Last month we decided to start an Influencer of the Month feature on our blog.  Then, of course things got crazy around here and we didn’t have time to release our Influencer of the Month for October as planned.  So, we’re going to do it now — in the middle of November.

A bit late on our end, for which we apologize.  We will definitely get them out on time in the future (last Friday of every month).  However, please do not allow our tardiness to devalue the talent of our Influencer for October: Brett McKay.

Who is Brett McKay?

We had no idea until he showed up on one of our recent Authority Lists for online DIY influencers. Brett appeared on the list because of his work on his primary blog —  The Art of Manliness (apx 150k monthly unique visitors).  Brett’s blog is a smart, fun portal for all things Man-ly.  He’s done a tremendous job building a brand around the Art of Manliness — as well as a loyal audience.  He furthers his work on his blog through two twitter accounts, @brettmckay (1,500+ followers, 700+ re-tweets) and @artofmanliness (5,800 followers, 1,100+ re-tweets); a YouTube channel; two Facebook pages, his (631 friends) & Art of Manliness (7,800+ friends); LinkedIn; and a StumbledUpon account.

One of the reasons why we’ve selected Brett this month is for his skills and use of multiple social media tools/platforms.  That is important for any influencer we consider.

Another reason we like Brett is because he is in the midst of translating his online success to additional offline success with the release of his first book – The Art of Manliness (what else?).  From all accounts the book is doing well.  For us at Traackr, this is a very exciting trend that we continue to see…and celebrate.  More and more, people are building their brands online, through social media, and creating value, enterprises…empires offline.  Brett is one of the early ones and we’re very happy to see it happen!

With all that said, the real reason we chose Brett for our Influencer of the Month for October is that the Art of Manliness wasn’t his first successful online endeavor.  Not at all.  While a law student at the University of Tulsa, Brett started and built a very successful blog, The Frugal Law Student, which was named the top student blog by the ABA Journal in ’07.  This is what we call a true online talent.

Our decision to select Brett as our Influencer for this month is not really about his current online endeavor and success.  We’ve selected him because he personifies one of Traackr’s fundamental beliefs in this whole new world — the idea that the individuals who generate influence online are talented people.  The content they create is very much secondary to that.  It doesn’t matter if they are talking about Ramen noodles or straight razors, knitting patterns or new marketing strategies.  It’s the person doing the talking which is where the influence is derived.  It’s why we started Traackr.  Brett (and many others) is proving our point with every post…

Thanks and congratulations to Brett McKay for being named Traackr’s Influencer of the Month for October!

DS

*by the way, here’s a good post from Chris Brogan (Content is Not King) which helps illustrate this last point.  The comments for this post are great as well…

Tags: a-list, authority list, Brett McKay, collaborative marketing, influencer, The Art of Manliness

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Influencer Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.