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I recently saw an advertisement for the XBox gaming system that essentially promoted this concept, “Life is short. Play XBox.” They kick off their ad with an incredibly profound premise, life is short, and then they follow it up with one of the most useless things that you can do as a result of that fact.

I actually own an XBox but I haven’t played a game on it in months. I don’t have time any more. Life is too short.

I want to be successful as a husband and father, as a cutting edge blogger, as a highly engaging social media figure, as a high-end website developer and more. I spend my time reading, engaging and studying…and I’m not even in school.

And as I do these things I find myself overwhelmed with a sense that I’m in a race. I’m competing to keep up with the ever changing winds that are shifting the trends of social media, design, and online interaction. I’m working to learn as fast as I possibly can.

My Twitter stream is an aid in that race. I don’t auto-follow everyone back like some do. I was doing that and I found myself with hundreds and hundreds of people who had used a bot to follow me and when I returned the follow I was left with spam. I don’t have time for that.

I constantly felt like I was digging through the trash can looking for a good piece of fried chicken. Every so often I would find it, but I tripped over a lot of disgusting trash on my way to it.

The 6 Personas You Should Follow on Twitter

I now basically follow only six types of people and I’ve listed them below.

The Authority: If I consider someone to be incredibly knowledgable on a subject in which I’m interested, then I follow them. For example, to stay up to date on the latest news about search engine optimization, I follow Matt Cutts from Google (@mattcutts) and Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz (@randfish). The Educator: As I mentioned above, I’m in a race to learn as much as a can as quickly as I can. With this in mind, I follow people who provide high quality sources of good information. I follow @psdtuts because they provide some of the best resources for improving your Photoshop skills. The Encourager: In any line of work, it’s important to stay motivated. The more excited and passionate you can become, the more effective you’ll be. I follow @TiaSparkles because there are few people who can put a smile on your face faster than she can. Surround yourself with motivated people. The Connector: Networking with other like-minded people is a powerful skill to develop. When you find someone who is truly good at it, watch them, interact with them and learn from them. I follow @NotAProBlog because he has fun and creative approach to connecting with people online and I’ve learned a lot from his style.

The Successful: Growing up, I often heard the cliche that you either are or soon will be who your friends are. With this in mind, I work to surround myself with the most successful people I can find. I want to know how they think and how they make business decisions. I follow @problogger because I want to experience the same level of blogging success that Darren Rowse experiences. The Creative: Much of our success in life can be attributed to our ability to think creatively. As a website developer, I find this to be especially true. You have to be creative if you want to get noticed. I follow @abduzeedo because he provides some of the most creative digital art that you can find.

The conclusion is that I follow people who I know I can trust their tweets. I know that if I click on a link that they provide, I’m going to be brought to a resource that is absolutely worthy of my time.

Don’t follow someone just to grow your follow numbers. Follow those who truly inspire you and develop yourself as someone who is really worthy of being followed.