Continuing my series on documenting social media power users and influencers, this week I’ve got five more wonderful people to share with you.

Again, these are in no particular order and I am taking the time to write on not only the big-name players, but perhaps even more interesting I will tell the stories of power users in the long tail also.

If you missed last week’s entry, start by checking out:

Social Media Power Users And Influencers:  Part 1

Now that you’re caught up, let’s get into part 2:

Peter Kim

Blog: BeingPeterKim.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/peterkim

Peter in brief: Peter Kim is currently building an enterprise social computing startup. It’s operating in stealth mode and funded by Austin Ventures.

Peter was previously an analyst at renowned Forrester Research, focusing on the intersection of social tech and marketing strategy.  His work frequently has been quoted by CBS, CNBC, CNN, NPR, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.  Prior to Forrester, Peter was head of global digital marketing at PUMA and a strategist at Razorfish.

What makes Peter an Influencer: Talking with Peter, he expressed that he doesn’t relish a role as “influencer,” just someone who likes to see patterns in things and talk about them. For example, he puts together extremely useful information, such as a list of social media marketing examples that thousands of people have found helpful.

Peter believes influence comes from being smart, not just saying that you are.

Best way to connect with Peter: subscribe to his blog.

Connie Bensen

Blog: ConnieBensen.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/cbensen

Connie in Brief: Community building is Connie’s passion. After 9 yrs of building community in public libraries she decided she wanted to be an online community manager and use technology to scale her abilities. Connie’s blog provides a source of information for community managers & organizations interested in having community managers. She also frequently writes about social networking & branding and is a contributor at Marketing 2.0.

What makes Connie an influencer: Aside from consistently strong Technorati rankings, Connie provides leadership and direction to many who seek her advice, and has become a go-to person for community building services. Her writing on the community manager role is frequently referenced worldwide. Jeremiah Owyang Senior Analyst of Social Computing at Forrester Research has even referred her as a key leader in the community management space.

Connie will be speaking at 2 upcoming conferences – Social Media Strategies and at Defrag on a panel on Making the “Social” Web with Kevin Marks from Google and others.

Best way to connect with Connie: subscribe to her blog.

Noah Brier

Blog: NoahBrier.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/heyitsnoah

Noah in brief: Noah loves the internet. Go ahead and ask Noah: is the internet awesome? He uses the web to understand the world. In Noah’s eyes, everything is linked, and he treats each encounter with information as a potential web that begs to be untangled.

What makes Noah an influencer: Noah and his ideas have been mentioned in AdWeek, PR Week, by Seth Godin, by thousands of bloggers and made page 1 of Digg. He has a clear understanding of how to manipulate the network in interesting and useful ways, and was recognized (and hired) by the Barbarian Group for his incredible skills. I’ve blogged about him before, too for his brilliant BrandTags site.

Best way to connect with Noah: subscribe to his blog.

Tim Jahn

Blog: TimJahn.com/blog

Twitter: Twitter.com/timjahn

Tim in brief: A freelance media professional with experience in interactive/web
development and video, Tim specializes in integrating ideas and technologies into effective solutions. He also mixes social media elements into his solutions to assist organizations in conversing with their customers.

What makes Tim and influencer: Aside from his great blog, which is very much in the style of Seth Godin — short, punchy and impactful, Tim uses his creativity to to spread his ideas and visions.  A neat example of this is for the past three years, Tim has created synchronized dancing light shows in suburban Chicago.  Through word of mouth (and a little help from traditional media the first year in the form of the evening news and a newspaper article), the display has steadily grown more popular. Visitors have come from as far as 50 miles away to share in the joy of lights and music.  Tim hopes to inspire young people to use technology in creative ways.

Best way to connect with Tim: subscribe to his blog

Chris Brogan

Blog: ChrisBrogan.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/chrisbrogan

Chris in  brief: Chris Brogan is a 10 year veteran of using social media and tech to build digital relationships for businesses, individuals and organizations. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles/features, and makes media of all kinds.  His blog is in the top 20 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati.

