Reading Reflection No. 3

I chose to read Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki.

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The general theme of this book is how to use social media to its full extent. It included tips and tricks to find each benefit within social media today. The book explains how to create the best social media presence and have the best experience while doing it. 

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

The book connected to this course when it discussed blogging. This was the first time I had ever made a blog and now I am acquainted with how Blogger works and could probably make another one for other uses. The book also opened my eyes a lot to how social media can be used for marketing my product. I knew that advertisements were important, but now that I know how to grow more of a following and have a larger presence on social media, I think that I could really use these tools to grow my business. Reading this book while also taking this class enhanced my knowledge on a lot of ways to succeed online. We are all using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to check up on our friends, but I now know the great value of these sites, as well as blogging, in the real world.

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

If I had to create an exercise for this class that related to the book, it would be called “Social media awareness”. This exercise would make students list out what social media sites they are on, how long they spend on each site per week, how they spend their time on each site and what they remember seeing from their current week’s site scrolling. These features would prompt the student to focus more on social media and its true potential. I would then have the students follow 5 businesses on one of the sites and check up throughout the week to see what they post and how they are promoting their product or company. After a few days of watching this, the students would write about how social media can be used for many things in the business world. Once again, I think this would really open the students’ minds to all of the true potential of social media.

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

The biggest surprise for me while reading the book was reading all of the things that you can use social media for. I knew that it was more than just connecting with old friends, but it surprised me to read that I really wasn’t using social media to the fullest extent. There are so many things that social media can be used for and I think that if we step back and look at all the positives, everyone would be surprised. I previously had the opinion that people were on social media way too much, which might be true, but it opens my mind up a lot now knowing the many things that people may be doing while on social media that benefit them and/or society.