Recently, my friend Cheri Albritton (Twitter’s @ArveyColumbus) wrote a blog post asking if you are a social media hero in the making. She was nice enough to point to me in her post. That was awesome to see pop up in my email! I decided to do at least a short series of posts highlighting some of my social media heroes. It will be one a week or so for a while. And while I am sure Cheri didn’t intend for anyone to point back to her, I want to start with her because she offers so much of herself in social media that it truly is inspiring.That kind of openness and honesty isn’t as common as it should be. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cheri and I connected over Twitter…. she says we have Mike Haley to thank for that. (No doubt he will make sure I don’t forget it.) But getting connected on Twitter can be very casual connections or you can really get to know folks. That really feeling like you know someone…. that’s the sort of social media hero Cheri is because she is willing to talk about important things, even when they are tough topics to write or talk about.

Cheri started her blog “Paying it Forward” less than a year ago. The first post she wrote grabs you as it is about her husband Tom and his fight with Leukemia. A few months later, I realized things had gotten much worse with Tom and cried as I read A Man That Every Man Wishes He Could Be. I remember chatting with Cheri off and on about the post, how Tom was doing, etc but I can’t imagine the strength it took to write that and just hope that the support she received in return from her social media community made it work it.

In the midst of the battle Tom had, it would have been easy for many people to either withdraw or be sad everyday. But not Cheri. That’s part of the reason she is such a social media hero! She continued to find the incredible in others. One of my favorite posts early on was one about one of the guys Cheri works with — Customer Service With A Smile – Nate’s Way. He doesn’t have bad days nor does he understand why others do really. He’s living positive all the time. Its something I strive for but I don’t know whether anyone would mistakenly think I had perfected that like Nate has!

Cheri seeks to understand the people she interacts with, takes time to try and help make connections when she thinks two people may be able to learn from each other and just makes you feel good. Besides that, who else has it in them to come up with the outlandish idea of getting #agnerd jewelry made!

And she has inspired a whole series of blog posts where I can thank some of the people who rock my social media world on a regular basis! I plan to do a weekly feature on a social media hero of mine for a while. I have enough of them that I went ahead and made this funky logo for the series!

For all those reasons and more, Cheri is one of my social media heroes. If you don’t know her, what are you waiting for? And keep an eye peeled…. there are more heroes to come!

Other Social Media Heroes:

• Danyelle Little @TheCubicleChick is One of My Social Media Heroes! — It has been a little while since I did a post in my social media hero series, but this weekend I was clearly reminded of one I needed to write up. That’s because Danyelle Little and her Show Me the Blog conference has rocked my world again. Yeah, I know I wrote about the conference […] Continue Reading
• Ryan Goodman, Ranchhand & Social Media Hero – Over the past few months, I’ve done several posts about some of my social media heroes. I have a lot more to go. But recently I sat down to write a post for the AgChat Foundation’s website and realized I was writing a lot of the things I should put together explaining why Ryan Goodman, […] Continue Reading
• A Social Media Hero With a HUGE Heart & Great Hugs @JeffPulver of #140Conf – I’ve written about Jeff Pulver before — he’s an integral part of my post about the faces of #140Conf Small Town and Monday’s #140confDM.  And while I talk a bit about Jeff in those posts… you don’t really get the feel for the guy cause all of that was within context of the conference and lots […] Continue Reading
• Creating the #BlogChat Community Leads to Hero Status for @MackCollier, Darlin’ – Writing that headline was fun. Blogging and social media have to be fun for me, cause this blog is a personal passion. I have no interest in “monetizing” my blog (I hope all the scammy folks who send weird messages will read that). I have a great job where I get to do communications.This blog […] Continue Reading
• The Farmer Who Broke My Twitter Sound Barrier @FarmerHaley – I’ve talked about how I came to be on Twitter before but what happened after I got on…. not sure I could have anticipated that. Within a few months of being on Twitter, the tweeting agricultural community was clearly as a great source of information for me. I can still remember when I broke the […] Continue Reading
• Who Convinced Me To Sign Up For Twitter? @Kath_Manning That’s Who – In doing this series highlighting some of my social media heroes, its hard to decide what helps someone reach true hero status. But its clear to me, that one of my colleagues, Kathleen Manning aka @Kath_Manning has to be on the list. Its really pretty funny to think about that first day so long ago. […] Continue Reading
• Social Media Hero, Farmer & Blogging Coach Judi Graff aka @farmnwifeA lot of the people who are involved in agriculture and who write blogs will probably recognize the social media hero I want to highlight this week. It’s Judi Graff aka @FARMnWIFE. There are a lot of reasons she is a social media hero to various people, but I get to make the list so […] Continue Reading