What makes Chris an influencer: Chris speaks with raw passion about social media and is a true leader and innovator in the space.  His blog posts and articles are infamous for generating great discussions and Chris is well respected by bloggers, marketers and PR people in all niches.  I could say so many more great things about Chris, but the absolute best way to see why he’s so respected would be to connect with him yourself.

Best way to connect with Chris: subscribe to his blog

Appreciate all the suggestions from last week, I plan to reach out to some of them soon.

Read the next part in this series:  Social Media Power Users And Influencers:  Part 3

Related posts from The Future Buzz:

The Social Web:  The Ultimate Scratchpad For Passionate Communications Professionals

Influencing Social Media:  What Drives Digg And Reddit Users

10 Reasons Why Organizations (And Individuals) With Audiences Win

Related posts from around the web:

Where Attention Flows, Money Follows (Kevin Kelly)

Notable Agency Bloggers (Conversation Agent)

Blogger Face-Offs (Daily Blog Tips)

Social Media Power Users And Influencers: Part 2 is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

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A Few Updates and a Hello to New Readers is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

Here’s just one recent Lolcat photo:

There are an immeasurable number of Lolcat images floating around the web across platforms. If you Google lolcat, you’ll get more than a million results.

Origin of the Lolcat
The Wikipedia entry for Lolcats places their point of origin from 4chan (a popular image-board). The Lolcat meme has spread throughout social networks from MySpace to Digg, through blogs and even received coverage in Time Magazine. People email each other Lolcat photos, users on Digg and Reddit reference them, they are popular on message forums, there are Lolcat Facebook apps, and they appear throughout the blogosphere.

The branding of a hugely popular meme within a blog
The meme itself has clearly stuck around, and one site was quick enough to take advantage of its snowballing popularity: I Can Has Cheezburger

icanhascheezburger.com

The people behind I Can Has CheezBurger have taken “ownership” of the Lolcat as a brand, even if they aren’t the ones who created the idea. I Can Has Cheezburger has built a community and gathered a crowd around the Lolcat phenomenon.

They successfully latched onto something that permeates cultures and niches on the web – almost everyone digs Lolcats.

Monetizing a meme
Silly name aside, I Can Has Cheezburger is easily within the illustrious Technorati top 100 at the time of writing this ranking between two massively popular tech blogs: Ars Technica (the art of technology) and Mashable (the most popular social networking blog):

Their traffic numbers are pretty phenominal as well – showing clearly if you create a successful blog around a meme it can be a big win.

Here’s some traffic stats from I Can Has Cheezburger’s advertising page:

Certainly, they have very nice numbers and demographics to show advertisers and I’m sure they are monetizing the blog and the meme well. You can do something similar, if you can spot something like this coming and successfully ride the wave.

Search trends for the lolcat meme
The Google Trends numbers also paint a nice story about the popularity of “lolcat” as a search term. Stacking up against rickroll, you can see it is a more stable trend:

Notice, neither of these terms had enough search volume to be a blip on the trend tool until nearly 2007. And, while rickroll had a decent peak, lolcat seems to be a bit more stable, noting that perhaps it has more staying power into the future.

The massive rise in popularity of social media certain has enabled memes to spread easily across the web and become a staple in web pop-culture.

Of course, web trends are a fickle thing and can easily fall out of favor. I Can Has Cheezburger is smart though, and has enabled anyone to easily get involved by creating an lolcat generator. It’s a good way to encourage fresh content for their site and draw people into the phenomenon.

Going beyond the Lolcat meme
The people publishing I Can Has Cheezburger aren’t content to rest on their laurels, and have created several other sites within their network.

They leveraged the huge success of I Can Has Cheezburger and the popularity of packaging idiosyncratic text with images to create other focused blogs in several niches:

• Dogs
• Politics
• Failure
• Office/chats

Clearly they understand how to successfully build a blogging network. Notice how all the sites use a similar layout/design, comment system and social media integration.

