Reading Reflection No. 2

The book I read was The Art of Social Media - Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick.  The book is pretty straight forward, and describes how someone can use social media to their advantage when it comes to networking, promoting, business, and the like.  I didn't find it all THAT insightful if I'm being honest, but that's probably because I'm very social media and computer savvy.  And before I took this class, I knew with high confidence that if you want to succeed in business you need to network, and right now social media is quite obviously the easiest way to do that.  It almost reads like a DUMMIES book, because it seems like it's for people who aren't familiar with social media.  Just like in this class, the book also talks about how you can use social media to gain insight into what customers want.  Different social media outlets allow you to test ideas in a certain area, demographic, etc., and see how people respond.  It's similar to what we do in class, except in the class we actually physically go out and talk to people.  If I had to design an exercise for this class that relates to the book and the power of social media in general, I'd say that in addition to the ideas that we've been formulating and pitching all semester, we also have to create a Facebook page in order to try to get our idea out there.  To make it fun, whoever's page gets the most "likes" can get 3 extra credit points, or something like that.  There weren't really any "aha" moments per say, because this isn't really a typical book.  It was more general tips and advice than anything, a lot of which I already knew or were things that as soon as you read it you go "oh, well yeah, that makes sense".  A lot of what I know or have learned already came a lot from trial and error, actually.  A few years ago I started YouTube channel that combines comedy and fitness.  It took many videos before we realized a few things, what worked and what didn't as far as promoting content.  That process could have been more fluid though if I had read this book ahead of time.  Even for people already familiar with social media, it's always good to reinforce good ideas and the book contains many.  One in particular that I learned a long time ago was to state your point clearly, and nothing else.  Filler words and unnecessary jabber just detracts from the focus of your rhetoric, your product, your idea, etc., which isn't a good thing.  Keeps things short and sweet.