Today is my birthday, and I decided to give you all a gift that few of you have been highly anticipating for a few months now. My most popular post on this site — probably by far — was last year’s Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2007 compilation. I spent about 3 days (and nights) on it (without sleep) and I was quite happy with the turnout. This year, I began starting to write this compilation in the first week of December. The collection begins with posts that start in January of 2008 and have been collected and shared in the last 12 months. Like last year, I’ve grouped them into different categories and written short descriptions on each post. There’s no order to the posts; I’ve used my bookmarks and a variety of social sites and peer recommendations to create this list. I hope this year’s list surpasses last year’s. Let me know how I did in the comments. 😉

Here’s how this works: In the Internet Marketing Best Posts “series,” I take posts that are typically timeless — they’re not confined to a specific event or news occurrence — they’re valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you’ll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road.

These posts range from beginner to advanced with a greater emphasis on the more intermediate posts. I’d argue that if you’re starting your Internet Marketing business with not much know-how, you should check out the 2007 posts; in fact, most may still find them relevant regardless of the skill level.

New for 2008: If your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, we have badges for you! Feel free to link to this post with the top right hand image, which was contributed by David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design. Every post is a winner!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Social Media: Generic Strategy:

Social Media: Strategy for Social Sites:



Twitter:

Sphinn:

Beginner’s Guide to Sphinn: Surely there are some of you out there who have never used Sphinn before, but if you are remotely interested in this post, you can imagine that half of the posts I put here were also submitted to Sphinn.? That said, join up and read this Problogger post for some rules of engagement.

Top 10 Signs You’re Spamming Sphinn gives you more insights into how to use social news sites properly.

Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already: Danny Sullivan rants about how there are “search marketers” trying to manipulate Sphinn (and other social news sites). He explores examples and shows how hard it is to be a moderator of a site like this. Hey, I hear you.

An Analysis of Sphinn: 175 Homepage Homeruns Dissected: This post shows you what people are loving on Sphinn.? It also somewhat correlates to the categories on this post since some topics just happen to be a lot more popular than others.

LinkedIn:

Digg:

How to Level the Playing Field with Digg: While I personally don’t like Digg anymore and find that it’s useless for marketers, Skellie think it’s still valuable. (I’d argue “rarely” nowadays.)

How I Became a Digg Power User with a 75% Popular Ratio: I got banned in October from Digg with a 67% popular ratio and 278 front page stories and offered very similar tips in 2007, but some people still want to use Digg for this kind of thing.? Personally, I think Digg will ban you when you get popular.? The guy who wrote this blog post speaks from the same kind of experience.

Wikipedia:

StumbleUpon:

The Idiot’s Guide to StumbleUpon: Tim Nash, an active StumbleUpon expert, has offered some strategies on using the social discovery tool.

How to Write Posts that Set StumbleUpon on Fire: Skellie utilizes real-life experience with the social discovery site to show you how you can get a whoosh of good traffic.

28 Tips to Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar: I personally love StumbleUpon — a lot. And you should too when you apply these tactics.

Fark:

Definitive Guide to Fark and Getting Mass Traffic: One of the lesser tapped social media sites among search marketers is Fark. But not for Glen Allsopp, who reviews it here.

Facebook:

delicious:

6 Ways to Make Life Easier with delicious: How many of you actually use delicious as a search engine? Maybe you should.

How to Analyze Your Site with Delicious: Ann Smarty dissects the various parts of delicious.com and shows you how you can learn more about your website.

Flickr:

How to Market on Flickr: While Flickr itself isn’t seen as a community that you would market to, you can find out how to become a respected community member AND market your services as well.

An Insider’s Guide to Marketing on Flickr: Rohit Bhargava gives some very detailed tips on how you can use Flickr to successfully market products.

FriendFeed:

FriendFeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising: Steve Rubel offers his initial impressions of FriendFeed.

25 Different Uses for FriendFeed: FriendFeed power users Michael Fruchter and Louis Gray team up (well, Mike posted the guest post on Louis’s blog) to share some tips on how you can get the most out of this service.? As an FYI, I LOVE FriendFeed (and as another FYI, I said the same about Twitter in 2007 and everyone joined up in 2008.? Just sayin’).? By the way, Louis has a ton of great posts on FriendFeed on his blog and this isn’t the only one.

Blogging:

Viral Marketing:

The Top 10 Viral Marketing Campaigns of All Time: Patrick Altoft reviews the most popular YouTube videos and explains why they rock.

Hard (but Important) Lessons About Viral Marketing: Having realistic expectations is important so that you don’t fail at your viral marketing campaign.

The Viral Marketing Glossary: Dan Zarrella gives definitions for a bunch of terms related to viral marketing.

What is Viral Marketing?: Seth Godin’s post from the last day of 2008 is the reason why I held publication of this post till 2009.? He explains viral marketing and then shows a case study of how it works.

Link Building:

Reputation Management:

Analytics:

Personal Branding:

Local Search:

Content Development:

Web Development:

Affiliate Marketing:

Domains and Domaining:

AdWords/PPC:

Internet Marketing:

General Marketing:

Best of Techipedia 2008

I typically don’t put posts from my blog in the “Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008” list, but this year, since I’ve grown a considerable number of subscribers, I’ve decided to give new users the opportunity to read the two best posts without feeling that they need to dig through the archives.? Of course, if you don’t mind reading the other posts I’ve written, by all means, go ahead.? There’s some good stuff there that I’m not highlighting here (including two on FriendFeed, which is a great content discovery and community building tool which simply doesn’t get much love).

The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette (or Netiquette) Handbook: My most popular post of December 2008 was about social media etiquette and goes through a variety of social sites to suggest what should and shouldn’t be done.? The comment discussion is great as well.

What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer?: Experts on social media marketing weigh in on the essential characteristics of the ideal social media marketing guru.

Thanks again to the Portland Web Design company for their awesome badges (and to Jill for the idea).? Also, thanks for all your contributions to this series.? Stay tuned for next year’s!

Badges: If you would like to use any alternative badges on your site, please choose one of the below and copy the corresponding text on your website:













Happy 2009!