Learnings and how you too can take advantage of an internet meme
Creating I Can Has Cheezburger and enabling the Lolcat meme to grow and spread certainly took a great deal of work. The site has a ton of detail, even going as far as creating custom widgets for you to easily share Lolcats with your friends on your blog or social networking page.

To successfully take ownership as the go-to source on the web for something popular, the best way is certainly to be first – but you don’t have to be.

According to the WHO-IS database at Network Solutions, lolcats.com was registered in June of 2006, and icanhascheezburger.com was registered in January of 07. Yet, I Can Has Cheezburger has dominated and continues to grow while lolcats.com remains neutral:

This is a case where better design, usability and smart marketing have let I Can Has Cheezburger be the dominant player in this space. Lolcats.com just doesn’t look as slick and did not integrate the tools necessary to build a community and have viral appeal. It’s clear when you look at both sites why the world has flocked to I Can Has Cheezburger.

If you want to take advantage of an internet meme, for fun or for profit, this is a great one to study further on your own.

If you dig this, check out some other case studies from TheFutureBuzz:

Case Study in Building a Blogging Network: The Daily Network

Case Study – Escapist Magazine / Zero Punctuation: Building Popularity By Teaming Up With An Exceptional Content Creator

A Case Study in Building Buzz in the Blogosphere: Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company

Using an Internet Meme for Fun and Profit: Lolcats and I Can Has Cheezburger (Case Study) is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

The obvious examples are TechCrunch (and its “Crunch” network) Weblogs, Inc. (which sold to AOL for 25 million in 2005)  and Gawker Media (which runs Consumerist, Valleywag, and Gizmodo to name a few). Those are networks managed by several people and definitely large-scale operations.

For this case study, I want to show you an exceptional example of what one single person has done on a smaller (but by no means less significant) scale building a blogging network.

Enter the “Daily” network, which includes three sites all run by avid blogger Daniel Scocco:

DailyBlogTips.com

DailyWritingTips.com

DailyBits.com

Click each logo to all the pages to see them live. You’ll notice several things about this blog network right off the bat:

Strong, linear branding and layout throughout each site
This is a smart move with developing a blogging network. Gawker does the same thing on theirs, and it makes users feel ‘at home’ on any site within the network. All of the logos have the same look and feel as well on these sites.

Clearly labeled subscription options
Daniel understands the value of making it easy to turn readers into raving fans and build anticipation by easily subscribing to daily posts across sites on his network. I am subscribed to Daily Blog Tips, Daily Writing Tips, and Daily Bits and found them all organically. This is certainly by design.

Popular post section
On each of the sites within the Daily network, it’s easy to find the most popular content and get drawn in. Again, this is a smart move and I’m sure it’s something Daniel found successful with the first site in his network and made it a pattern throughout.

Fresh content daily
One of Seth Godin’s favorite tips about finding success with blogging is the importance of showing up. Daniel understands the value of this so much; he’s built it into the name of his brand.

I’m a fan of the Daily network for good reason – each blog in the network provides exceptional value, interesting content and fresh posts daily.

Monetization of the network
Daniel makes it easy for potential advertises to be a part of his network. Not only that, but it’s a strong selling point when you can offer advertisers the value of being on not just one site, but several popular sites all with strong reputations.

Check out some of the copy on his advertising page:

Advertise
All the sponsorship and advertising deals cover the three websites on our network:

• Daily Blog Tips
• Daily Writing Tips
• Daily Bits

Combined they generated over 400,000 monthly impressions, with more than 20,000 RSS subscribers. Our audience is composed of bloggers, webmasters, online marketers and web entrepreneurs.

You can see the rest of the page here. Notice how clear it is what sponsors will get and how it is easy to make contact if they were interested in placing an ad.

