Friday, August 1, 2008

Twitter Thought Leaders

I've mentioned before that I don't do Twitter. The reason is the same as why I don't buy donuts or keep Valium in the house: I am a weak person. If I tried it, I would totally love it. And the rest of my productive life would grind to a halt and I would lose what remains of my sanity.

But in case you do Twitter and are looking for good people to follow who are authorities in social media, marketing, PR, and business, PR guru Peter Shankman has provided a good starter list:

  • @brianmorrissey
  • @chrisbrogan
  • @philgomes
  • @guykawasaki
  • @colinmckay
  • @jspepper
  • @skydiver (himself)
  • @sarahmorgan
  • @mashable
  • @overthinker
  • @jowyang
  • @savvyauntie
  • @zappos
  • @maratriangle
  • @prblog
  • @pistachio
  • @DougH
  • @JanePorricelli
  • @astrout
  • @michaelallison
Anybody got any suggestions for good publishing people to follow in Twitter? It would be fun to put together a list.

5 comments:

Mark Roy Long said...

I have to admit, I've never really quite "gotten" Twitter as far as investing a lot of time in it, especially for business purposes. It strikes me the same as a lot of Web 2.0 social networking marketing tools: potentially (and endlessly) entertaining, but I'm not sure how you track the real ROI when it comes to getting sucked into it as opposed to other publishing-related activities.

Sarah said...

Mark, I felt the same way for about a year.

Once you hit the right people to follow, you make Twitter useful for you. Till then, yeah, it's a time suck.

But, at least for me, it's been an extremely worthwhile balance to find.

Sarah Morgan (@sarahmorgan above)
http://www.sarah-morgan.com

Anonymous said...

I avoided Twitter and then, finally, took the plunge. I see and have problems with the concept of social networking. For one thing. I think it can often take on a life of its own. Me, I can be dopily competitive about anything that gets numbers attached to it. It becomes like keeping score if I don’t watch out.

It can also become addictive, that sense of just hanging out and keeping up with people. And work can fall by the wayside.

The other main negative point is this false sense of value to becoming friends (albeit usually just online, where the word “friend” is used very loosely) with someone you don’t really intend to know.

Kind of like my 60 second contact with Amway, back in the early ’80s. I lived with a teacher at the time. Teachers, for some reason, were particularly susceptible to the Amway pitch back then. And the way my girlfriend got hooked and tried to enroll my support was someone’s idea of the “cool” notion that you could have a tax-deductible party by piggybacking an Amway meeting onto the party.

I told my girlfriend (at the time), “But if it weren’t for the Amway part there’s no way I’d want to know any of these people, much less attend a party with them.”

On the other hand, I’m trying very hard to connect with (on LinkedIn) and to follow/be followed by (via Twitter) people with whom I feel a professional kinship or that might provide some professional benefit. (I am certainly hopeful that I would be of benefit to them, too.)

So it’s imperative—and the reason I don’t really have very many, comparatively, Twitter buds. (As for LinkedIn, I made a mess of that early on, deciding to just roll up the numbers if I could. I have few relevant connections there, I think, tho’ it’s now become hard to tell.)

On Twitter, however, I regularly do searches on such terms as “book design,” “book publishing,” and “book layout.” I hope it will lead to more, steadier, and better paying freelance book design/page comp work. The jury’s still out.

As a closing aside ... Mark is someone I’ve had worthwhile, publishing-relevant, and friendly contact online for awhile now. So I’ll be searching you on Twitter and following in a minute. And Sarah, since what you just said rings true to me, too, I’ll only know whether you’re a relevant follow by trying it.

Tweet ho!

Mark Roy Long said...

Okay, so Steve Tiano shamed me into getting us a Twitter account set up even though it is more fun (and easy) to be critical of things you've never used.

(For any intereted parties, our account is tstcpublishing)

Lori Cates Hand said...

I have to say that after all my protests, I might try it myself as well!