Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless, a published author and all around smart, nice guy is doing something so smart on Twitter.

He’s publishing and frequently updating a list of the “top” CMOs on Twitter – those with the largest number of followers.  So what does this mean?

–  It makes Kent a leader in the marketing community on Twitter.  It makes his “personal brand” stand out in a positive way among friends and colleagues with shared interests.
–  It’s likely that many on the list will retweet the post but, just as importantly, they’ll send it to others outside of Twitter (Hey Mom, look at this list I’m on!).  This exposes Kent and his work to an ever-widening, friendly crowd on the Web.
–  It connects everyone on the list to one another.
–  It gives Kent fresh content to create meaningful tweets over time.  Not always easy.
–  It drives traffic to not only Kent’s Twitter page, but also his own website, which is where he posts the list.
– Each time he posts an update, everyone on the list has their names, their brands and their Twitter addresses repeated, thus making it likely that they’ll get even more followers, and giving the search engines yet another page to crawl for their name. 
– And of course, each new update can potentially bring changes to the list, thus given a new CMO a fresh spotlight and creating renewed interest as everyone checks the list anew.

Kent leveraged his profession – which any of us could have done but didn’t – into its own mini-phenomenon that spreads learning and excitement across the Web, simply by calling attention to a community in which he’s already a member.  It’s a marvelous example of social media marketing at its best.

I’m proud to be on Kent’s list (#30 with a bullet!). For those of you on Twitter, take a quick look at the list:  you may want to follow someone who is the CMO of a brand you care about.  At #1 is Best Buy ’s Barry Judge (with more than 6,800 followers!) and it goes from there.