Highway to Hale

It’s that time of the week again – when I give my opinion on my favorite people to follow on Twitter. I know not all of you are on Twitter, but most of these people have personal or professional blogs that I will try to link as well.

My first #followfriday recommendation goes out to the president of a small-ish online marketing firm in Minneapolis called Spyder Trap. The people over at Spyder Trap are always working working hard and it always shows in their tweets. They are not afraid to tell you exactly what they are working on, and it is hardly ever glorified in any way. @MikeRynchek may be the president of the firm, but he always has his hands dirty in the hard work going on at Spyder Trap. The Spyder Trap Blog often features posts directly from Mike…when he’s not too busy making two+ client pitches per day, playing hockey, or watching his hard work pay off as he signs a master service agreement with UnitedHealthcare.

My second recommendation belongs to somebody that works for Mike at Spyder Trap. He is a fairly new member to the team, but he has obviously fit right in and become dedicated to his work. He also blogs at the Spyder Trap Blog, but has a personal blog where you can find his progress in his new hobby (running) and other really neat insights into his life. I enjoy following @JasonDouglas because he makes a point to engage his followers. When he is not buried in work or running, he asks thought provoking questions (with a sense of general curiosity) and gives his take on pretty much all stories surrounding sports.

My final recommendation goes out to the youngest member of the Spyder Trap team. He’s a recent graduate with all of the energy you would expect from such. His hands-on research for blog posts is always fun to follow. I am not sure if @BradWellman writes for a blog of his own, but his posts at the Spyder Trap Blog are enough to keep me interested. If his tweets about social media, personal life, and hockey are not enough, he is also a BlackBerry enthusiast. In fact, he’s almost always on top of tech news.

You can also follow the @Spyder_Trap account of course, but these three recommendations aren’t happening because they all work in the same building – that’s just a fun coincidence.

Stay tuned for my upcoming blog post about what it is like in the social media job market for recent graduates. Have a great weekend.

Lately, I have taken a step back from the social media landscape. What have I been doing? Listening to some great conversations online, reading non-stop (blogs, twitter, books, news), and researching options for employment pretty heavily – even actually doing a bit of freelance work. Where I’ve done my writing this past week is in the comments of blogs from others.

So, I’m back and have some pretty cool posts lined up for the near future. But today, I take a note from some friends and bring you my follow Friday recommendations via blog. For those of you on Twitter, these are the people I believe you can receive a lot of useful information and good conversation from.

My first recommendation is only natural because you have seen him show up in this blog a few times. Furthermore, he is the reason you can find my follow Friday recs in my blog rather than on Twitter this week (and in the future). If you want to know about PR, marketing, community building, or just have an intelligent conversation, this is the man to listen to. He does a great job of interacting with anybody willing to add value to a conversation. Hopefully I will be able to meet @ArikHanson in person soon because I know the conversation would be great and the fun would be endless.

My second recommendation is a double feature. These two brothers have both recently moved back to their home state (one coming from Minneapolis, the other from Norway and a host of other European countries) to start up a business. They’re young, smart, motivated, and willing to let me in on some of their work to keep my skills sharp and continue learning. @BigTwig16 and @johntmeyer are technically savvy entrepreneurs in the marketing industry with a passion for sports and community. These guys are creative, intelligent, and hardworking – a winning combo.

My final recommendation goes out to an artist. Very few people work as hard as he does for a chance to express their creativity. He works two side jobs so he can have the creative freedom that comes with working at a small start-up agency in the community he loves. He shares great information about design and finds some serious examples of extreme creativity that he loves to converse about. I just framed some of @BrenniFresh‘s print work yesterday because it would have been a shame to let it stay in that trash can I kind of stole it from.

As a last note, try to follow some of the social media coming out of Iran lately. The situation is amazing, horrifying, and intriguing. A lot of young people using social media to bypass an oppressive government and reach out to the world to express that they would like to have a voice.