The Art of Social Media in Summary

This last week we finished our first book for our Principles of Social Media Class. The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick is 184 pages of information best used for a business using social media. As a class, we got through the 12 chapters in four weeks. For this post, I will be picking the item I found most useful in each chapter. Some of these facts will be repeats from previous chapters, but consider it a final round up of helpful tips. Not all tips will be found useful because some chapters were short and common sense to the generations that grew up with social media. Another point to make is these tips are meant for business social media not personal. None-the-less, here we go!

1. How to Optimize Your Profile: stick with one profile picture across social media sites. This is not for personal profiles but it will help your viewers find your company across sites.
2. How to Feed the Content Monster: use a calendar to schedule posts to insure you are constantly updating with new
   material. Use sites like Hubspot.com to work with a team.
3. How to Perfect Your Posts: use an infographic for easy reading and eye appeal. Here is the infographic that was presented in the book.
4. How to Respond to Comments: there should be no more than three replies for a post. Meaning they comment first, you respond, and they respond to your comment. Do not continue after that. If it needs to be addressed do it in a direct message.
5. How to Integrate Social Media and Blogging: add drama in the form of an image, video, or links. It creates more interest.
6. How to Get More Followers: get on new platforms as they start. Even if they do not catch on like Google+ it is still important to own the username for your company.
7. How to Socialize Events: use simple hashtags and encourage everyone at the event to use it as well.
8. How to Run Google+ Hangouts on Air: use good equipment and good lighting. Make sure you know how to use it so you do not waste the first five minutes trying to figure out the sound.
9. How to Rock a Twitter Chat: let your guests know in advance especially of the hashtag and if there are any questions that will be asked.
10. How to Avoid Looking Clueless: if you do not like a post do not comment on it. Move on. This might be hard on your personal account, but for a professional account it is best for the company to ignore it.
11. How to Optimize for individual Platforms: when using Instagram always put a comment with your post. Keep it simple and use a couple of hashtags that will help your viewers understand the post more.
12. How to Put Everything Together: update everything, profile pictures, bios, and content to match each site.

Thank you to the authors of this book for teaching us how to rock social media for businesses. The tips they offered were enlightening and showed their experience. It was a very easy book to use and there were many funny parts of it. Look back next week for a chapter summary and thoughts on our next textbook.