Actionable Marketing Advice

Most useful digital marketers to follow on Twitter

Why the list?

Many marketers on Twitter are still relatively new to it, and like me have the challenge of needing to keep up-to-date across the whole of digital marketing.

So, I wrote this post at the start of 2009 to show who I think is really worthwhile following, i.e. there is a good signal to noise ratio focusing on insights which help me learn about the latest developments or best practice. I’ve updated it in 2010 to include others I now regularly follow.

My recommendations on who to follow are categorised across all the the different areas of online marketing shown in the diagram below based on who I have found useful to follow to keep me up-to-date, advance my knowledge. Generally I have just included real people rather than publishers or information sites that just push updates and don’t interact.

I hope you find my tweets useful too! - I try to act as a filter for marketers who don’t have so much time to spend in Twitter themselves to find the useful updates on digital marketing tips, tools, techniques and announcements. That’s where I try to concentrate my Tweets.

In this latest update I have also included the relevant section in the Twitter user directory Wefollow - this will give you some ideas, but I find it ‘hit and miss’ – most of the Internet marketers I follow don’t feature highly on these lists eventhough they are well known from books, blogs,  conferences, etc. Maybe they are spending time working.

But I’m sure I’ll be missing some useful specialists, so if you know someone you think will help me and others in keeping up-to-date, please let us know in the comments or through an @DaveChaffey message in Twitter. Alternatively check out this longer (100+) list of best digital marketers to follow on Twitter from Geno Prussakov

Skip straight to the categories of the best digital marketers to follow on Twitter

What is the scope of digital marketing?

It’s massive! The whole of marketing, online.

While many agencies and consultants operate in just one area, like search or email marketing, many client-side marketers and account managers at agencies need to know keep up-to-date across the whole of digital marketing

Since I consult, train or write across all of digital marketing, I also need to keep my life challenging by keeping up-to-date on all techniques in digital marketing that make a difference.

So there are lot’s of specialists I like to keep up-to-date through about what’s happening in search, email marketing, online PR, web design and conversion optimization, affiliate marketing and web analytics. These are what matter most to most companies.

The chart covers all aspects of digital marketing that need to be managed across acquiring, converting and communicating to customers online:

Digital marketing processes

Digital marketing processes

Source: Econsultancy Guide to Managing Digital Channels

Criteria for inclusion in my list

I follow a range of digital consultants, publications, agencies and vendors who tweet practical tips, examples and the latest developments.

If you’re following multiple digital sectors like I am,  you have to be a bit ruthless so, I currently only follow around 50 well-respected commentators and guy’s doing this stuff day-in-day-out whose tweets are mainly about sharing tips and current developments rather than what they’re up to.

That means I’ve missed many experts whose noise to signal ratio is too high for me, plus many publications who don’t use Twitterfeed to syndicate their RSS – like many I spend a lot less time in my feed reader these days.

So finally, the list:

Who to follow in digital marketing

General Digital Marketing and strategy

Of course, Seth Godin’s blog is worth following for all marketers, but Seth doesn’t “do Twitter”.

E-commerce and E-retail

  • etail / Internet Retailing (UK trade magazine)
  • US http://www.internetretailer.com/ not on Twitter?
  • Roxyyo / Linda Bustos and jbillingsley / Jason Billingsley (formerly) of vendor Elastic Path

Conversion optimization and customer engagement

Web analytics

I know this area well since you can’t get anywhere with digital marketing unless you don’t test, measure and optimize.

Website design

Jakob Nielsen of Useit.com isn’t active on Twitter, but two of the main source I follow are:

Web copywriting and blogging

These guys know a thing about online PR too – amongst the most popular on this list:

My friend and colleague Jonathan Gabay is also worth following via his Brand Forensics blog.

Who to follow in digital media

In my books we breakdown digital media 6 ways to help with planning and managing it. So I have grouped people I follow in these 6 areas:

The 6 main types of digital media channels

The 6 main types of digital media channels

Source: Chaffey et. al. (2009) : Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice

1. Search Engine Marketing (SEO and PPC)

One of my specialist areas, so quite a few here:

2. Online PR and social media

So many, to chose from! Social media experts have been around on Twitter from the beginning. So I’ll be selective

Thanks Phil at theredrocket.co.uk for recommending PR blogger’s similar list for the UK PR industry

http://www.prblogger.com/2008/11/uk-pr-people-on-twitter/

"€¦which got loads of people asking to be added, so it morphed into a useful wiki on the subject

http://ukmediatweeple.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

3. Online partnership marketing (including affiliate marketing)

Not so active in affiliate marketing so thanks to @djbarker for recommendations. Have picked out those with the best signal for my preferences.

