I chose to read "The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users" by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick.
1.) The theme of this book is the overall improvement and optimization of social media usage as a tool for growing a business or personal brand. It is basically a guide on how to create strong profiles and forming good posts that get a lot of attention.
2.) This book connects with the course by giving detailed information about growing your social influence and figuring out the behavior of your buyers, or in this case followers. It treats social media as a tool we can use to maximize the number of potential customers who see our product or service. In other words, increasing visibility in a crowded market. In the current day, this is everything. If you can manage to make a post about your service or product go viral, or if you can gain followers easily, then you will be a great position. I think that I am extremely likely to use the information in this book regardless of whether I actually pursue my business idea after this class.
3.) If I had to design an assignment based on this book, I would ask students to design a profile or page for their proposed business or product. This would include coming up with a strong name that can be easily used across multiple platforms, selecting a good profile picture to represent their brand, and writing a brief but effective bio summary of what they are that can be easily understood within 5-10 seconds. The assignment would not require the creation of real social media profiles, because that would complicate things. I would simply ask students to put the information into a document under clear labels and explain their reasoning for each decision.
4.) I was most surprised by just how comprehensive this short book is. It truly covers pretty much every scenario I can think of where a professional would benefit from utilizing social media, and it advises you on how to make it as easy as possible for others to see and share your content no matter what platform you are using. Going off of that note, the book also talks about DOZENS of different platforms, some of which I didn't even know existed. The authors go over everything from how to properly hashtag to how to dress in videos. I expected the book to give general advice about creating appealing posts and to talk about 6 or 7 big platforms at best. Boy was I wrong.
Kailey,
ReplyDeleteI thought your reading reflection was very interesting. I am very interested in this book now after reading your post. In today’s world it is so important to have a strong social media presence. It can really give you a leg up on the competition. I thought your idea for an assignment for class based on this book was really original and would be something great to incorporate.