Social Media and The Inexperienced

              In this week’s reading of “The Art of Social Media”, Guy Kawasaki talks about how not to look foolish when using social media. A lot of his points that he made, I personally thought, were pretty obvious things that everyone should know not to do and went without saying. A few tips that I thought should have been left out because they were so easy were do not tell others what they should share, do not ask others to follow you on whatever social media platform you are using, do not ask people why they unfollowed you on a certain social media platform, and do not swear. I feel like these are basic things that when you are using social media, especially for a company or organization, you should absolutely not do these. If you do these things on social media, you are poorly representing whatever company or organization that is paying you to represent them well to the public.

              One thing I had never put any real thought into was bought followers and or likes. I always thought that you wanted to have a lot of followers so you could attract other people to your page or whatever you were trying to promote to the public. That would let them know that you were successful and were worthy of their follow. However, Kawasaki explains that these are just ghosts. They are not real people. Yes, they boost your follower count, but they are not potential consumers who will help out your future company or organization. The results that you see from your social media pages are basically garbage. They aren’t real and, therefore, you can not really see how you are impacting the public with your platform.

              Guy also talks to us about a feature of Twitter called a Twitter Chat. I am fairly new to Twitter, so I was unaware of this feature. After looking into it more, it seems like a good tool to use to help reach out to the public and answer any questions they may have about a certain topic or concern. One thing he told us to do as hosts of a Twitter Chat is to prepare our guests who will be joining us. He says to give them potential questions that may be asked so they can help answer them more quickly. I thought this was a really helpful tip of him to give. I know that since this is very fast paced, you need to know what is going on and how to manage your time in the best way possible. For me personally, I know I like to really think about my answer to a question before I put it out there for others to see. I would not do well in a Twitter Chat if I had to post something really fast with only seeing it for a minute or two. I think it would be fun to try one out one time just to see how I would do.