Prompted and inspired by Jay Ehret (@TheMarketingGuy), I thought I would take a look at which blogposts were the most popular in 2009 based on total pageviews. Here they are, ranked by popularity and with my own reflections:

1. The Power Of A…So Close Yet So Very Far Away
Nothing like a good controversy to drive traffic to a blog. Earlier this year, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) decided to create a new campaign called The Power of A. I didn’t like it at the time and am still not convinced it was well executed. However, it did provide a rather pointed example of what happens when you engage a major PR firm with little prowess in online social media to run your campaign.

2. The End Of The Industrial Age And Social Media
This was a useful example of what happens when a highly visible and well regarded twitter user promotes a post. In this case, it was David Armano and I am very appreciative of him sharing his popularity with me.

3. VIDEO: Building Your Brand Ambassador Program
Crikey, every time I see this post I ask myself in an exasperated voice, “Why the hell don’t I do more multimedia posts?” Probably because it was twice as hard to produce than a typical written post. The presentation that forms the basis of the content is one that I gave to a local nonprofit group. Maybe I’ll pitch the presentation again in 2010 with some subtle refinements.

4. Five Steps To Make Employees Your Best Brand Ambassadors
Technically, this post was written in 2008 but it makes for a nice followup with the Brand Ambassador video above.

5. Micro Center And The Art Of A Good Apology
I enjoy coming back to this particular post because it reminds me of what can happen when a company gives a damn about customer service. Whether Micro Center continued its good work or not…I can’t say. All of which is why one example of good customer service is fine, but it has to be demonstrated on a consistent, company-wide basis.

It’s always interesting when my favorite posts aren’t exactly the ones that are most popular with readers in terms of pageviews. Here are two of my favorites from the past year:

Beyond Engaged Community Members…Think Stewardship
I love the comments and dialogue that this post inspired. The idea of online community stewardship is one that continues to resonate with me. I hope I get to make more time in 2010 to explore this concept in more detail.

The (Weak) Ties That Bind: The Jobhunting/Social Network Connection
2009 marked in interesting year for me. I started up a new business and also had a hand in helping unemployed folks find new work. This post combined my interests in social networks and job hunting.

Over this past year, I’ve been blessed to make many new friends and build relationships that will only become stronger in the coming years. I hope that if you’ve been reading this blog for a while that you’ve found it useful and insightful. And if you’re brand new, I hope you’ll come back and engage in the dialogue.

Best wishes for a successful and kickass 2010!

A few weeks ago, Mack Collier asked the question of whether your blog is losing its identity. To a great extent, Mack’s post was about the increasing degree of homogeneity in blog content. His perception is that most blogs are going the route of How-Tos, Echo Posts, and Top 10 Lists. It’s an interesting observation considering that most folks will say that its these types of blogposts that get the most visibility and attention.

The post also provoked a slightly different reaction with me. Below is the comment I left with some subtle updates:

Mack, here’s the problem and it’s one that I believe affects all media, both new and old. Do people really want to read original and fresh ideas? Or do they want to read overly-provocative posts from familiar and famous sources? For old media examples, we see hyper-provocative personalities on TV and print get all the attention as well as find run-of-the-mill sitcoms and stagnant dramas remain on-air year after year. This is while smart voices and excellent programming struggles to gain visibility and survive.

If we’re really serious about wanting more innovative and interesting ideas from our blogs, we not only have to write them…we have to nurture them in others. It starts with stepping out of our comfort zones and reading new blog sources. If someone writes really great stuff but it goes unnoticed, it’s very likely that they’ll stop writing altogether or submit to the more formulaic blog writing ideas that seem to attract the most eyeballs.

Now, let’s all do something positive and introduce great AND NEW writings to our own readers.

I honestly believe that if you carry influence in the online space, you have an obligation to use your voice to not just lift up familiar folks you know, but perhaps more importantly, give visibility to smart and talented folks who are less known. This goes triple for A-listers, some of which are better than others in this regard.

So for 2010, let’s make it a point to share visibility with other smart folks who need more attention to their ideas. And I’ll start…here are a just few who I’m excited to see more of their work:

Kelly Stonebock (@kellyopoly): kellystonebock.wordpress.com
A.J. Bingham (@ajbingham): readaj.com
Roxanne McHenry (@roxannemchenry): roxannemchenry.com

What will you do to help bring visibility to smart folks you know?

