Yakiji (Yah-key-jee)

It’s only hours before the decade is over and 2009 was a great year for me. It was a year of outstanding innovation in the web and with that came great content as social media really took off. Sadly there wasn’t enough time in the day to read all the great content from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc…and of course I have a life too. I really dove into Twitter this last year and it opened up my eyes to some great resources and articles. While I probably missed many great posts, I decided to list some of my favorite (must-read) blog posts from 2009. Enjoy.
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Social media presentations, articles, blog posts and the likes are a dime a dozen these days. Of course this is great news because it means that awareness is spreading and corporations are investing in social engagement. While the rules for engagement are still loose, corporations must be sensitive to the reactive nature of their customers. The rules are different in social media (as opposed to traditional media) and today I’ll explore 4 common misconceptions in corporate social media.

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This last year has ushered in a new era for the web and at the helm is the social groundswell. Social Media has clearly become a hot topic in the world of web marketing. Articles, blog posts, white papers are all covering the latest crazes and tactics around social media. There’s so many questions to answer and so much information to absorb. And yet everyone has an opinion and everyone is a social media expert. It’s hard not to get a little annoyed by this wave of interest and yet I’m guilty of the fascination with it. So why are we so captivated by social media?

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While the conference was titled Blogwell, the broader idea was about social integration on the web from the corporate view. Having a social presence on the web is rapidly shifting towards a necessity for corporations. Your audience is out there waiting to engage and if you don’t engage with them, your audience will do it on their own. From the great speakers of Blogwell, the message seemed clear – social media is still imperfect and you will make mistakes. The lessons you learn from your mistakes will ultimately define your success. Here are some great lessons from the corporate social media experts:

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• Some eCards – eCards for when you care enough to hit send. A fantastic collection of eCards that say it how it truly is.
• DZone – Fresh links for developers. It’s a “Digg” like website for coding and web development.
• 10 Things to Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS – A major task like choosing a CMS is often skewed by sales pitches and lopsided marketing tactics from CMS companies. This is a great rundown on the basic principles of choosing a CMS.
• Open Source CMS – Try before you install. A nice little website that allows you to test out some basic open source CMS’s.
• What is your Google Analytics IQ? – Whoo-hoo! Google Analytics now offers an online course. $50 to take the test.
• CNBC Gives Financial Advice – Gotta watch this! This is one of the most viral web videos jumping across the web over the last couple of weeks. Jon Stewart tells it how it is.
• Xinu Returns – A site that tells you how socially connected your website is.
• Post Rank – Measure Audience Engagement.
• Clear and Effective Communication in Web Design – Thanks from Smashing Magazine on this one.
• Realtime Twitter Search Results on Google – I usually don’t recommend GreaseMonkey downloads but this is a huge exception. This download embeds Twitter search results into your Google search. Since Twitter has been argued to have the most up-to-date search results, this is a fantastic add-on.
• Check User Names – Finally ready to dive into social media (cough – Chuck)? Well you’re going to want to make sure you have a unique alias that you can build your own personal brand. Find out here.
• Idiot’s Ultimate Guide to Building Your Own Computer – I am a firm believer in that if you are a tech enthusiast, you should try to build your own computer at least once. Here’s a great place to start.
• Forrester is Wrong About Paying Bloggers – Forrester got attacked from all angles after posting an article about the benefits of paid blogging. The point of the attack was because they highlighted the benefits of paid blogging while not emphasizing the risks involved – example: websites can get blacklisted by Google. Read on…

I attended a seminar last week on the Future of Email Marketing at The Depot in downtown Minneapolis. It was presented by Jeff Rohrs, the VP of Marketing at Exact Target. Overall, it was a great seminar and it raised some interesting points on where email marketing is heading in 2009.

Here were some of the significant take-aways (in a scattered format from my notes):

• The big value in Email Marketing is migrating to the “Social Inbox”. The social inbox is known as the inbox that we have through Facebox, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. These are the inboxes that we go to now expecting non-spammy messages from people (or companies) whom we have invited.
• Yahoo! is currently beta testing their own version of a social inbox which is getting a lot of buzz lately as being a big thing in 2009. This inbox will (somehow) be a collective inbox for all of our inboxes – voicemail, email, text messages, IMs, blogs, blog comments, RSS, etc. Essentially, it’s supposed to be a “one stop shop” for all of our incoming messages and media. One of the raving features is that will (supposedly) have a filtering feature that will adapt well with keeping spam and unnecessary messages out.
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