Thriving on Social Media

The final chapters of Guy Kawasaki's book "The Art of Social Media gives readers some final tips for using different forms of social media. Before diving into the different forms of social media he gives readers some tips to not look clueless while posting on different forms of social media. Some of his tips for not looking clueless seem obvious but there are still people that do some of the things that he mentions, otherwise he wouldn't have to bring them to the reader's attention.

The first tip is to not say bad things online. Sarcasm doesn't always convey through words on line so depending on the type of media that you put out, it may be best to not use sarcasm. Just being belligerent and mean is not okay to use at any time as a general rule of thumb for life. You do not get anything good from being mean to other people. His next word of advice is to not tell people what to share. People don't like to be told what to do but I don't think that this is a black and white rule for using social media. Making suggestions for other social media profiles for people to read is not a bad thing but telling people that they shouldn't read something should generally be avoided. The next tip is to not buy followers or likes or other things that social media tools use to show that people like your content. This is different from buying page space on Facebook because that is the way the Facebook was designed to run. However, buying followers is unethical if you are trying to show that you are improving your numbers. In the long run it just hurts your company, you are not going to see improvements in other fields which would reflect that the increased number of followers is not helping. I think that the main lesson you can take from Kawasaki's tips to avoid looking clueless is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and see if that is something that you would react positively towards.

Kawasaki discusses some ways to make your content better based on the platform that you are using. If you can, depending on the platform that is being used, embed videos that you are uploading. Embedding videos is more visually appealing and it will be more likely that people will watch the video as opposed to clicking on a link. The Instagram app was designed to keep posts simple. Instagram was made to share the moment of life that you are in, so there is no need to overthink it and try to make yourself look better than everyone else. LinkedIn is a social media tool that is becoming a standard tool used for searching for jobs and building a network in the professional world. If you are trying to build your network, writing a personal message asking people to connect will give you a greater chance of that connection being added. Kawasaki gives multiple tips for many of the most popular types of social media, if you are interested in many more tips across multiple platforms of social media I would encourage you to check out his book.