For better or worse, platforms and other technologies changed publishing and other industries dramatically over the past year. With the rise of social media and evolving IT, content, and business models, it’s more important than ever to understand what’s happening today and look out to the future.
This month’s recommended reading list aims to inspire you and provide practical tools and strategies that can help you keep up with the pace of change and thrive in the new year. Read on to learn how to get noticed, unleash the extraordinary, and think differently.
Book Picks: Get Noticed, Unleash the Extraordinary, and Think Differently in 2017
Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by
To be successful in the market today, you must possess two strategic assets: a compelling product and a meaningful platform. In this step-by-step guide, Michael Hyatt, former CEO and current chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, takes readers behind the scenes, into the new world of social media success. He shows you what best-selling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to win customers in today’s crowded marketplace. Hyatt speaks from experience. He writes one of the top 800 blogs in the world and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. His large and growing platform serves as the foundation for his successful writing, speaking, and consulting practice. In Platform, Hyatt teaches readers not only how to extend their influence, but also how to monetize it and build a sustainable career. The key? By building a platform. The book includes proven strategies, easy-to-replicate formulas, and practical tips. Social media technologies have changed everything. Now, for the first time in history, non-celebrities can get noticed—and win big!—in an increasingly noisy world.
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by
Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It’s Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO. The company’s new IT initiative, code-named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced. With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited. In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they’ll never view IT the same way again.
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by
New York Times bestselling author and social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk shares hard-won advice on how to connect with customers and beat the competition. A mash-up of the best elements of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy with a fresh spin, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is a blueprint to social media marketing strategies that really works. When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they plan for the “right hook”—their next sale or campaign that’s going to knock out the competition. Right hooks convert traffic to sales and easily show results. Except when they don’t. Thanks to massive change and proliferation in social media platforms, the winning combination of jabs and right hooks is different now. Vaynerchuk shows that while communication is still key, context matters more than ever. It’s not just about developing high-quality content, but developing high-quality content perfectly adapted to specific social media platforms and mobile devices—content tailor-made for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways by
Far away from Silicon Valley, in familiar, traditional, even unglamorous fields, ordinary people are unleashing extraordinary advances that amaze customers, energize employees, and create huge economic value. Their secret? They understand that the work of inventing the future doesn’t just belong to geeks designing mobile apps and virtual-reality headsets, or to social media entrepreneurs hoping to launch the next Facebook. Some of today’s most compelling organizations are doing brilliant things in simple settings such as retail banks, office cleaning companies, department stores, small hospitals, and auto dealerships. William C. Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company and best-selling author of Practically Radical, traveled thousands of miles to visit hotbeds of simple brilliance and unearth the principles and practices behind their success. He offers fascinating case studies and powerful lessons that you can apply to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways, regardless of your industry or profession.
Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by
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Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini
