Social Media for Strategic Communication

Since we finished "The Art of Social Media" last week, this week we begin "Social Media for Strategic Communication" by Karen Freberg. This book is very different from the last. Instead of a self-help book, it is more like a traditional textbook in size and length. The chapters are much longer; however, from the quick skim I did it seems to have a lot of tables and examples as well. Chapter 1 is titled "Introduction to Social Media" and surprise, surprise, it is just that. This first chapter gives a little information on the popular social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and gives a lot of information on what social media is, what platforms you should use, and how to use social media as a practice. While a lot of this information I already knew, I can see how this would be helpful to someone who is not as familiar with social media. I think it is a great introduction to the book, even if I do feel like I am back in high school reading my history textbook. I am interested to see what else is in this textbook in the later chapters. Besides the actual content of the chapter, I also enjoy the structure of how the chapters are set up. There are learning objectives at the beginning of every chapter and thought questions/exercises at the end of every chapter to help the reader reflect on what they've read and learned from the book. I think that is a helpful tool to have especially if students will be quizzed over the book.