21A - Reading Reflection No. 2

The book I chose to read was Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan. The general theme of the book is putting your company, business, or even idea out into the realm of the internet, particularly social media outlets. As such, it goes over topics like: how to remain relevant with the changes to the shopping industry, how to get your name/brand on Google, how to gain more consumers through your current consumers, and how to efficiently market yourself on social media, to name a few of the topics. Although the book is a bit outdated compared to the standards of social media and online marketing today, the core values it presents can still be used. In my opinion, the most useful topics are those involving people's behaviors, like chapter 8 that details how people are more likely to show others a site or webpage if it "blew their mind."
The book's topics did connect with many of the topics we've learned in the class thus far. Most of which involved marketing and how to turn your prospects into leads. When it comes to how this book "enhanced my learning" for the class. Most of the material had already been covered in previous lectures for this course, as such I already thoroughly understood the topics. I noticed as I was going through the book, that it mostly covers surface level details, never really delving deep into its marketing topics. This is probably because the book itself is marketed toward entry-level marketers, not people who have more experience and knowledge, like the people taking this class.
If I were to design an exercise for this class based on the book, I'd design an exercise that revolves around having the students create their own mock social media page. It'd involve them using a program like Wix in order to show me how they'd "wow" their visitors. They'd be graded based on the principles the book tries to show, like how easily would I be able to find it on Google, would I be enticed to show more people the site, and so on.
I suppose what most surprised me about the book is the alternative to having people who frequent social media on your team. The suggestion posed was to work with a PR agency. Granted, this seems like an obvious solution, but its one I'd never given much consideration. Frankly, I've always thought that it'd be the easiest simply to hire or work alongside people who understand the platform. But the process of hiring, working with, and gathering knowledge from a PR team was quite interesting. Many of the topics covered in this book I'd already been at least somewhat aware of, but I've never had to work with a PR agency, so this was a bit eye opening.