Identify an influential thought leader whom you admire
Identify an influential thought leader whom you admire (or not) and follow that person on social media (Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc.). Your objective is to keep up-to-date on what your leader is thinking and sharing publicly. You should mainly track how followers:
Are responding to the leader’s posts or tweets.
What messages are they retweeting? What is the public feedback to the leader’s posts?
How many likes? Dislikes?
How are followers promoting, defending, or criticizing the leader on social media?
Keep track of the typology of responses (e.g., favorable/unfavorable of leader; favorable/unfavorable of a particular issue, etc.) Try to identify different follower styles from social media posts? For example, who is a die-hard? Who seems to be alienated? Who is a pragmatist (person who is guided by practical ideas)? How does the leader respond to follower feedback, if at all? How much influence do followers’ comments seem to have on the leader’s expressed attitudes or behavior?
Your Task:
Write a 2-page paper (excludes title and reference page) describing:
their typology of follower responses
the functions of followers’ social media posts
any influence the followers’ posts had on public opinion of the leader or on the leader’s expressed ideas and behaviors.
What advice would you give the leader on how to better motivate followers or use the capabilities of the medium (e.g., Twitter–brevity, Facebook–networking, visuals) to influence people toward a common goal?
