Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

As a follow-on to my last post - Eight Business Reasons to Twitter - here are ten people I’d recommend you follow once you’ve set up your account, in no particular order:

@jowyang - Jeremiah is a Forrester analyst whom I met years ago at a Web 2.0 conference when he was just beginning to blog. He’s very active on Twitter, has good opinions, and asks a lot of good questions.

@Scobleizer - Robert Scoble was the original blogger who gave Microsoft a human face and heart. He’s probably got more people following his blog and Twitter feeds than any other - because he gives good tips and hints. Watch and learn.

@turoczy - Rick Turoczy writes Portland’s Silicon Florist blog, I can always find interesting information - especially about Portland - reading his tweets.

@marshallk - Marshall Kirkpatrick is a lead blogger on ReadWriteWeb, a Portlander, and I find much breaking technology news from him.

@pkedrosky - Paul Kedrosky is a VC, an academic and a tech watcher with an economic bent. I guess you’d call him a brainiac Renaissance Man. Follow him and see if you can come up with a better description.

@pdxmama - Suzame Tong is a marketer, sustainable living advocate, Portland Farmer’s Market Board member and delicious writer. Learn the ‘art of the tweet’ from her.

@thisKat - Katherine Gray is a web strategist, usability mentor, extreme Twitterer and gives great reports from conferences, her back yard, and life in her basement office.

@charleneli - Charlene Li, the Forrester social media analyst guru, why wouldn’t you follow her feed? (Tip - see who she follows, and check out whether you might want to, too…)

@dtboyd - Dylan Boyd over at eROI always makes me laugh at least once or twice a day from his feed, he also posts useful news for Portlanders.

@gapingvoid - Hugh MacLeod, artist, sage observer of human nature and a guy who actually moved TO Texas from Great Britain; he is a bellweather of breaking industry trends, connected individual and sometimes curmudgeon. I like him.

Once you get a good suite of people to follow (I’d much rather follow than be followed, learning is way fun), find out which of your followers know each other using a tool like TweetWheel. Thanks to @CalEvans, who blogs over at Sixty Second Tech and recently published a great eBook, Twitter for Marketers, if you’d like to take your education a step further.

BTW, I follow more than 200 people on Twitter, and it’s a pretty random list I’ve pulled here. I hope those I haven’t mentioned won’t take my lack of mention seriously. Browse through anyone I follow, and you’ll find some gems who will absolutely delight you.