If you are not familiar with Chris Brogan and you do inbound or online marketing, then this is a guy you need to start keeping tabs on. Although I thought Chris was just someone who rose to fame due to massive twitter followers and an aggressive blog routine both of which are true, but he has also been around doing this stuff long before twitter and the term "blog" were ever around. By the way if you get a chance to see him live jump on the opportunity. He is a good speaker/presenter.

The funny thing is as I tell you to follow Chris Brogan, I too was told this early on since he was a leader in the industry. Sadly, I rarely viewed Chris's stuff beside becoming a twitter follower. I did however see a blog post a week ago called Social Media Metrics in which Chris and I got into an interesting conversation over the importance of metrics and which ones are important.

Granted, I walked away from this interaction thinking Chris might be out of touch and a real jerk. I figured I would probably want to avoid him at all costs at the Hubspot Users Group and the Inbound Marketing Summit. What I learned though is Chris is a very funny guy and probably got this inbound marketing thing down much better than I do. Obviously, he makes a living speaking about it. The funny thing though is that sometimes we tend to put these big name guys on a pedestal and think they're conceded jerks and out of touch with everyday companies and people.

This is very much not the case with Chris. He is a really down to earth guy that if we lived closer he might be someone I'd call up to go grab a drink.

Chris has done a great job of creating a highly valuable "personal brand". You hear this term thrown around these days, but if you want to see a perfect example of this Chris Brogan is it!

Is Chris a jerk? Well some people may think so, because he is blunt and calls things as he sees them. This is a quality some do not like, but I find it honest and refreshing. I think he is a great guy. I also know sometimes you're going to piss people off, but if you have proof, experience, or honesty sometimes people need to hear the hard truth. Sometimes they need to hear the truth they may not be willing to admit to others and themselves.

So the take away here is this…
connecting to people in the digital world is great, but there is something missing without the hand shake and face-to-face conversation.

Chris, I want to thank you for opening my eyes, connecting and "BS"ing with me at HUG and IMS. I look forward to getting to know you better on a more personal level than just one of your random followers.