Reading Reflection No. 3

Reading Reflection:

"The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users"

by Guy Kawasaki

General Theme: This book generally deals with the concept of social media and its connection t your professional life. Kawasaki highlights the fact that social media becomes a second resume for potential employers, as the information we put out on these sites is easily accessible to those reviewing us for positions. Thus, establishing a professional appearance on social media sites becomes important to workers wanting to promote their own abilities, as well as to increase the appeal of a certain brand that one promotes or owns. Doing things like putting your full name in your profile, using professional pictures that show your whole face and smile, and only posting information that is relevant to your desired followers become essential first steps to establishing a credible online presence.

Connection to ENT3003: We learn in this class that search engine optimization when developing a website is an essential practice for achieving higher internet attention, which usually leads to more product sales. Kawasaki is essentially advocating for the same practice with social media, though you become the product that is being sold with this media form, marketing yourself to potential employers and improving your brand in the public eye. In this case, optimization occurs by managing your accounts for business professionalism, and only focusing on a few platforms that are essential to your personal brand and producing quality content on these few accounts. Building a consumer base for a product and a network for professional ventures, while different in their content, generally follow the same pattern of development and should be studied with the same frame of mind.

Class Exercise: I think working on creating a professional media page would be very useful for future students in this class, as having a business-based social media presence would not only be beneficial for developing an entrepreneurial venture, it would also be a useful skill for students as they move forward in their professional careers. I think an exercise that could be done would be to create a mock social media "About Me" page in a blog entry, complete with a personal description, listing of valuable skills to potential companies, some form of professional photo, and one relevant post concerning a topic within a field the student is knowledgeable about that somewhat relates to their desired professional career. With this practice, it should be easier for students to create real professional business media pages in the future, benefiting their future careers and help cement the venture they have identified in reality.

Surprising Moment: I think the most surprising moment for me while reading was when Guy Kawasaki said that you should focus on only two or three platforms to produce your professional image, and not expand into too many avenues of media exposure. This surprised me because I figured that using more avenues would likely lead to more business opportunities, as more total people will see your brand and want to hire you or buy from you. What I learned though, is that while generating cross-platform promotion is a valuable tool for business, spreading yourself too thin is a risk that you should not take likely, as diluting your content to appeal to a larger audience can be potential disastrous for your image quality, and employers and buyers will not be as likely to heed your message.