Reading Reflection 3

I chose to read The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawaski. I specifically chose this book due to the fact that I have never been a diligent user of social media. I decided that learning about how social media can impact businesses and entrepreneurs would be valuable to my future goals. The general argument was that social media is not utilized to its full potential. It also argued that social media can be a powerful force for a business if certain steps are followed. For example, the book described the importance of visual appeal when a potential customer visits your social media page. Your photos should convey a message and be appealing to customers when they look at them. Aside from this, they go into more detail regarding the importance of collecting a larger audience across multiple platforms.

Throughout this class we have discussed a lot about identifying our target audience. As we progressed through the class, we all became better at identifying opportunities and potential customers. However, we rarely discussed methods of acquiring customers. Social media is becoming an incredible method of customer acquisition. I believe that a solid understanding of social media can drastically improve our customer acquisition rate.

I would have students find a business that is in the same marketplace as them. After this, I would have them make a list of positives and negatives associated with their social media. Lastly, the students would be tasked with inventing creative solutions to the problems they identified in the previous step.

My biggest surprise was when the author discussed not caring if people saw the same tweet or picture multiple times. He explained that it was far more likely for a customer to receive the message if they saw it multiple times. In addition, he explained that different types of people use social media at different times. Understanding this was a major point he made in connecting to your audience.