The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick
Social Media
Take a moment and ask yourself these questions about your use of social media,
- How do I show up?
- What do people think of me when they see or read what I write or share?
- Does this match who I am and where I want to be?
Whether or not you are a serious blogger, a multi-user (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.), or a single user, such as Facebook, this book offers great essential tips on improving who you are and your content throughout your social media network. The authors provide a simple, straightforward message, offering over 100+ practical, user-ready tips across the social media sphere. Below are four areas from the book I found really useful:
- Personal Profile
- Writing Content
- Responding to Comments
- Blogging and Social Media Integration
1. Personal Profile
- Goal is to convince people to pay attention to your social media activities
- Explains who you are
- How do you want to be judged?
- Should give the impression you are likeable, trustworthy, and competent
- Communicate what’s important to you
- Practical tip – stick with one picture across all your public profiles (p. 7)
2. Writing Content
- Be valuable – write good stuff that is engaging to the reader
- Be brief – “sweet spot” for content is 500 – 1000 words (p. 46)
- Use links and photos
- Distribute your content widely (e.g. use a distribution service like Buffer)
- Always be curious – helps you keep learning and increases your sources for writing good content
- Practical tip – use hashtags to your posts (e.g.#socialmediatips) to add relevancy to a shared topic of interest – (p. 53)
3. Responding to Comments
- People watch and judge everything you write on social media
- Remember – everything is always on the record (p. 75)
- Consider the audience in your response to a comment – response is meant for the whole audience of your readers and not just the commenter
- Stay positive
- Agree to disagree
- Practical tip – Use mentions (@ symbol) when you mention someone in a post or comment and not hashtags (# symbol) which is used for a topic (p. 74)
4. Blogging and Social Media Integration
- Above all, write really good content and do this consistently
- Use a blog to promote your social media and vice versa – your social media to promote your blog
- Write guest posts for other blogs
- Add share buttons to your blog (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Join blogging networks to amplify your outreach (e.g. Triberr)
- Practical tip – “Pin” every post: make a Pinterest post for each blog post to drive more traffic to your blog (p. 86)
The book continues with a lot more tips that are easy to implement. This is a quick read with actionable steps in improving your social media network right away.
When I think about my own social media footprint, I am committed to being authentic and positive. I write and share content from a personal growth perspective with an ongoing learning mindset to keep improving in life. I have a passion for connecting with others and sharing my insights of reading and photography. Lastly, my hope and desire is to leave a legacy of stories and photographs that will inspire others.
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