Assignment 27A Reading Reflection No. 3

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

• What was the general theme or argument of the book?
• The book emphasizes insights and strategies of building a strong and compelling presence on the most popular social media platforms. Kawasaki presents hundreds of tips and tricks of bringing attention towards your business and advancing it through social media. He gives in-depth breakdowns of each key aspect to keep in mind with your social media, such as optimizing your profile, perfecting your posts, and gaining followers. Overall, The Art of Social Media stresses the significance of social media in terms of self branding, as well as the importance of treating your social media like a business. 

• How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?
• The book goes through the many tips of maximizing the benefits of social media that include getting your name out there and self branding. Many of which, are also emphasized in this course being that social media is a significant platform for marketing your business. Both the book and the course also emphasize key aspects to consider when using social media to promote your business, such as effective ways of including links and key words, and creating a business page, to ensure that your business is receiving the most amount of attention it deserves. In which, nowadays, social media has allowed marketing to be more efficient and effective, as it can be shared with thousands with just one click. Social media plays a huge role in entrepreneurship, as it gives entrepreneurs a platform that will give them the opportunity to get their business out on the field and generate success. Overall, I found that this book increased my understanding of how social media is beneficial in the business world, and how an entrepreneur can apply many of these key takeaways towards their business in order to be successful.

• If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?
• An exercise that the class can do based on The Art of Social Media, would be to create a business profile for your business. The book began with a chapter based on optimizing your profile and its importance, to explain who you are and convince other people to pay attention to your business. Each student's business profile should include the avatar (image of you as the entrepreneur or logo of your business), cover (image that visually sums up your business), biographical text (summary of what makes you credible and include text that summarizes your venture), and important links that are relevant to your business. Having a strong profile is significant to your business, as it draws your customers in and it is essentially their first impression of your business.

• What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? What did you learn that differed most from your expectations?
• One thing I found surprising, was that Kawasaki emphasized the notion that with social media, if you are not "pissing someone off" on social media, you are not using it aggressively enough. In his chapter about how to perfect your post, he highlights the importance of being active, in which he defined to be 3 to 20 posts each day. He stated that as long as your posts are good, there is no problem with posting multiple times a day. Overall, this whole notion of posting multiple times a day and that you know you are using social media correctly if you are pissing someone off, differed from my expectations. I always thought that constant posts on social media, pissing people off, would drive the consumers away from your business, as they may find it annoying. Though, Kawasaki argues that it is important to make yourself known through social media.