Saturday, December 6, 2014

The Art of Social Media Review

A review of The Art of Social Media

The book The Art of Social Media is written by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick. They are basically heavy social media users. So, it is my pleasure to have their knowledge available in the form of this book. Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy in exchange of a review.

The nice thing about reviewing a book, especially non-fiction book is the fact that I can use it to do stuff with it. In this case, my usage of it was light. It's my fault, though. I was expecting to use it with my Nanowrimo project, and this is the first time in years that I failed to complete my project. Oh, well. Better luck next time.

The book itself is excellent, typical of Guy Kawasaki's work. If you haven't done so, I suggest that you check out his other books as well. They are all terrific. To be honest, there's some information overlap across that many books, but I don't mind. I'd rather have all the knowledge contained in a book, than having a book refer me to other books just to complete my knowledge. The fact that I have an electronic copy on my Kindle is a bonus. It's very convenient to just open it up and read, without having the burden of carrying papers around.

I think I screw up on my first item. It says that my profile should give the impression that you are likable, trustworthy, and competent. I guess the name "Simpleton Geek" isn't all that likable (who likes a geek?) and competent (Simpleton? Eh, move along, please). You can be sure to trust me, though. Would it help to say that I am likable (at least to other geeks), and competent?

Overall, I took notes on the first chapter on how to spruce up my profile. Maybe not enough to go the whole professional looks in one evening, but enough that I should be able to be more approachable, and not at all clueless looking. Yes, the book features a whole chapter on "cluelessness."

Chapter 2 shows several ways to curate contents. That's because according to Guy, a twice weekly content is not enough. Mind you, I subscribed to several on-line comics, and some of them are  3 times weekly. I even read Megatokyo webcomic, which if you're in the know, once-a-week update is not adhered to most of the time. I have to differ with Guy here regarding frequency. I don't know about timeliness, but sometimes people are responding to my old posts. So, I'd like to post well-crafted posts. Unfortunately, that's a weekly schedule for you, as I am terribly busy and lacking in free time. I tried to do a little each time, but it didn't work, and I predictably burned out. 

Still, if you do as much research as I do, the book does list useful resources that you can tap into, of which I am eternally grateful. I don't have to do 6 hours of research daily anymore. Now, I can compress it down to just 2-3 hours. Eh, not much time saved? Oh, well.

Chapter 3 is basically the meat of the book. What are you trying to say? What kind of posts will people find popular? Will you find a date on Tinder? These and other questions like them defines this chapter. I was just feeling very sad. If only I had known better. Then again, there's no time like the present to start improving yourself. Already my head is spinning with ideas on how to re-phrase certain planned posts. Thanks, Guy and Peg! What you write down here is worth the whole book to me. I know it's kind of silly to say that the a mere chapter is worth the whole book, but I'd say this holds true for me.

I do have some issue regarding some advice. Giving free Wifi to an event is great. Not providing password to the wifi is incorrect. Yes, if you put on password, it'll have to be posted everywhere. But you'll see the network name and connection, and this will mitigate the man-in-the-middle attack. I certainly don't think that a free wifi is a big deal to risk that and absolutely refuse to connect to free public wifi, which means that the existing wifi is useless to me. If you have the means, then by all means provide more than one, with at least one as protected "premium" version.

A very useful plan is provided for a book launch at the end. It provides a comprehensive step-by-step method to promote your book on Amazon, Goodreads, and other platforms. It is certainly useful to anybody who has any aspiration to promote a product or service on social media. Highly recommended.