It’s been a long journey since I started in the search marketing industry and over the years I have had the chance to meet and interact with a number of great search and social marketers. Many of whom I have come to look up to in one way or another.  Each of them bring upon their own talents and expertise. However, when I think of all of the different people I interact with on Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn I realize that there are a handful of folks that I am constantly looking towards for new inspiration and information. And with that I developed a list of the top 5 search and social geeks I wish I could spend just one day with to see their processes and how they work.

David Harry
Twitter: @theGypsy
www.huomah.com

David Harry, AKA ‘The Gypsy’ is one of the first search marketers who really got me to think outside the box.  He helped me to understand patents better and the importance of understanding information retrieval as a means to bettering my SEO. When we first started chatting it up a year or so ago I would spend hours scouring the net for new knowledge, patents, and information.  Unfortunately as time has passed and my kids have gotten older a lot of that free time has gone by the wayside, but his inspiration is still there and he is still someone I greatly admire and look to for new ideas.  If that weren’t enough, he also writes the SEO Dojo SEO Newsletter to keep me abreast on any geekiness I missed.

Tamar Weinberg
Twitter: @tamar
www.techipedia.com

Tamar is probably one of the first social savvy internet marketers I began following in my early days on Twitter and even Plurk (remember Plurk??). I’ve always loved how well she can cross over between the search and social realms and still display a balanced level of expertise.  Many marketers you come across are strong in one more so than the other, but I have always found Tamar to be a knowledgeable source on both ends of the spectrum.

Melanie Nathan
Twitter: @melanienathan
www.canadianseo.com

A friendly face and a sweet personality aren’t the only things that put Melanie on my list.  In fact the one thing about Melanie that I admire most is her passion for link building, of all tasks.  It’s not rare to find Melanie spouting off on Twitter about the latest sweet link she got hold of, nor is it uncommon for her to share some juicy link building tidbits on various blogs.  But what I admire is that SHE LIKES IT! As a search marketer one of the tasks I have always loathed is link building. Part of that may stem from the limitations I have to seek out quality links at my workplace, but I would love to know what it is she does that makes her link building efforts so fun.

Samir Balwani
Twitter: @samirbalwani
www.samirbalwani.com

I’ll call him social marketing’s rising star, because in my eyes he is.  I have seen Samir take leaps and bounds in his blogging and his marketing career over the last year and I don’t see any signs of him stopping either.  Another great mind whose posts have often forced me to think, Samir does a great job at giving folks some rhyme and reason to their social media marketing efforts and also gives some great insight on how easily it is to mess it all up. Samir’s knack for understanding social media, tracking social metrics, and interest in social media education are just some of the many things I have come to appreciate in Samir’s writing and in our interactions.

Audrey Seiberling
Twitter: @shirleytipsy
www.missshirleytipsy.com

The funny thing about having Audrey on my list is that 1) she is the one who started my search marketing career, and 2) I have worked under her not once, but twice.  In fact for almost a year we worked within 5 feet of one another.  But during that time I have never really seen her process as a search marketer. With taking over a lot of her duties upon her leaving my current company I have gotten a little bit more insight into how she worked, but haven’t really pieced together the whole process.  With a strong background in PPC and SEO and the fact that this whole thing started because of her, I would love to just have a day to see how it all comes together.

So there you have it, a handful, but by no means all of the search and social geeks I look up to on a regular basis. Who are some of the search and social marketers you admire?

You might recall earlier this year when I mentioned the opportunity to reach search geek nirvana at the SEO Dojo.  At the time one of my fellow search geeks David Harry, AKA TheGypsy, had begun beta testing a little community called the SEO Dojo and what was once a small group of search geeks, has now blossomed into a full blown community of SEO’s.  As of today, it has shed it’s Beta skin and is now open to the public.

I was fortunate to get in on this project at the very beginning, and have seen the community develop into an amazing network of search marketers from all over the world, each with their own specialties, personalities, and wealth of knowledge.  While I have been a bit of a lurker in the Dojo, I will say that the community is very engaging and always willing to help out their fellow SEO’s and best of all the community thus far has been very respectful to one another. I’ve asked a few questions here and there, and even started  a new forum topic and everyone has been really helpful.

But the SEO Dojo is more than just a community, the SEO Dojo has become a vital tool in my SEO arsenal.  With weekly chats, a weekly newsletter, and regular search news updates the SEO Dojo has become a great way for me to keep up on my search geekiness when I just don’t have enough time to get through all of my regular search blogs.  Furthermore it has helped me to connect with other SEO’s who have more than once helped me to solve some of my SEO problems or simply give a second opinion on something I am considering or looking into in regards to my search marketing efforts.

I highly recommend you go check out the SEO Dojo today and see what it has to offer.  If you’re looking to train in SEO and access top minds and resources, then this is the place to be.  And while today is the official launch of the Dojo there are still plans to expand and add more features in the future, which will make this an even more valuable tool for an serious search geek.  If that weren’t enough the first 25 readers who sign up through Musings For A Darkened Room get a 25% off discount using the discount code MikeRocks!

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately on how to make my online blog and article reading more efficient.  I am subscribed to over 200 blogs in Google Reader and what used to be easy to skim on a daily basis is becoming next to impossible.  I used to have more time at the last company to catch up on blog reading throughout the day, but since the switch to PlasticSurgery.com I just can’t dedicate the kind of time needed to get through the list.

My reader is chock full of stuff from varied interests, but SEO is by far the largest category with the most frequent updates.  Last month I threw out the idea of having my readers and twitter followers decide what blogs stay in my reader, but I haven’t been able to come up with a valid way to expedite the process.  Today, while spending a little extra time catching up on last weeks posts I started thinking to myself, if I gave up my SEO blogs in reader could I pick up enough of the most important SEO information on twitter and other social outlets alone?

What are your thoughts? Do you think there is enough buzz on twitter from the SEO community to keep you well informed, or is there simply too much information and noise to consider twitter and social media a reliable source?  Share your thoughts in the comments below or weigh in on my previous idea to let my readers decide what I read.