I hate the holiday shopping hoards and the inevitable battle against the sea of over-tired and under-patient humanity. Thank heavens for the internet. I try to do most of my Christmas shopping online these days, but it’s almost unavoidable that I’ll need to pick at least one gift up at an actual brick-and-mortar store. So it is that I found myself at one of the local upscale outdoor shopping centers that are prevalent throughout Austin. These places are far more than your everyday, pedestrian strip malls. They have immaculate boulevards and well-landscaped walkways to entice us weary shoppers out of our hard-earned money by convincing us we’re far more cosmopolitan than we might actually be. These shopping centers also have their typical upscale retail establishments like J. Crew, Coach and Burberry with their artfully designed storefronts. But as I entered another of these stores, I found myself faced with a parallel to something I see frequently in my work.

The store’s windows and exterior were creatively developed to be eye-catching. I imagine someone painstakingly took their time to design and arrange the various props to entice casual shoppers like me to open the door. It was all so neatly done that I felt compelled to go inside and see if they had a gift for my wife. And here’s where the disappointment hit me like Santa himself swinging a bag of coal at my head. Not one of the sales staff welcomed me, not one asked if I was looking for anything in particular, not one did anything that would potentially complete a successful transaction. As easily as I entered, I left. What the hell was the whole point of the work devoted on the outside if it all goes to waste inside?

Now before you think this is just a problem with the retail buying experience as a whole, let’s think about a similar experience in the online world. Most businesses know they need a web presence to compete and so they go through the exercise of creating a spectacularly beautiful site. It has all the bells and whistles we associate with business or e-commerce websites. It’s chock full of animation and sliding panels and dancing kittens and all the usual links to every single social media network known to man. You look at it and think, “My word, this is the most impressive website I have ever seen and will likely see ever again!” And then what? Well, this is often where all that wondrous and creative design talent goes straight down the crapper. No one ever thought to ask about business objectives or about generating a sale. In other words, your customer just walked through the door based on an artful exterior but doesn’t know what to do next…so they wander aimlessly and likely leave.

Most consumer-driven websites unfortunately don’t focus on the all-important Ask, which is the primary funnel for directing visitors toward taking an action. But there are a few things you can do to ensure that your site not only looks great but fulfills the investment you’ve made in your web presence.

Know your goals before ever thinking about design. Don’t spend all that time on the external window dressing only to ignore the reason why your customers enter in the first place. I can’t say how many times I’ve seen clients get wrapped up in the design process without a clear vision for what they want their site to achieve. It’s the classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Before building a new site or committing to a redesign project, get clear about what you want your site to do to drive business to you.

Be crystal clear and inviting with your Ask. Think of your website’s Ask as the warm greeting your customer receives when they enter the store. If you know your audience’s needs, then your Ask should be a knowledgeable sort of “How can I help you today?” What does your business do and how does your website help you do it better? If your business is built to sell directly to your visitor, then develop an Ask that guides your prospect toward making a purchase or bundle of purchases. Or perhaps you’re a B2B company that uses your site to offer product information and generate leads; if so, then create an Ask that funnels visitors toward a lead generation form. Whatever you choose for your Ask, make it not only clear, strong and tied to your business goals, but focused on the psychological needs of your customer.

Measure your results. You just can’t assume that your Ask is going to be automatically successful. That’s like having a great storefront and a greeter at the door only to take whatever money you receive from purchases and toss it in a bag and forget about it. You have to know whether what you’re doing is leading to achieving the key objectives you set for your business at the beginning. Same thing for your site. Know whether your Ask is funneling prospects toward completing a goal. There are several tools to help you like Google Analytics. It’s free so you have no good reason for not incorporating measurement into your plans for success.

Your website isn’t just there to look pretty. It has a purpose. Help your customers achieve their purpose through a great Ask and you’ll see successful results.

There’s a rather lively conversation taking place at Olivier Blanchard’s The BrandBuilder blog about social media “certification” being promoted by the International Social Media Association (ISMA). I put certification in quotations because I question the very idea of whatever this organization is pushing as true certification. I’ve been on the professional association side of things and know how much work goes into developing a certification program, the standards and oversight needed to make it truly legitimate. (If you’re curious about what basics go into developing and maintaining a recognized certification program, here’s a terrific article from the American Society of Association Executives.) Once completing the program, you may receive a certificate, but it is not certification and there’s a huge difference. I understand the proposed value and rationale for a certification program as a ward against snake oil salesmen but based on the site’s info, I wonder about the true purpose of the ISMA’s program.

