By Mark Schaefer
Hard to believe but I am nearing the end of my tenth year of blogging and one of my traditions is to summarize my most popular posts of the year. It was a big year on {grow} as I tested new ideas that would eventually make it into a new book, started conversations on everything from sex to the Facebook Apocalypse, and featured some excellent guest content.
Before I count down the top 10 posts of the year as determined by your page vies, I thought I would pluck out my two favorite posts of 2018 that did NOT make the list:
- How to make the content hierarchy of needs work for your business — I thought this simple insight would lay things out in a new way for the busy marketer and it created some great online discussions.
- Your organizational culture is your marketing — Probably my favorite lesson of the year. I interviewed Wistia CEO Chris Savage for my new book and he told me that his sales only took off when he stopped selling.
Now on to the top 10 list. Here are the best blog posts of 2018 …
Number 10
Five golden lessons from writing 2,000 blog posts — If you place all my blog posts end to end it wold reach to the moon and back. Well … probably not, but I’ve written A LOT. Here’s what I learned along the way!
Number 9
Three reasons why your corporate storytelling won’t work any more — We need to update our view of content in the marketing eco-system today and this post kicked off a great conversation.
Number 8
To dramatically increase your creativity, slash your budget in half — I think this post resonated with so many people because I’ve never met a marketer who said “darn it, my budget is just too big!”
Number 7
Sex Sells. But what about beauty and truth? — One of the most interesting things going on in business right now is the adjustments going on to redefine politically correct. What happens when redefining body image goes against advertising best practices?
Number 6
Why did Nike do what they did? — This was the most amazing marketing event of the year. Just as the explosive new Nike ad campaign hit the streets I was studying the research on values-based marketing for my new book. The case study just revealed itself and ignited massive conversations around the web. I’m super proud of this post.
Number 5
No social media, no email, no website. And she’s a business success — People were absolutely delighted by this story of becoming a business success without any digital presence whatsoever!
Number 4
Why marketing technology is sucking the life out of the marketing profession — This post was an example of how I use my blog audience as my research department. In this post i floated some ideas from the book I was working on. One reader commented: “This is great! Can you write a book about this?” I knew I was on the right track!
Number 3
Facebook’s biggest problem isn’t ethics, hate or fake news. It’s Facebook. — What a disastrous year for Facebook. The thing that makes me so sad is that this valuable company and its thousands of employees are suffering because its leader has no moral compass. The implosion of Facebook may ultimately become a bigger business story than the rise of Facebook.
Number 2
Don’t panic. The Facebook announcement is no big deal — The year started with what some called the Facebook Apocalypse or Facebook Zero. Panic ensued. But when you look at the numbers, you can see that the announcement was neither surprising nor significant. This post had a huge impact because it put the announcement in a rational new perspective. Plus … I was right.
Number 1
10 ideas driving the future social media marketing — This post was a summary of my speech at Social Media Marketing World. I put a ton of work into my talk and I was rewarded by my readers since this was the top post of the year.
I also wanted to give a nod to my great contributing staff Kiki Schirr, Kerry Gorgone, Brooke Sellas, Mars Dorian and the newest writer on the team Avtar Ram Singh. Mars is now in his seventh year writing for {grow}, the longest-tenured writer I have ever had.
Kerry Gorgone can boast about having the top guest post of the year, The world’s best chatbots for work and play.
And the podcast
It felt like Tom Webster and I hit a new level of quality and wackiness this year and I’m really proud of our work on The Marketing Companion. If you have never experienced the most entertaining business podcast on the web, here are our five most popular episodes from 2018:
- The marketing agency of the future
- Emotional connection and the modern brand
- Our favorite marketing books
- Staying relevant in a marketing career
- Why customers really don’t want to engage with you
Thanks for all your support this year everyone! Have a great 2019!
Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.
