Liz Strauss
[dropcap style=”style1″]I[/dropcap]nfluential for her social media expertise, Liz Strauss is an international business strategist and a professional speaker on leadership, attracting customers and community building.
She is the CEO and Co-Founder of interactive business strategy summit, SOBCon, as well as Managing Partner at Inside-Out Thinking, a business creation partnership, and author of the popular Successful-Blog.com.
During her tenure as an international publisher and instructional designer, Liz was consistently hired to rebuild companies and reignite teams. Liz trained hundreds of employees to understand the needs of their market and the ways leaders move action through a company. She has worked with C-Suite executives and interdepartmental teams on four continents.
One of Strauss’ most influential characteristics isn’t one she chose, rather one she is, and that is kind to the core. In the race to be bigger, better, stronger, and louder, Strauss has stayed the course and stuck to her principles, inspiring others to be authentic and kind, just as she is.
Lori Ruff
[dropcap style=”style1″]T[/dropcap]he LinkedIn Diva, trainer Lori Ruff, is not only the CEO of Integrated Alliances Social Media, specializes in B2B sales and marketing, she is one of the top connected women on LinkedIn. Ruff credits passion, persistence, and courage for her success.
She and her partner Mike O’Neil co-host “RockTheWorld with LinkedIn” radio and her next book, “Keep It Real: Living Life Fearlessly” comes out Spring, 2014. She offers a plethora of free information at RockLinkedIn.com, which offers more than your typical individual training package. Ruff is always light hearted and willing to help, and is influential for her generosity of her time and talent.
Lou Adler
[dropcap style=”style1″]L[/dropcap]ou Adler is an influential force on LinkedIn, posting of the most interacted with posts on the site for all of 2013.
Adler is the CEO of The Adler Group which was established 36 years ago, and he’s more than a LinkedIn force, he is an expert in hiring, publishing several books, such as Hire With Your Head.
What we respect about Adler is that he has long helped businesses to embed performance-based hiring training with the executive search process, and has continued to innovate in his field.
Lucky Shirt
[dropcap style=”style1″]W[/dropcap]hen long-form blogging platform, Medium.com launched, we suspected that it would be the usual suspects filling the pages, but from the first days, Lucky Shirt captured our attention.
If there is such a thing as a God on Medium, it’s Lucky Shirt. Each month, when Medium rounds up the most read posts, his pieces are almost always included, and with stories like “I Never Win Because I’m a Girl,” and “Dear Guy Who Just Made My Burrito,” it’s no wonder why the world can’t stop reading his hilarious columns.
He is directly influential on Medium for responding to the anti-Medium rhetoric boiling over in the earliest days of the platform, with his column, “Why I Write for Medium.”
Mari Smith
[dropcap style=”style1″]O[/dropcap]ne of the best known Facebook experts, Mari Smith is one of the most elite social media experts in the land. She has penned The New Relationship Marketing and coauthored Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day.
Smith is brilliant with relationship marketing and is an industry veteran, which is why she is highly sought after as a keynote speaker and trainer.
Sure, she has a huge following, but she makes our list for always being poised and polished as she helps shape business’ social media efforts.
Keep clicking for other influencers you must meet:
Linda Bernstein
January 2, 2014 at 2:22 pm
So many terrific people here! I love this list.
Christopher S. Penn
January 2, 2014 at 2:40 pm
Thanks for including me! Much appreciated.
Ted Rubin
January 2, 2014 at 3:50 pm
Honored to be included 🙂
Miriam Slozberg
January 2, 2014 at 4:05 pm
Very honored to be included! Thank you.
Amber Osborne
January 2, 2014 at 4:27 pm
Honored to be included among those who inspired me to get into this industry. Thank you!
annhandley
January 2, 2014 at 4:45 pm
This list is stuffed full of people I’m lucky enough to call friends, as well as many who have influenced *me*. Thanks for adding my name to the roundup.
Charles E Gaudet II
January 2, 2014 at 5:51 pm
Thank you for the honor! I’m both humbled and grateful to be included among this least of extraordinary people.
