21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

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

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?
 
- The general theme of the book, The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki is the importance of social media use to enhance your business in modern day society. Guy teamed up with a colleague of his, Peg Fitzpatrick to write The Art of Social Media. This book is the one essential guide you need to get the most out of your time, effort, and money when it comes to social media marketing. Social Media can make or break your business. There are many people now a days that are naturally proficient (similar to how people are proficient in Word or Photoshop) in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and all of the popular social media outlets right now. These people are eager to be hired and help others with their businesses when it comes to social media because it is a skill that not everybody has. In this book, Guy and peg give practical and applicable advice and tips on how to strategize when it comes to the most popular social media platforms.

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

- In ENT3003, we learned and explored a lot about "culture" in the workplace and what "culture" means when it comes to businesses. Culture is a resource that can be created in a lot of ways and is an incredibly important asset for any business. Every business has some sort of culture even if it is unintentional but social media can be a very great way to create culture for your business or show your business's culture without people needing to physically be there or literally experience it. Culture is rare and cannot be imitated but with social media it is easier to create at least an image of culture even if it isn't true (lol). Culture is the deeply held beliefs of what the business is and it is usually an unconscious thing. Social media can create culture also in the sense that people need to join (your company's page or follow it in some sense) so it creates that membership feeling.

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

-My exercise would be to mimic an Instagram page to promote your business idea as if it were already up and running. This exercise would involve a screenshot of the page with the last 6 photos also showing profile picture, name, and biography. In addition, the assignment should include a description of why the posts are laid out the way they are, the common theme throughout the posts, and the captions that would go along with the last 6 posts.

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?

-I had a few 'aha' moments when reading this book because social media is such a prevalent thing in my generation but not really that easy to the older ones. The first one was that there are people out there dying to help local businesses with social media because it comes naturally to them (especially in my generation) and its becoming a business opportunity as opposed to just a personal leisure choice. Another realization I had during my read was that social media is so incredibly annoying and overwhelming for people that are not used to it and do not use it for personal purposes. Lastly, social media is just a race regarding how fast you can catch people's attention because there's so many things that can catch your customer's attention so it is a skill that needs to be learned.