See also A4U Forum list of affiliate marketers to follow

  • eprussakov Geno Prussakov author of one of the best books on affiliate marketing and the excellent AM Navigator blog
  • affiliatetip / Shawn Collins well-known US affiliate
  • onelittleduck / Jason Dale of Loquax
  • affiliatedoctors / affiliatedoctors – keeps in touch with most well-known UK affiliates – a lot of banter amongst these guys – nice community
  • clarkeduncan / Clarke Duncan of Paid on Results has interesting snippets on developments in affiliate marketing

4. Online advertising

Oops I’m missing anything here although I’m a member of IAB.  Any thoughts?

Ogilvy have recommended their www.twitter.com/ogilvy which syndicates their blog postings across all media including advertising. WPP tweet next to nothing

5. Email marketing

Quite an active community here, another of my specialisms:

6. Viral marketing (and social media)

See Online PR.

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  • http://www.silverpop.com Loren McDonald

    Dave,

    Great list of digital marketers to follow – I’ve discovered several folks on the list I didn’t realize were tweeting and will start following them. Thanks for sharing the list.

    And thanks for including me on the list – honored and appreciate it.

    Loren McDonald

  • http://www.bigmouthmedia.com Andrew Girdwood

    Thanks for including me! Also; I have to say it’s nice to see a list backed up with some sort of rationale as to how it was put together.

  • http://www.customercommunicationscommunity.com Jules

    A very useful post for people to use. Diagrams also explain it well. Thanks.

  • http://interactivemarketingtrends.blogspot.com giles rhys jones

    Nice list. You might want to check out twitter.com/ogilvy. An amalgamation of all ogilvy blog posts covering all digital media/disciplines and our verge digital news.ps yes I work for ogilvy.

    • http://www.davechaffey.com Dave Chaffey

      Thanks Giles – Am following Ogilvy.

      Still looking for others in social media / E-PR and display advertising.

  • http://mediaczar.com/blog Mat Morrison

    You could do worse than look at Stephen Waddington’s post, Top 50 UK PR people on Twitter, of course. Would also recommend taking a look at my own Twitter research — but then, I would, wouldn’t I?

  • http://www.theredrocket.co.uk The Red Rocket

    Nice charts ;-)

    PR blogger Stephen Davies started this off a while ago for the PR industry
    http://www.prblogger.com/2008/11/uk-pr-people-on-twitter/

    …which got loads of people asking to be added, so it morphed into a useful wiki on the subject
    http://ukmediatweeple.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

    it would be interesting to see other groups incorporated into this – not that I’m suggesting you do it, of course.

    Oh and for what it’s worth, I’m @theredrocket :-)

  • http://www.atinternet.com/en Walid Robert Norris

    Thanks for this Dave. Very useful list to help a twitter newbie (e.g. moi) cut through all the hullabaloo to focus on the interesting stuff. Many thanks

  • shep

    Ashley Friedlein has 11 updates. Hopefully he’ll use twitter, otherwise it’s not a great first recommendation!

    Glad you got Andy Beal in your top 5 general marketing one though. A great follow, and would recommend subscribing to his blog RSS too.

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  • http://www.just-eat.co.uk Ash Ali

    Once again Dave with a superb blog post and some very interesting set of people to follow on Twitter. The 6 groups covers pretty much everything and i think we have an excellent list of pros here!

  • http://www.chiefmartec.com Scott Brinker

    Hi, Dave — honored to be included in your list! Also have found some other great people to follow. (Could you make a minor tweak and add the “r” to the end of my name?) Many thanks!

  • http://www.davechaffey.com Dave Chaffey

    Thanks Mat and @TheRedRocket for the E-PR tips – I hadn’t seen that.
    Thanks also Ash – I hope all well with you.
    @shep – fair point about Ashley, but I know and respect him, so sure he will deliver. He has 400+ followers, so will have to…

  • http://blog.bronto.com DJ Waldow

    Dave -

    I’d like to say the exact same thing as my colleague Loren McDonald said above. Word for word. Not sure I could have said it any better.

    dj (Bronto)

  • http://www.bedroompublishing.com Nick

    Great list, now following everyone that you suggest.

