KAY BELL

• Kay Bell has 10,500 Twitter followers and 1,100 followers on LinkedIn, but only 37 followers on Facebook (which has not been publicly updated since 2011), making Twitter her chief influencer channel.
• Bell is a journalist and author who focuses on the accounting industry, with a particular focus on taxes.
• Twitter serves mostly to channel traffic to her main website, Don't Mess With Taxes, which she launched in 2005.
• While working towards a BA in Journalism and History from Texas Tech University, Bell began her career at a "West Texas daily newspaper" in 1977.
• However, she soon shifted careers, serving as a legislative assistant and, later, in government relations from 1982 to 1999, before returning to her journalistic roots as an editor and writer for Bankrate.
• She launched her own company, SKB Editorial services, in 2005, which serves to "take complex financial concepts and turn them into articles that consumers can use to better manage and maximize their money."
• Bell seems to have maintained her focus on taxes throughout her blogging career, but follows the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Association for Women in Communications on LinkedIn, suggesting that she has some interest in minority and women's rights as well.

RICK TELBERG

• Rick Telberg has 25,200 Twitter followers and 176,124 followers on LinkedIn. While he has a Facebook page, it is set to private.
• Telberg graduated with a BA in Journalism from New York University in 1979.
• He soon emerged as an Executive Editor in numerous financial publications and accountant groups, including Lebhar-Friedman, Thomson Reuters (now SourceMedia), and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
• Since 2005, he has simultaneously served as President and CEO of two companies, Bay Street Group and CPA Trendlines Research.
• CPA Trendlines provides "actionable intelligence for the tax, accounting & finance community."
• Telberg has received a citation from the National Society of Accountants and has "long associations" with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and Accounting Today magazine.
• In his public persona, at least, he focuses all his attention on subjects related to accounting, particularly as it relates to small businesses.

BRIAN STREIG

• Brian Streig has 2,260 Twitter followers and 499 LinkedIn followers. He does not seem to have a Facebook page.
• Streig graduated from the University of Texas in Austin with a Master's in Professional Accounting (Tax) in 1997.
• He has tended to stay with companies for extended periods of time: As a Tax Senior for PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1996-2002, as a Tax Manager for The Manigold Group from 2003 to 2007, and as a Tax Director for Calhoun, Thomson + Matza from 2007 on.
• While most of his tweets focus on tax laws and policies, he occasionally sends more personal tweets about his life, ranging from commenting on what he's watching on Netflix to his interest in dance, acting, and singing.

KIM BRYANT

• Kim Bryant has 10,700 Twitter followers and 1,400 followers on LinkedIn. She does not have a public Facebook profile. Her company website has its own blog, but this has not been updated in over a year.
• Bryant "graduated Magna Cum Laude from Doane College" in 1990 with a Bachelor's in Accounting. Since then, she has worked in the Lincoln, NE area, where she lives with her husband and two children.
• She launched her own business, Bryant & Associates, in 2001, and remains the company President.
• Bryant is a contributing author to two books, "The Lean, Mean Business Machine" and "The Six Steps to Small Business Success."
• Many of Bryant's Tweets are inspirational rather than professional in nature; for example, quoting Anne Frank: "Whoever is happy will make others happy too."

GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS

• George Papadopoulos has 10,800 Twitter followers and 3,176 followers on LinkedIn. While he has a Facebook page, the last public post dates to 2011.
• Papadopoulos, who is apparently often confused for President Trump's foreign policy advisor, graduated with an MSA in Accounting from Eastern Michigan University in 1992.
• From 1995 to 1998, he was a Senior Tax Advisor for Deloitte & Touche to "high net-worth individuals."
• He also served as a Senior Financial Planning Counselor for Ernst & Young from 2002 to 2004.
• However, overlapping with both of those roles, Papadopoulos is also President of the accounting firm which shares his name and which he founded in 1998. His firm focuses on wealth management, including "Integrated Tax Planning and Preparation Services."
• In addition to tweeting about financial and economic matters, Papadopoulos seems to tweet about whatever catches his interest, from cute dogs to social and political commentary to food.
• He also occasionally contributes to the Wall Street Journal blog on a variety of economic and accounting topics.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

TAX ADVICE

• The most common trending topic amongst the top accounting influencers is, unsurprisingly, tax advice.
• Many of these threads originate in advice columns written by Kay Bell.
• For example, she breaks down how to qualify for the $500 dependent tax credit and the circumstances in which one might not qualify for it.
• Similarly, 401-Ks are a frequent topic of conversation among the top US influencers. Specific articles tweeted on this topic range from overviews of 401-Ks for the layman to offering reasons to file one's taxes early rather than at the last minute.
• It is also common for the influencers to mark important tax-related dates, as when Kim Bryant reminds her audience that October 15 "is the last day to file for most people who requested an automatic six-month extension."

TAX SCAMS

• Kay Bell often sends alerts about new tax scams, which George Papadopoulos often retweets.
• The IRS is alerting consumers to two new types of tax scams, the "Social Security hustle" and the "fake tax agency."
• The Social Security scam involves telling victims that their Social Security Number (SSN) has been "suspended" due to suspicious activity in order to trick the victim into giving up information or even money in order to fix the "problem."
• In the second scam, a letter is mailed from a fake tax agency claiming bogus delinquent taxes and demanding payment to remove an alleged lien on the victim's property.

BUSINESS AND PERSONAL IMPROVEMENT

• Given the focus that many of the top influencers have on small businesses, it is not surprising that they often tweet articles, by themselves or others, providing valuable advice to small business owners. Rick Telberg is particularly prolific in this regard.
• For example, Telberg tweets about an article by Steven Sacks on cutting out "useless meetings" in favor of building a culture in which strategic conversations, both in the meeting room and in the cubicle, are the norm.
• Other tweets point to articles about being better communicators and creating procedure manuals for the firm.
• Many of these articles focus on small accounting business practices, e.g., "10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Buying an Accounting Practice."
• Kim Bryant frequently posts aspirational and inspirational messages on her Twitter feed, many of which seem particularly intended to encourage small business owners.

CRYPTOCURRENCY

• One relatively-new trending topic amongst the top influencers is cryptocurrencies (e.g., Bitcoin) and how the IRS has declared them to be taxable.
• The IRS has sent over 10,000 taxpayers letters informing them of potential violations of the US tax code in not reporting income from cryptocurrency transactions.
• Bell suggests that crypto investors study "Shaun Hunley's tax cheat sheet for Bitcoin owners" as a valuable resource in complying with the US tax code.

RESEARCH STRATEGY