Reading Reflection No. 2

For my second reading reflection, I read the book: The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki. This book was an easy read and offered several important websites and tons of supplemental material to the readers. The only issue I had was that the book had embedded links in the text and reading the book in print form limited my accessibility to those links.

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The general theme of this book is about how to use social media correctly and effectively. This book was definitely informational and Guy provided several tips on how to maximize your social media presence and influence.

I personally think that this book connects well with this course and its exercises. Many of the blog posts assignments we have completed so far have forced us to step out of our comfort zone and put vulnerable thoughts and ideas up on the internet where others can see them and judge them. Guy mentioned in his book that with social media, you need to be comfortable expressing yourself and your thoughts as you like. If someone disagrees, they can unfollow you. You have the freedom of speech and the freedom to express your ideas. By embracing a "personality" presence on social media, you differentiate yourself from other accounts and draw in more followers with similar interests. I think this notion goes hand-in-hand with the blog assignment because every week we have to put ourselves out there to be critiqued by classmates and others.

If I had to design an exercise based on the book I read, I would have students design a social media marketing plan for their venture ideas. Entrepreneurs need to think about how they can promote awareness for their concepts effectively. Social media is such an integral part of our everyday lives and businesses are using it to capitalize on customer engagement now more than ever. You can have a great idea/product/service, but if you can't get the word out about it, you'll be missing out on many potential customers.

The biggest surprise I came across while reading this book was the sheer number of social media platforms that exist now. There are so many more websites and apps to engage with people on than just Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Whenever I think of social media, I immediately think of the "big three" apps. I think I'm finding it hard to believe that so many people use other "less popular" social media apps because I personally don't use them. As a general tip, it's really important to step back from the constraints of your mind and lifestyle to consider other people and their preferences. Just because you don't use Vine doesn't mean that nobody else does either. By keeping a closed mind on what social media platforms you choose to promote on, you may be missing out on some niches.