Digital Leaders

Dispatches from those who know how to increase your digital influence.

- Shumit DasGupta

I work in education. I was recently asked to “tweet” in order for our department to gain visibility within our own organization,something I have been consciously avoiding. I quickly discovered three previous Twitter accounts which I started and abandoned after my ADHD kicked in and I got bored. I started a new account. I have 38 followers. 

Suffice to say, I do not have a lot of digital influence. I’m not a digital native—I’m old enough to remember when if you wanted a loudspeaker for your opinions, you needed to get on television, the radio, or write for newspapers. Media was in the hands of professionals, and you had to know someone or be someone to get access. I can even remember when email was novel, rather than being the norm of business and personal communication. Things have changed.

When the editor asked me to do a piece on Digital Influencers, I hesitated. Was she aware of how unsavvy I was at this sort of thing? Since I’m a science person, I wondered if she made the not-unreasonable assumption that I had some amount of tech literacy, something that is patently false.

Still, though, I was curious. I did need to beef up my Twitter numbers. Maybe I could learn something if I could converse with somebody who did know something about this world wide web that the kids are all on these days? And who wouldn’t want a little more digital influence? I decided to say “yes.”

Then I was asked to talk to some pretty important people. By pretty important people I mean people who attended or work with premier universities, who podcast, who manage global networks of communication online. They have their own Wikipedia pages. These people count followers in the thousands or millions.

I’m not sure what to ask them exactly. But I decided to give it a shot.