Developing your own blogging network
I can’t speak too much on advice for this as I really only focus on one blog right now. Creating posts on different subjects daily, keeping tabs on comments, fielding questions from readers, promoting your sites and managing advertises to multiple blogs is certainly a full-time job.

Also, you probably should have at least one ultra-popular blog before you even think of developing a network around that brand. It makes sense, because you would only want to create a network off a concept that you know will be popular and catch on. Then, the trick to making the network scale is patterning what you did on that first successful site. Get used to managing one popular site before you attempt several. When you’ve got that down, taking on two, three or four sites will be far less daunting.

Starting a blogging network is no easy task, and a great deal of work, but it is a great business opportunity for someone who is dedicated, passionate and focused. It is the blog-entrepreneur’s (blogtrepreneur’s?) dream.

Case Study in Building a Blogging Network: The “Daily” Network is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing

There are a ton of people out there trying to sell you information on the “secrets” to marketing on the web, making money online, essential blogging tips, etc.

Here’s the real secret: there is no one book, guide, or formula that will guarantee success for you. Teaching yourself, experimenting, looking at trends, and basically diving right in and learning as you go is by far the best way to unlock the power of the web for money, marketing, readers, influence or whatever you want (let’s hope it’s something positive).

The information on how to achieve success is actually 100% free, and in fact most of the free stuff is far, far better and the writers are even more passionate and knowledgeable about the materials than the sites trying to sell you the info.

Today I thought I’d do a bit of personal aggregation for you and put together a list of 101 absolutely fantastic blogs you will find extremely useful in one easy place. I have linked to some of these blogs previously, but I wanted to put together an inclusive master list.

These are all on SEO/SEM, online marketing, making money online, blogging, or some hybrid of these subjects – essentially if you like the content on this site, you’ll also dig this content. No spam sites or dead blogs on this list, I promise – all useful sites.

Feel free to browse at your leisure, you may already subscribe to some of these, but hopefully I will help you discover some new ones today. I’ve greatly benefited from much of these writers, and so can you. Hope ya dig.

In no particular order.

101 Essential Online Marketing, Blog Tips, Make Money Online, And SEO Blogs:

1) TopRank Blog – All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing, optimization and online public relations.

2) Shoe String Branding – Branding for independent professionals

3) Marketing FM – Frequency of change marketing blog

4) Techno//Marketer – Matt Dickman on emerging media, marketing, PR and everything in between

5) Daily Blog Tips – A place where you will find simple yet effective tips to improve your blog.

6) Read Write Web – A popular weblog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis.

7) Aurelius Tjin – Viral marketing and email marketing enthusiast.

8) Duct Tape Marketing – Digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author.

9) ProBlogger – Essential blogging tips.

10) DoshDosh – Helping you make money online.

11) The Long Tail – A public dairy on themes around the book.

12) Seth’s Blog – Seth Godin’s riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.

13) SkellieWag – Skelliewag is about creating content your site’s visitors will fall in love with.

14) Micro Persuasion – Steve Rubel explores technology trends and their impact on culture, media and digital marketing.

15) ShoeMoney – Skills to pay the bills

16) Logic + Emotion – Logic+Emotion exists at the intersection of business + experience design—where passive consumers become active participants.

17) Wikinomics – Exploring the cutting edge of mass collaboration with Don Tapscott, Anthony Williams, and the rest of the New Paradigm team.

18) John Cow – Make money online.

19) Buzz Machine – Jeff Jarvis blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com.

20) How To Change The World – A practical blog for impractical people.

21) Search Engine Land – Must read news about search engines and search marketing.

22) Pronet Advertising – Personal experiences in successful social media marketing.

23) CopyBlogger – Copywriting tips for online marketing success from Copyblogger

24) Search Round Table – The pulse of the search marketing community

25) Mashable – Social networking news.

26) SEOmoz – Search engine marketing news and tips.

27) AdRants – Marketing and advertising new with attitude.

