in fact, doing the opposite. Jarvis travels back in time to show the amazing parallels of fear and resistance that met the advent of other innovations such as the camera and the printing press. The internet, he argues, will change business, society, and life as profoundly as Gutenberg’s invention, shifting power from old institutions to us all.

Based on extensive interviews, Public Parts introduces us to the men and women building a new industry based on sharing. Some of them have become household names—Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and Twitter’s Evan Williams. Others may soon be recognized as the industrialists, philosophers, and designers of our future.

Jarvis explores the promising ways in which the internet and publicness allow us to collaborate, think, ways—how we manufacture and market, buy and sell, organize and govern, teach and learn. He also examines the necessity as well as the limits of privacy in an effort to understand and thus protect it.

Winner of a Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Award!

We are on the cusp of a marketing revolution.
And it is being led by you.

Return on Influence is the first book to explore how brands are identifying and leveraging the world’s most powerful bloggers, tweeters, and YouTube celebrities to build product awareness, brand buzz, and new sales.

In this revolutionary book, renowned marketing consultant and college educator Mark W. Schaefer shows you how to use the latest breakthroughs in social networking and influence marketing to achieve your goals through:

• In-depth explanations of the sources of online influence—and how they can work for or against you
• Interviews with more than 50 experts, including tech blogger Robert Scoble, Influence author Robert Cialdini, and industry thought leaders such as Mitch Joel, Jay Baer, and Christopher S. Penn
• An insider’s look at the controversial social scoring company Klout and its process for assigning influence numbers to everyone
• Practical, actionable tips to increase your own personal power and online influence
• More than a dozen original social influence marketing case studies

Even if you already use social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, or blogging to maintain an online presence, this eye-opening, action-ready guide shows you how to reach the “superconnectors” who ignite epidemics through word-of-mouth influence . . . and become one yourself.

This is the future of marketing at your fingertips: low-cost, high-speed, influence driven, and powerful. Filled with fascinating case studies, interviews, and insider advice, this essential guide prepares you for the next wave of social networking. This is how to win friends and influence people in the digital age—with a Return on Influence.

Praise for Return on Influence:

“Influence is the ability to cause, affect, or change behavior. Mark Schaefer helps you define the outcomes you wish to see . . . and measure them!”
—Brian Solis, author of The End of Business as Usual

“Schaefer’s book has earned its place on the shelf of anyone looking to find influencers—or become one.”
—Harold Burson, founder, Burson-Marsteller

“Return on Influence is definitive, exciting, and endlessly practical. In an age where marketing budgets are tight and getting tighter, social media—and particularly influence marketing—has become the silver bullet to solve all problems. Consider this book the marksmen’s manual.”
—Rick Wion, Director of Social Media, McDonald’s

“I could not stop reading this book. Mark Schaefer demystifies the power of influence in this insider’s guide to combining content strategy with network interactions to create social conversations that move markets.”
—Ardath Albee, author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

“A fascinating exploration at how you track and increase your online influence. Real-world strategies for real-world companies.”
—Randy Gage, author of Prosperity Mind

• Thousands of Africans head to China each year to buy cell phones, auto parts, and other products that they will import to their home countries through a clandestine global back channel.
 
• Hundreds of Paraguayan merchants smuggle computers, electronics, and clothing across the border to Brazil.
 
• Scores of laid-off San Franciscans, working without any licenses, use Twitter to sell home-cooked foods.
 
• Dozens of major multinationals sell products through unregistered kiosks and street vendors around the world.
 
When we think of the informal economy, we tend to think of crime: prostitution, gun running, drug trafficking. Stealth of Nations opens up this underground realm, showing how the worldwide informal economy deals mostly in legal products and is, in fact, a ten-trillion-dollar industry, making it the second-largest economy in the world, after that of the United States.
 
Having penetrated this closed world and persuaded its inhabitants to open up to him, Robert Neuwirth makes clear that this informal method of transaction dates back as far as humans have existed and traded, that it provides essential services and crucial employment that fill the gaps in formal systems, and that this unregulated market works smoothly and effectively, with its own codes and unwritten rules.
 
Combining a vivid travelogue with a firm grasp on global economic strategy—along with a healthy dose of irreverence and skepticism toward conventional perceptions—Neuwirth gives us an eye-opening account of a world that is always operating around us, hidden in plain sight.

Unearth a Gold Mine in the $1 TRILLION Junk Bond Market

“Few experts in this area have been willing to share their inside knowledge with the outside world. None have done it as well and as simply and clearly as Bob Levine has done in his new book.”
—Joel Greenblatt, bestselling author of The Little Book That Beats the Market

“A great book by a great investor. . . . [I] recommend this book to everyone who wants to acquire some invaluable horse sense about investing in high yield bonds.”
—Martin S. Fridson, author of How to Be a Billionaire

“This is the best book ever written on high yield corporate bond investing. Destined to become an instant classic. . . .”
—Jack Malvey, Chief Global Markets Strategist, Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

Do you think of the junk bond market as an arena of chaos, a financial Wild West, a place to avoid at all costs?

In How to Make Money with Junk Bonds, a pioneer of the junk bond business gives you the insight and information you need to lay that fear to rest—so that you can generate unprecedented profits in this $1 trillion market.

Robert Levine has the credentials to lead both individual investors and the professionals just getting started in the junk bond market. At Nomura Corporate Research and Asset Management, his junk bond funds substantially outperformed both high yield and S&P indices for more than 18 years—and in this book he explains the method he used to achieve such remarkable results. Helping you pick high yield bonds that have a low possibility of default. How to Make Money with Junk Bonds covers:

• The difference between stocks and bonds—and where junk bonds fit between them in the risk spectrum
• How to conduct a thorough credit analysis—the key to making money in junk bonds
• How to evaluate market conditions—and decide when to invest and when to sit on the sidelines
• Why you should hire a portfolio manager—and how to select the best one for your needs
• How to invest like a pro—using Levine’s personal, proven investing method

The junk bond market isn’t the scary place it used to be. Critical information is easier (and cheaper) to obtain, and transparency is greater than it was in the market’s early days. How to Make Money with Junk Bonds gives you the tools to root out strong, forward-looking companies poised for growth and generate a level of profitability impossible to achieve in other markets.