Essentials of Social Media Marketing

After finishing reading Stukent’s textbook, Essentials of Social Media Marketing, for class, I feel a bit indifferent in regard to the book. I thought there were both pros and cons to the book and the information it provided. Depending on the audience, the book could be useful or useless.

On the plus side, I did think the book was very good for beginners and considering it was a principles class, that made sense. The book was almost like a social media for dummies, it explained all the concepts and platforms in a way that was very easy for anyone to understand. The PowerPoint slides provided also made it exceptionally easy to follow along in class. I also thought that the “by the numbers” portions of each chapter helped with learning those facts because it was in one big graphic instead of simply in paragraph format.

On the other hand, because I do know social media, it almost got boring to read because it felt like I already knew everything, or it was all common sense. I also think because of how much time my generation, and society in general, spend on social media, it is more likely for others to feel the same way. I could be wrong and maybe I’m just online too much, but at certain points while reading the textbook it started to seem extremely repetitive with obvious information.

Overall, I think the book had advantages and disadvantages, and I think whether I would recommend the textbook would depend on the situation. If you know absolutely nothing about social media, I definitely recommend it. But for college students that already use most of the popular social media platforms, I think there’s more useless or already known information in the book than otherwise, and making quick PowerPoints would have been just as effective.

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