Taylor Swift is a master of social media who has over 200 million followers across platforms. She builds relationships by personally responding to fans' posts and messages, keeping her social media presence authentic. Swift also creatively promotes her work, like dropping clues about her album on Instagram. She stands up for causes through social media as well, convincing Apple to pay artists for streaming after they had planned not to. Her strategic and personal social media use has made her the undisputed queen of social media.

1. Case Study Don’t Mess with the Queen of Social Media
In the 21st century, record sales are depressed. Yet her albums
sell by the millions. She has 60 million followers on Twitter
and another 100 million friends and subscribers among
Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
She is pop singer Taylor Swift, and in the second decade of the
21st century, she is the undisputed queen of social media.
How she has mastered the social medium should serve as a
primer for any individual or organization eager to understand
and penetrate the world’s most potent communications force.
Here’s how she’s done it.
Building Relationships
Public relations begins with building relationships, and here
Taylor Swift is a master. The singer may be a millionaire many
times over, but she never loses sight of her “Swifties.”
Answering the appeals of the Swift fan base appears to be the
singer’s number one interest. She builds a relationship with her
audience by responding to random appeals on Twitter and
Instagram. For example:
· A girl named Hannah wrote to the singer that she was being
bullied, so Swift decided to send a heartfelt message
encouraging her to “keep walking in the sunlight.” The
Instagram comment Swift posted on the girl’s fan account went
viral.
· Another fan told the singer of her heartbreak over a lost boy
friend, and Swift told her to, “Hang in there.” Again, the
Instagram went viral.
· Swift used Instagram to wish another fan a happy 16th
birthday, congratulated another on her engagement, and another
on earning her driver’s license. She even commended the “sense
of humor” of another teenage follower.
Such interactions occasionally open Swift to attack from the
some of the more cynical denizens of the Internet, but the more
Swift embraces the hate, the more popular she gets. With

2. strategic social media messages like these to individual fans,
Swift has developed a reputation for caring that transcends that
of any other superstar. Indeed, one Swiftie even devotes a
Tumblr account to follow Swift’s likes and comments on
Instagram.
Keeping It Real
In the 21st century, everyone from corporate CEOs to
entertainers to the President of the United States to the Queen
of England communicate via social media. But how many of
them have ghost writers, i.e. public relations assistants who
draft the missives for them? Answer: Nearly all of them. Except
for . . . Taylor Swift!
While most celebrities, like Britney Spears whose manager
tweets from her client’s account to the 39 million Britney
followers, have social media experts writing for them round-
the-clock, Swift, by all accounts, engages with fans in a raw and
natural way, personalizing her social media communications.
When a Swift fan tweeted her how she went “bonkers” over a
particular song at a concert, the singer retweeted that the girl
had “made her day!!!!” When another fan tweeted about a local
dance party with all Swift songs, the singer tweeted back,
“Wish I was there!!!!”
The Swift social media “touch,” including the multiple!!!!
exclamation marks, adds to the singer’s authenticity as a social
media presence and, by extension, as a “real” person. Indeed, in
her interviews and personal appearances—including the time
she threw a private concert for a six-year-old Leukemia patient
and her two-hour lunch with a 17-year-old girl battling cancer—
Swift comes across as confident, enthusiastic, and the “real
deal.”
Promoting Creatively
The fact that everybody uses social media means that just like
any other medium, to really score with the new technology, one
must use it creatively. Here again, Taylor Swift excels.
In 2014, when the singer was about ready to drop her new
album, “1989,” she enticed a larger audience by dropping clues

3. on Instagram. In the video, an unseen person presses the 18th
floor button of an elevator, followed by a screen shot of her
phone, showing the time, 5 p.m. Another screen shot
mysteriously showed Yahoo!’s search engine.
This creative gamification strategy gave her audience an
additional reason to care about what the singer was leading up
to. The outgrowth: Swift would debut the album with a live
stream on Yahoo at 5 p.m. on August 18.
Not only did the singer leave the social media clues to entice
interest in the new album, but she also proceeded to comment,
favor, and retweet individual fan posts about the campaign.
And beyond the social media games, Taylor Swift also is canny
enough to avail herself of social media’s most fetching
commodity—the cat. So when the singer walks her cats or goes
shopping with them, she makes a point of posting the photo for
her adoring fans. Predictably, those fans have awarded Swift’s
cats, Meredith and Olivia, with numerous social profiles (Figure
10-8).
Such are the initiatives that separate celebrities who merely
understand and use social media from those who are true social
media prodigies.
Standing for Something
Taylor Swift also distinguishes herself from other social media
users by demonstrating, through social media postings, that she
stands for something.
This gutsiness was amply demonstrated in the summer of 2015
when Apple announced that it didn’t plan to pay artists royalties
during a free, three-month trial of its new streaming music
service.
Immediately after the Apple announcement, Swift posted an
online announcement of her own, saying she would withhold her
latest album from the service because Apple wasn’t planning to
pay artists and labels directly for the use of their music. In part,
the singer posted on her Tumblr page:
To Apple, Love Taylor
“We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to

4. provide you with our music for no compensation.”
She closed by expressing hope that the company might change
its policy and “change the minds of those in the music industry
who will be deeply and gravely affected by this.”
And within hours, that’s exactly what the most powerful tech
company in the world decided to do. Said Apple’s senior vice
president, “When I woke up this morning and I saw Taylor’s
note that she had written, it really solidified that we needed to
make a change.” And so Apple did, gently brought to its knees
by the Queen of Social Media
The Gig Economy
Uber is largely hailed as the advent of the gig economy, which
is the idea that people will not work for any one employer, but
instead will work on projects for any variety of companies
desiring their services. While creating a new type of
entrepreneurship for individuals, it raises a host of new legal
questions for companies around the law of agency.
An investment firm has asked you to evaluate Uber’s legal
exposure for the conduct of its drivers.
Write an interoffice memo in which you:
1. Summarize the main principles of agency.
2. Analyze the circumstances under which Uber might be liable
for the conduct of its drivers.
3. Identify the steps Uber can take, if any, to limit its legal
exposure for the conduct of its drivers.
4. Use at least four (4) quality and real/credible resources in
this assignment. Note: Wikipedia is not an acceptable reference
and proprietary Websites do not qualify as academic resources.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
• Your news brief or memo should include a heading, summary
statement, background and recommendations.