I have been following many founder-CEOs, VCs, investors, and business and thought leaders on social media, as have millions of others. They are obviously successful in their careers (and perhaps lives too), have interesting stories to tell, are fun people to listen to/read, and much of what they say is meant to be positive, inspiring, and something you can learn from; some of what they say is meant to be consciousness-raising and something that changes the way you look at things; and of course, all of what they say is supposed to be engaging and entertaining.
However, to the experienced eye/ear, their social media engagement also sounds very much like self-positioning and brand building for their own person (as well as their enterprise), and if you are a sceptic (like I am), it looks like all they are doing is humblebragging, virtue signalling, and/or copy-pasting/paraphrasing some insipid ‘motivational’ stuff, catchy phrases, and truisms. Let me hasten to add that there is little other than that they can do on social media, given the constraints of their job and celebrity status. So, let us not judge them too quickly.
However, my question to you is: How honest do you think their posts are and how much of it is just for optics? Do you think they are serious or are they simply posting because they need to post an X amount of times a week to stay relevant online? Do you think they are WYSIWYG or are they following a playbook (especially those who claim that it isn’t their SM team that is handling their personal accounts but they themselves)? Do you believe them when they talk of entrepreneurship or investing or business (or even social change)? Or do you take them all with a pinch of salt, and if so, how large a pinch is that?
Ditto political, social, literary, artistic, philosophical, academic, religious, and scientific figures and celebrities. But let us keep this discussion to the business (and allied areas) leaders.