    You may also want to check out shoemoney.com the guy has made a fortune from AdSense and he often talks lots of sense when it comes to digital marketing.

    • http://www.davechaffey.com Dave Chaffey

      Yes Shoemoney is entertaining, but a bit too much noise for me and too detailed for general digital marketers rather than search specialists.

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  • http://www.venues.org.uk Allen

    As a recent user to using Twitter I have found your list and similar lists very useful in finding good industry contacts to follow.

    Cheers!

  • http://www.promotional-merchandise.org.uk/ Paul

    Hi,
    I am quite new to social networking sites including Twitter, and was looking for a good source to improve my knowledge. Thanks for your list of online marketers to follow, I hope I will learn a lot and apply it to my product.
    Cheers

  • http://www.make-it-rain.co.uk @mohamedosman

    Great list Dave, keep the good work…

  • http://blendingthemix.com Paul Fabretti

    I think you would be limiting your potential audience Dave if you were to consider the online pr audience only.

    social media is clearly (at the moment anyway) open to any number of people – the pr peeps in the UK at least seem to be dominating.

    My advice woudl be to look at the UK-based Ad Age Top 150 blogs.

    http://t4w.blogs.com/spinningaround/2009/07/the-uks-top-marketing-weblogs.html

    • http://www.davechaffey.com Dave Chaffey

      Yes Paul, the AdAge 150 is a good way of independently benchmarking useful sources although it won’t include some of the most influential / useful people in Digital marketing like Avinash Kaushik, Bryan Eisenberg, Steve Woods, etc. These days, it’s more slanted to online publishers with teams of bloggers while this post is more about individuals to follow on Twitter.

  • http://www.digitalpersonnel.co.uk Ashley Seddon

    A great list, I have added a number of your suggestion to my own list. No mention of a specialist in the digital media recruitment field, so may I take this opportunity of advising a follow to @digitalrec.

  • http://www.tsnn.co.uk Brantley

    Hi, cheers for providing this great list I am using it and trying to expand my own contact and follows in the UK Events and Exhibitions field with Twitter.

  • http://www.asomo.net Jonathan Moody

    Great list and i will certainly check out a few. However, I am already suffering digital marketing/social media guru overload. As a recent review of Adtech Chicago said “Agencies talking to agencies.” More useful for me (and more difficult to find) are clientside Tweeters. I follow a guy at Kodak and he provides a steady stream of updates on what a fairly social media savvy company are up to..

    • http://www.davechaffey.com Dave Chaffey

      Hi Jonathan – good point about client-side marketers to follow. Mostly they are too busy, but there are those who make the leap to the other side who can be really useful before they do – Sam Decker at Dell, Avinash Kaushik at Intuit and Kevin Hillestrom at Nordstrom spring to mind. Sounds like a good idea for the post. What is the address of the guy at Kodak please!

  • http://www.actionable-analytics.com Jonny Longden

    Thanks for the mention Dave,

    And if anyone is interested, I also write a blog about web analytics, which is also available as RSS if you want to subscribe.

    Jonny Longden
    Actionable Analytics Blog

    (anyone notice the shameless back-linking?)

    • http://www.davechaffey.com Dave Chaffey

      Yes that is shameless Jonny but i will allow it because it’s useful to my readers and all comment tags on my blog are nofollowed, so Google ignores them for SEO (if you believe that).

  • http://www.allinclusivemarketing.com Sarah V Bundy

    Nice post, thanks for the tips on who to follow.

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  • http://twittervendingmachine.com Jimmy Sou

    Excellent post, you must have done a lot of research

  • ksaxoninternet

    Realise this is an old post now (impressed at how current it seems!) but if you’re still lacking in online advertising tweeters to follow there’s a few in my list of internet marketers to follow: http://www.boom-online.co.uk/alternative-top-tweeters

    Otherwise, it’s hard to pick out just a couple. For access to a really great group of people, follow #ppcchat: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23PPCChat?q=%23PPCChat For a great client side PPC specialist try Neil Sorenson http://twitter.com/iNeils. For sharing his own in depth investigation and tweeting great information Martin Röttgerding is your man http://twitter.com/bloomarty

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