Assignment 21: Reading Reflection No. 2

I chose the book, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Powerful Users by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick for this reading reflection.

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book? The main focus of this book was to teach the importance of using social media to build a brand. Social media is an integral part of our society and it has made the world small. What I mean by that is social media makes it possible to reach global awareness without needing a huge budget and research teams stationed in international offices. You have the power to view trends, build lasting relationships with your customers, and receive direct feedback all from a gadget that fits into the palm of your hand. The book is structured around several helpful tips you should use to get the most out of your social media accounts and goes in-depth on why and how to incorporate them in your practice. 

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003? This book focuses on using social media and new media trends to help shape your business. It dives into why user-generated content should be seen as a beneficial tool to communicate with your customers and how utilizing these platforms can help you understand your customers' needs. These topics go hand-in-hand with the teachings of this course. As the future of entrepreneurship and marketing continues to become more involved with relationship building and harnessing the power of technology to do so, this book can be a powerful tool to drive those concepts home.  

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve? I think a really fun assignment would be to start a social media campaign or build an online presence on a social media site that the student thinks would work best with their intended audience. This assignment could incorporate several of the topics we discussed in class, like creating a theoretical product and discovering your prototypical consumer. This assignment could be a multi-week project that incorporates weekly assignment goals, similarly to how the class is currently set up with blog postings. Not only would we learn the concepts covered in the lectures, but it would take a hands-on approach that could help us see the concepts in action.

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 think my "aha" moment was the section about building your foundation. One of the first things discussed in the book is how important something as simple and seemingly insignificant as your profile's avatar is to a potential customer. We've all heard common expressions like, "You only make a first impression once." Though I've heard this all my life, I've never really stopped to consider how this is also applied to your account on Twitter. Not only is your avatar a visual cue of who you are, but also the language you use in your bio and your activity level can be indicative of your brand.