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 …

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, …

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.

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 …

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.

Are you still waiting to see if social media marketing is worth your time? It’s understandable to be hesitant of this new style of marketing, but entrepreneurs in particular have a lot to gain from getting involved with social media. It’s a free way to get in touch …

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
—Niels Bohr

When you make the decision to leave the comfortable corporate life to be an entrepreneur, you’re bound to make some mistakes. Ask any successful business person how they got to where they are today, and they’ll probably tell you it was by learning from their costly mistakes. While many people few mistakes as huge blows to their business, I believe it’s better to cherish these mistakes and to learn from them so that you’ll be a smarter, more effective entrepreneur.

So, by now you’re wondering what the biggest mistake I’ve ever made is. Let me start by giving a little background- I’m a freelance copywriter. As a freelancer, there is no set salary, and sometimes you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from. This is something all entrepreneurs can identify with.

The mistake I made was I got comfortable. Things were going surprisingly well at an early stage of my business. I had more than enough work on my plate, and all of my clients were happy with the copy I was providing them with. Things couldn’t have been better.

Then, it all came to a crashing halt. Projects were done; contracts were completed; and suddenly, I had no work. Just as quickly as I had built a successful business, it was all gone. I had committed the cardinal sin: I stopped marketing myself because I was too busy working for my clients.