In the spirit of #followfriday I wanted to include some twitter users that I enjoy following. I suggest you follow them as well as they can provide great insight and entertaining tweets!

@thederekjohnson – College dropout CEO of @Tatango & @Derek_Media.

@skanwar – Partner at Jet Cooper. Part marketer, part geek. Ruthless go-getter, your friend. Evangelist, listener.

@GenYjobs – Co-Founder & CEO of Koda.us. KODA is Social Recruiting – changing the way new talent connects with companies to find jobs. (@kodaus)

@bbunderground – A Blackberry Evangelist speading the Blackberry word …and The Only Real Blackberry Social Network, for users, and abusers

@wesbos – I’m a Web Designer thats into WordPress, CSS, & Jquery. I love vintage bikes. I’m an Internet Astronaut.

You can also follow us a @younggogetter, happy tweets! Also please leave a link to your twitter account in the comments below so we can get to know you!

When you think about companies or organizations that have succeeded in branding themselves well – with a logo or a symbol or maybe even a commercial that sticks in your head, what comes to mind? I’m sure we are familiar with the swoosh from Nike, the Apple logo, the Golden Arches for McDonald’s. But recently, another public eye giant has stepped onto the courts…

LeBron James. And yes, the last sentence was full of puns.

LeBron “The One” James. The 24 year old basketball wunderkind who has made leaps and bounds from a young age at doing things well. We know he dominates on the basketball court as part of the Cavaliers but did you know that he has been a force to be reckoned with in the personal branding world? LeBron has taken full control of how his image is seen by people around the world. He understands that he has alot of influence through corporate endorsements and decided to create his own path to secure his dream of becoming the first billion dollar sports brand.

Yes, billion dollar.

Check out this video interview from 60 Minutes which gives us some insight into the thinking of the branding smart guy.

One fine day, you woke up and decided to have a logo designed for your newly started business. You went out of your bed, searched for logo design companies online and extracted some top ranking links from Google’s search engine. You called them up one by one and finalized one logo design company for your logo and felt relaxed. Your job is not done here!

Hiring a logo design company is not enough. You need to do your homework before asking your logo designer to design a logo for you otherwise all your money and your designer’s time and efforts would go wasted in the end.

Logo creation is a delicate process; therefore, you need to make it easier for your logo designer by clarifying few facets before asking him to start your project.

Write down a detailed Creative Brief:

You as a business owner, must know what exactly you require in your logo because your logo designer is only the creator of the image, you should be the one to guide him what your logo should look like. Prepare a creative brief and clarify the following points to your logo designer to avoid disagreement in the end.

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So I came across this page featured on the West Virginia Surf Report via Twitter and couldn’t help but to laugh. As I took I quick skim over the site, it became pretty obvious what the images represented. The photos are basically fast food concoctions that many of us are familiar with – e.g. Wendy’s Chicken Club, Arby’s Beef ‘n Cheddar sandwich, etc. The ones on the left side represent what we see when the commercials or the billboards try to lure us into the restaurant to quench our stomach churning hunger (induced by the said advertisements, of course). The photos right next to those represent…what we actually get when we open up the wrappers. Now, depending on how much you like any of these foods will determine how much you shake your head in disgust or sigh at the glaring difference in what you actually pay for. The bottomline here is that there is a big difference between what you’re shown/told you are going to get and from what you actually wind up with.

In life, there are plenty of opportunities for us to be duped into believing that everything we see on television or on the Web will be exactly what is shown. It’s tough sometimes but after awhile, you learn from your mistakes. On the flip side, there are even more opportunities for us to tell someone we are going to do something, add on some verbal fluff about what it will be and how much it will help them do something and then it turn out to be a soggy, 2.5 star version of what it should have been.

Whether you are applying this to business (working with clients), social life (helping a friend move) or in relationships (picking her/him up on time) – it is always important to follow through on what you advertise to someone. You’ve pegged yourself as someone who wants to make a difference, who wants to put their energy into making something great and moving forward. How are you going to do that when people expect greatness from you but get mediocre results at best? Each time that happens, you undermine people’s ability to trust that they will get what you tell them and eventually they will look to another establishment/individual for their needs (or hunger!).

You’re better than that. Give your best and you won’t ever have to worry about websites popping up making a mockery of you or your product.

By now, I’m assuming most of you have gone through and added all of these amazing entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. Hopefully, some of them have added you back. Now, your mission is to make sure the people following you on Twitter keep following you. You don’t want to be the victim of someone’s spring cleaning of their following list.

How can you improve your follower retention on Twitter? Start by following these 10 tips.

1. Remember Why People Follow You- This is the first thing you have to figure out. Unless they’re just desperate for more friends, people usually have a specific reason for following you. If your Twitter account is for professional networking, they most likely want to hear your thoughts on relevant industry topics. In other words, they don’t want to read about you clipping your toenails or getting in a fight with your significant other.

2. Determine Why People Quit You- It’s a sad fact of Twitter life, but people will unfollow you at some point. You need to figure out why they’re doing it. One handy tool for doing this is Qwitter. This will send you an alert letting you know the exact moment someone stops following you. It will show your most recent Tweet with the hopes that will shed some light on the situation. If that doesn’t help, ask yourself if you’re living up to your expectations from tip #1.

3. Interact with Your Followers- Twitter is a social tool. So, you need to be social. Don’t just send one-way Tweets. Interact with the people you’re following. Someone is much less likely to drop you if you engage with them on a regular basis. Remember, social networking is about building connections. The only to build strong connections is to chat it up.

4. Don’t Over Tweet- Maybe I’m being anal, but one of the things that leads me to unfollow someone is when they drop 50 Tweets in the span of a few short minutes. It’s like the guy at the conference who tries to take over the show by asking 10,000 questions. Let everyone share the floor. Tweet your heart out, but just be careful not to overdo it.

5. Don’t Under Tweet Either- If you don’t give your Twitter account any attention, you’re begging to be wiped away when someone starts trimming their following list. It goes back to tip#3—if people don’t know you, they’ll have little problem dropping you like a bad habit. Keep your visibility up by making at least a few quality posts each day.

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