On A Mission

Looking through social media is a bit like reading a Dr. Seuss book. You never know what is coming next. Will you see a mouse, or a house, or green eggs and ham? Or a politician getting on a plane to attend a Peace mission for Ukraine.

So, knowing how influential a politician’s or business owner’s social media’s footprint is, I went on an excursion to check out a few LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts. With this week’s reading in mind on the benefits of authentic communication from likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen, I came up with a few real finds to share below.

@CoryBooker, U.S. Senator for New Jersey has a wildly popular social media presence. He is transparent in his introduction as he says right up front that “most tweets (and typos) are mine, some are my team’s.” 

In the business world, I took a look at PepsiCo’s CEO Ramon Laguarta’s LinkedIn posts to find among the quarterly earnings updates, posts about FIFA Women’s World Cup and this one introducing a new limited-edition, Pepsi Nutmeg. The tone of all these posts is neutral, so seems like someone is posting on his behalf and just below this post are some disparaging comments about the working conditions in one of Pepsico’s warehouses, that according to the person who posted, need cleaning up. (I didn’t find any comments to address these remarks.)

If you have ever watched Jeopardy, you will recognize the face of Alex Trebek, longtime host who died in 2021. In his brief announcement posted to Facebook in 2019, he shares devastating news about his stage four pancreatic cancer because he didn’t want his fans to hear inaccurate information. He’s transparent, human and to his credit, manages to crack a joke about needing to fulfill his contract through 2022. This to me is just about the closest thing to being authentic and transparent in social media: 

I am interested in social causes, so I looked at the social media presence for the head of Wheeler (Sabrina Trocchi, PhD, MPA) and found nothing on Twitter and only a light touch on LinkedIn.

All of this does make you think about the challenges in developing authentic posts while running a business. 

Before I finish, I want to share a couple of endearing posts from Jacques Lamarre, playwright and creative professional for a Hartford-based marketing firm:

His sense of humor makes his posts easy to swallow and are some of the most entertaining I’ve found.