28) Search Engine Watch – News and tips about search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and searching the Web.

29) PR 2.0 – Shaping the convergence of social media, PR, web marketing and technology.

30) Niche Marketing – Blog Search Engine Performance, WordPress, Niche Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Tips and Social Media with Original Opinion and Loads of Attitude.

31) PSFK – Trends and ideas to inspire change.

32) The Technium – From the founding editor of Wired, a series of posts, with public comments, on the future of science, technology, and society.

33) Successful Blog – Thinking, writing business ideas

34) A Clear Eye – On customers, brands and marketplace success.

35) Blog Maverick – Mark Cuban on technology, blogging, new media, business, etc.

36) Romow – Internet marketing center and directory

37) Shotgun Marketing Blog – Rants & raves, commentary, and a fresh outlook about today’s marketing landscape from marketing speaker Chris Houchens.

38) Carl Ocab – Another make money online blog – written by a 13 year old (he’s actually now 14).

39) Diva Marketing Blog – An approach to marketing that’s fun, bold and savvy.

40) Instigator Blog – All about instigating discussion, ideas and better business. Focused on entrepreneurship, small business, marketing and technology, with a heavy dose of humor.

41) Marketing Profs – Daily news, opinion and commentary from the sharpest minds in marketing.

42) What’s Next Blog – Internet marketing strategy, social media trends, news and commentary.

43) JenSense – Making sense of contextual advertising. An authority source of information for both publishers and advertisers using contextual and behavioral advertising.

44) Darren Barefoot – The personal weblog of Darren Barefoot, concerned with technology, pop culture, marketing and PR, science and whatever floats Darren’s boat.

45) ChrisG – Blogging, marketing and new media news and strategies.

46) eMoms at Home – A blog for starting, running and succeeding in your home based business. Topics include business tips, motivation & productivity, success thinking & personal development, work life balance, and technology & blogging.

47) SEO by the SEA – William Slawski muses on the inner workings of search engines, probes related patents and passes on other news of interest to webmasters. Clever site name too.

48) Drew’s Marketing Minute – Random musings, ideas, and tips about marketing and branding in the world today.

49) Courtney Tuttle – I help bloggers to earn more money! We discuss tips and techniques that help users to learn more about internet marketing and website/blog promotion.

50) Mr. Gary Lee. – Tips on Marketing your Website along with other quirky Internet News.

51) Business Pundit – One of the first business bloggers in the blogosphere. Co-founder of the Carnival of the Capitalists. Thoughts on business by an entrepreneur, manager, small business owner.

52) Net Business Blog – A blog focused on helping users increase their online income through domaining, SEM, affiliate marketing, web design, blogging, forums, and more.

53) Jaffe Juice – Uncensored and uninhibited dialogue on the subjects of new marketing, advertising and creativity.

54) ToddAnd – Really, all you need to know about ToddAnd is that he’s passionate about marketing, media and PR.

55) Deep Jive Interests – An (almost) daily blog with news and commentary on a wide variety of interests — from the emerging web2.0, blogging, wordpress installations and quirks, portable applications, web design, entrepreneurship, and more.

56) Who Is Andrew Wee – Blogging, affiliate marketing, social traffic generation

57) Digital Media Wire – A daily briefing of the most important news stories about the business of digital media & entertainment.

58) The Viral Garden – Mack Collier blogs about how companies can use social media to share control of its marketing message with its community of customers.

59) MSDanielle – Writing about what I know and love: online marketing, blogging trials and errors, good food and music, and Binky.

60) Ryan Shamus – RyanShamus.com is the personal blog of Ryan Shamus who is devoted to helping others make money, get motivated, and quit their day jobs. Updated daily with fresh, fun to read content.

61) Twist Image – Marketing, advertising and communications insights with a focus on digital marketing, brand democratization, social media and everything next.

62) Small Business Branding – A multi-author blog magazine about small business marketing and branding. Learn how to better market and brand your small business by hearing about the experiences from other small business owners like you.