But lest I go into a more focused rant against ISMA, I actually want to address a tangential issue that arose from Olivier’s post. It has to do with the value of the diplomas and true certifications we earned. Think about the Bachelor’s and other post-graduate degrees you hold as well as the professional certifications necessary to practice your craft. Maybe it was an advanced engineering degree earned from a large university twenty years ago. Or perhaps it was a general liberal arts degree from a small college last year. What is it’s value to you today? If you’re thinking it has little or no value, I’d encourage you to think again. Even if you’re not actually using that degree today, I wager it has had some impact on the way you view the world.

My personal example (and yes, your mileage may vary) is that I went to a small liberal arts school and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in history. If you know my profile and background, you’ll notice that I haven’t spent any professional time working in museums, teaching history or any other historical-related efforts. Yet, what I learned through my history major has impacted how I view the world around me. I see cause-and-effect differently; I seek out root causes for incidents; I believe there are multiple viewpoints to explore for any event. So while I’m not a practicing historian, I do see and think about my world through the lens of a historian. And that is what adds to my unique value as a professional no matter what I choose to do in my career. Now I’m working on a Master’s degree in Business Anthropology and that further adds to my specialized approach to working with clients.

Try to think about that diploma differently. Don’t disregard or undervalue the learning that you’ve gathered over the years regardless of how detached it may seem to the work you’re doing right now. That academic learning coupled with your experiential learning makes you the unique and highly valuable professional you are today.

Are you doing something different in your career than your undergrad or post-grad prepared you for? More than likely you are…if so, how do you think your academic learning has influenced your professional work? Love to hear your own stories.

More football, you exclaim? Yes, its another football-related post. Sorry friends…when it’s Fall and the weather starts to cool, my mind gets a bit preoccupied with all things pigskin. If you have no interest in the NFL, just bear with me for a few more weeks and I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.

Now, to the issue at hand and it involves the gentleman over to the left. He might be recognizable or he might not. His name is Charlie Weis and earlier this week he officially became the former Head Coach for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team. Did he deserve to be fired? Probably, based on the key metric used to assess all sports coaches: wins. However, it was an ignominious end to what was once a very promising career with the Irish. Weis was known as an offensive guru with the New England Patriots and highly sought-after coach in the NFL. But his alma mater of Notre Dame came calling and it looked like a golden relationship for a once-proud college football program battling mediocrity. After the first couple of years of success (and some have argued undeserved), the roof caved in and Weis’s Notre Dame teams returned to previous levels of unremarkable football.

To paraphrase Marc Antony (Roman not singer), I come neither to bury Weis nor to praise him. Instead, I think there are a couple of career lessons we can extract from Charlie Weis’s fate.

Success at one level or different position is no guarantee of universal success. Weis is the owner of four Super Bowl Champion rings as a result of his 15 year career as an assistant coach in the NFL. In hindsight, we might be able to say that this prior success offered no indication as to whether he’d be a good head coach in the pro or collegiate levels. Both career transitions offered their own unique set of challenges that would be new for him. And don’t we face these same challenges any time we receive a promotion to manager or change industries? Here’s the key: recognize that what got us to where we are isn’t necessarily going to take us higher. We have to be prepared to set aside our ego and learn with a child’s curious mind.

Sometimes the view from below is better than the one from above. While the above is about what we need to do when in the gig, let’s take a look at the view of where Charlie is right now. It’s one that many of us have experienced before. Maybe we got laid off or even canned. Maybe we got demoted after a promising rise through the organizational ranks. Here’s the good news, though…these are the experiences in which we grow the most. It’s like the old proverb says, “There’s always more growth in the valley than there is on the mountaintop.” See Vince Young and my earlier post as an example of someone who took the time while in the valley of their life and profession to refocus their efforts toward success. Trust me, I’ve been in the valley quite a few times and it sucks. But I also cherish these times as moments in my life when I was more truthful with myself, more humble toward others and more accepting of the gifts that come in life. They were crucial waystations in my journey and I recognize that I’ll likely visit the valley again at some point in my life.

What are your experiences? Any wisdom you gained while trying to climb a new mountain or trekking through a valley in your work or life? Love to have you share your story with the community here.