Reading Reflection No. 2

1. For this assignment, I read Guy Kawasaki's & Peg Fitzpatrick's The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users. The general theme of this book was boosting your social media presence via numerous tactics that are simple yet often overlooked. Some of these tactics include: treating your social media with a professional mindset, content creation vs content curation, linking your different accounts to drive users from one account to the other, etc. While some of the ideas presented seemed fairly obvious to myself (since I grew up with social media like the rest of my generation), others who did not grow up with it could take more away from this book. The best idea, in my opinion, presented in this book was the mixture of content creation vs content curation. Most of us are familiar with creating content for our audiences on social media. However, not all of us curate other people's content and share it with our followers. It is much easier and takes far less time than content creation. The key here is to share content your audience is interested in, and give your own brief summary of the article or video.
2. This book connected with ENT3003 because it not only mentioned blogging, but it showed how to incorporate your blog into your social media. While this class places the material and assignments into a blogging format, this book helps to highlight the other potential benefits of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. I felt as if this book was a good addition to the content we are learning in class, highlighting a couple different social media tools and tactics that can help strengthen my chances of success as an entrepreneur. In this class we have focused on content creation and strengthening our blogging skills. This book shows that content curation is just as important, and is necessary to succeed in today's online entrepreneurship world.
3. If I had to design an exercise based on this book, it would be a practice in content curation. For example, this assignment is the closest we get to content curation in this class. I would have students find a post on Twitter or Facebook that relates to ENT3003 and the course material. I would then have them summarize the post and share it on their blog or personal Twitter or Facebook account. The focus would be on finding a quality post that their classmates would benefit from and want to read/see. This would help students get a better grasp of content curation and the positives it can bring to their social medias.
4. The biggest"aha" moment for me was having the mindset that your social media needs to be treated like a business. Meme culture has become a staple on the internet. Log on to any social media platform and you are bound to be bombarded with finny videos, pictures, and all sorts of whack content. While you can enjoy this content, it is probably not in your best interest to share most of it on your professional social media. In order for your audience to take you seriously, you need to have a good mixture of content that you create and curate. This doesn't mean it has to be 100% super serious, almost robotic. It also doesn't mean you can't share your views or opinions. You just need to be aware of what you are sharing at what time, keeping the majority of it professional. Always ask yourself, "would my audience want to see this?" before clicking the post button. If you want to be a pro at social media, you have to act like one and think like one. It is a skill. Skills take practice and time to master. Doing these things will help you have a greater online presence.