63) Chris Webb – Primarily, this blog is a collection of my thoughts on the changing world of publishing and the impact of the Internet, and disruptive technologies such as “social media” on the more traditional approaches to print and online publishing.

64) Steve Pavlina – Personal development for smart people.

65) Marketing Shift – Online Marketing Blog, Now With More Data.

66) RexBlog – Meditations and musings on marketing, magazines, new media and life since August, 2000.

67) Essential Keystrokes – Tips, tools, reviews and commentary on web design, marketing, blogging, new media and related topics.

68) 10e20 – A blog offering a unique perspective on SEO, social media marketing, design, programming and being successful in today’s new media world.

69) ClikZ – Internet marketing solutions for marketers.

70) BlogStorm – Search Engine Optimisation & Internet Marketing Blog.

71) The Buzz Bin – The Buzz Bin offers readers musings and analysis on marketing, buzz, PR and Washington, DC from the team at Livingston Communications.

72) Influential Marketing Blog – Reflections on creating compelling marketing, advertising and PR strategy.

73) This is going to be BIG – A blog about Product Management, digital expression, marketing, branding, and MeVertising. The Mets, kayaking, and Brooklyn, too.

74) Marketing Sherpa – Blog of Marketing Sherpa, a research firm specializing in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing.

75) Presentation Zen – Professional presentation design.

76) Designers who blog – A Design blog for designers, writers, photographers, marketeers, etc, who blog.

77) Beyond Madison Avenue – Pop culture and advertising at it’s best.

78) Brand Noise – Ideas and insights for brand planners.

79) Marketing Over Coffee – Business/marketing podcasts

80) Servant of Chaos - Branding, creativity and the importance of a good story.

81) Marketing Nirvana – It’s all about marketing in a world of social networking.

82) Media Hunter – Media and marketing in the hunter region

83) Brand Builder – Helping brands fine-tune.

84) NextUp – Customer Experience, Marketing, Innovation, Conversations.

85) Every Dot Connects – Connecting through conversation.

86) Lee Hopkins – Better communications results.

87) Three Minds – Covering digital marketing since 2005.

88) 93 Colors – Thoughts, ideas and creativity from a new marketing company.

89) Calacanis – Jason Calacanis’ blog, (the CEO of Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine, was previously the co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. with Brian Alvey, and the GM of Netscape.)

90) Lorell on WordPress – Lorelle on WordPress offers wordpress tips, wordpress help, wordpress news, and help on WordPress Themes, Plugins, resources, WordPress versions, and WordPressMU.

91) Brazen Careerist – Advice at the intersection of work and life

92) Blogger Lounge – A Blog that helps bloggers and entrepreneurs achieve success on the internet and in life with special tips, techniques and strategies.

93) Simplenomics – Dedicated to carrying on the art and science of using common sense when you sell, market and advertise, which was very prevalent before it disappeared from everyday life.

94) Matt Cutts – Gadgets, Google and SEO

95) Web Ink Now – Viral marketing strategies using blogs, news releases, ebooks, and online media.

96) Everybody Go To – Web 2.0, Technology, Internet and more related reading. Plus my own personal Open Source Ideas.

97) Solostream – We design powerful, easy-to-use web publishing platforms – sometimes known as blogs or content management systems – that make it easier for small business owners to connect with their customers, make a name for themselves and earn more money.

98) Nate Whitehill – Strategic Business Blogging and Internet Marketing.

99) Entrepreneurs Journey – Aimed at those interested in Internet business and Blogging.

100) Smart Wealthy Rich – Blog is about Conversational Blogging, Entrepreneurship and Productivity.

101) Graywolf’s SEO Blog – Michael Gray on SEO, social media and blogs.

The Ultimate Blog List: 101 Essential Online Marketing, Blog Tips, Make Money Online, And SEO Links is from The Future Buzz, a Blog Covering Digital Marketing