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
AmyVernon
January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!
Liz Strauss
January 2, 2014 at 7:31 pm
Thank you, AGBeat, for the thought and work that went into writing about all of us. You captured the people who have influence not just their resumes, making this fun to read. I’m honored that you included me.
Michelle Poccia
January 2, 2014 at 8:34 pm
This list is chock full of GENIUS! Congrats to all who are on it! And thanks AGBeat for my 2014 Stalker List!
Danny Brown
January 2, 2014 at 8:56 pm
Nice to see such a diverse group, and appreciate the fact you took the time to share reasons why people might want to connect, versus a generic “OMG, these guys are just awesome, y’all!!”
Cheers for the kind inclusion, and Happy New Year!
J Philip Faranda
January 2, 2014 at 9:33 pm
I hope to meet Michael McClure in person someday! He is remarkable.
Belinda Summers
January 2, 2014 at 11:00 pm
Gee! A bunch of people I look up to. 🙂 How I wish to be one of them someday.
Matt Hixson
January 2, 2014 at 11:38 pm
This was a great way to start the year. Thanks for including me.
Belinda Summers
January 3, 2014 at 1:00 am
Gee! A bunch of people I look up to. 🙂 How I wish to be one of them someday.
Lucretia M Pruitt
January 3, 2014 at 3:02 am
Some of my favorite people on here… Glad to see AGBeat and I agree on so many awesome people as influences!! Congrats for a solid list and kudos to some awesome folks.
Lucretia M Pruitt
January 3, 2014 at 3:02 am
Some of my favorite people on here… Glad to see AGBeat and I agree on so many awesome people as influences!! Congrats for a solid list and kudos to some awesome folks.
Michael Q Todd
January 3, 2014 at 6:37 am
Great list and especially great endorsements well done for taking the time and effort have subscribed to you
S. Anthony Iannarino
January 3, 2014 at 10:39 am
Thanks so much for including me on this all-star list! I am honored!
Heather MacLean
January 3, 2014 at 11:34 am
Great list. Nice to see some really familiar faces as well as some new ones.
agbenn
January 3, 2014 at 1:36 pm
As the Founder and Publisher of The American Genius, I certainly do not want to sound callous, and text can be so impersonal. We hear your feedback, and have noted it for future reference. When we see people, we see human beings, whatever their race or gender.
In saying that, our pick if we were considering race or gender ie. a particular Hispanic Influencer, it would have undoubtedly been His Holiness, Pope Francis. However, because we’ve covered His Holiness, several times in the past month, it gave way to another open spot out of hundreds of thousands of potential people we considered one by one. To be quite honest, I actually had to go back and look and read every entry to see if anyone was or wasn’t Hispanic.
For the record, I am Hispanic, and I am honored to have our team present this list as it is, and with innocent hearts. We do know several of the persons you’ve mentioned and do hold them in very high regard.
So thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback and encouragement, and we look forward to meeting and getting to know a few on your list. 🙂
Brian Hansford
January 3, 2014 at 1:47 pm
So nice to see some new faces in a list. It gets old seeing lists with the same names over and over just to get SEO juice.
agbenn
January 3, 2014 at 2:01 pm
Maya, bless your heart for sharing your kind thoughts and ideas with us. We agree with your sentiments profoundly, and thank you for recoginizing the complexity of what we’re presenting through our lists. We’ll take your idea and have the team bounce it around and see if we can’t do something as meaningful more often. As you know, things become passe when over done, even when done well. For the record, you influence me in thought provoking ways, and that’s not easy to do with a guy like me.
Happy New Year, and kick 2014’s ass!
tracysestili
January 3, 2014 at 5:19 pm
I love listening to Brian Carter speak. He’s not only funny, but real. Plus he presents data in a way that you didn’t think of. Glad to see he made the list and a few of my other faves. 🙂
Eve Mayer
January 4, 2014 at 5:47 pm
Whoa, I’m so lucky to be on this list! Thank you very much for thinking I’m somewhat as cool as all those respected peeps!
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