Reading Reflection No. 2

Brittany Traynor

ENT3003 Reading Reflection No. 2

Due: 11/03/17

The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, by Guy Kawasaki

1. The general theme of this book was providing helpful information about how to successfully and effectively use social media, for both personal and company/advertising related purposes. I chose to read this book because my product is a mobile application and part of my reasoning for people wanting to use my product is to keep up with technological innovation, and I think social media is a huge component of current technological innovation. Each chapter of this book covered different aspects of social media, such as optimizing your profile, responding to comments, and integrating blogging with social media. This information will most likely change the reader’s outlook and use of social media for the better.

2. I think that the book enhanced what we are learning in this class because ultimately, this class is preparing us for potentially creating our own product or company. One of the first and most important steps in this process is marketing that product or spreading awareness about that new company, and encouraging people to buy what you are selling. In today’s society, one of the most efficient ways to market a product or idea is to utilize social media. However, with that said, presence on or use of social media can have negative results or repercussions if not used or monitored properly. This book helps the reader to better understand how to use social media to most effectively sell a product or at least get other people’s attention. For example, the book mentions that it is important to provide new content often, so that people do not grow bored. It is also important to monitor and respond to all comments (if possible), even negative ones. These pieces of information, although seemingly obvious to some, are essential in ensuring that you/your company’s presence on social media is positive and effective.

3. Based on the content of this book, I would create an assignment that required my students to create a page on a certain platform of social media, such as Facebook or Twitter. This page would be advertising some sort of potential product or service, and each student would have the same product or service. The student’s goal for this assignment would be to get the most shares (or retweets), and since they would all have the same product/service, their only way to get more shares than each other is the way they present this idea on social media. Kawasaki states that in the social world, re-sharing is the sincerest form of flattery. When creating a product or service that you want to sell, you want as many people to know about it as possible, so making sure that people are sharing your post is essential for marketing purposes. The book provided tips, followed up by statistics to prove the best methods of ensuring your material will be shared. For example, creating short, trendy hashtags, as well as adding a photo to each post, increases the chances of people reading it or sharing it. I would want to see my students get creative with their post, so I would want them to utilize these tips to try to get the most shares.  I would probably offer some sort of incentive, such as 5 extra credit points, to the individual who got the most shares.

4. I think the biggest “aha” moment for me when reading the book was reading about the “content monster”. The author emphasizes the importance of creating and curating new content frequently, to keep people interested. The author even went as far as to say that you are not using social media correctly is you are not pissing people off. This made me really think, because I personally tend to avoid controversial topics on my own social media pages. However, I often find that reading about controversial topics and observing each commenter’s opinion is the most interesting type of content on social media. This content would not be there if everyone were like me and avoided engaging in controversial content on social media. I guess what I learned is that you have to be careful when choosing content, because you want it to be interesting but not to the extent that it will anger people and turn them away from your page.