21A – Reading Reflection No. 2 -

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

1.) What was the general theme or argument of the book?
The main theme of the book centered around discussions of various social media platforms, along with how to leverage each of these platforms depending on the type of profile a user was aiming to promote, whether it was a business or personal profile, with tips to refine one's profile or content in order to attract larger following bases or engage with audiences better.

2.) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?
Over the time I've spent within this course, our discussions have touched upon the utilization of one's social capital, as well as branding techniques when it comes to identifying one's main consumer audience. I felt that the section that covered increasing consumer awareness through social media was super relevant to what this course had to offer, and how graphics are key to pitching to potential consumers who might not want to read lengthy posts about what a business offers.

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 design an exercise based off this book, I would definitely have it center around having participants focus around branding. I would have participants focus around getting better profile pictures and redefining their content to give a clear and unified idea of them as people. I would make the exercise long, in order to have students report back any boost in following they might have recorded after implementing the book's suggestions, or have them ask their fellow students whether their changes made their pages more appealing.

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 personally found it surprising that the author has us, the readers, at one point evaluate our basic knowledge, having us pronounce several terms or names to show us how commonly many people mispronounce such things, and the negative or uninformed connotation it brings when one looks uninformed on social media. Tips within this section also talked about proper language usage, and avoiding buying followers, which surprised me, but made sense as the author talked about truly engaging with one's real audience, rather than "building" one, all concepts I had never truly considered before reading this book, but made sense once explained.