The 34 Most Popular thinks Posts: Celebrating 5 Years of thinks

Some of the earliest blogs date back a good decade or more, but I’m still going to recognize a milestone date here at thinks. It was 5 years ago yesterday that I published the first blog post I ever wrote. thinks was hosted on Blogger then and the blog ranged all over the place.

The Blogger-hosted version of thinks lasted just over a year, before migrating to its own servers and streamlining to its current focus of marketing in the age of the local, mobile, social web. Since that time, we’ve hosted contests, interviewed celebrity marketers, launched several successful series – and a few less so. We’ve made bold predictions and offered encouraging words. Oh, and we’ve connected with thousands of readers through over 750 posts and many hundreds of comments. This blog is a better place because of you and I’m extremely grateful and humbled by your continued support.

Here, for your reading pleasure, are 34 posts that you – the readers of thinks – read, shared, commented and enjoyed the most:

Marketing, E-commerce, Usability and SEO

1. 3 Reasons Why A/B Testing Is Always the Right Answer
2. Want to Improve Bounce Rate? 6 Questions You Must Get Right
3. Top 5 SEO Best Practices
4. What Does an A/B Test Look Like Anyway
5. When Does Marketing Become Sales?
6. 19 Words and Phrases to Avoid in Your Copy
7. How Your Customers Use Their Mobile Phone

Measurement and Metrics

8. How to Build the Right Metric For Your Marketing
9. Measuring Customer Satisfaction: The Avinash Kaushik Interview
10. Brand Awareness Is Not a Goal
11. What Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Will Buy in 2007. And Why.

Social Media, Twitter and Facebook

12. What’s the Business Value of Twitter?
13. Smart Companies Use Twitter. Here’s How.
14. Yet Another Reason Smart Companies Use Twitter
15. Twitter Is a Fad. So Why Does Your Business Need to Be There?
16. I Heart Zappos: The Best Customer Service Story You’ll Ever Hear
17. The Downside of Social Media
18. Can You Find New Business Using Twitter?
19. 4 Ways to Make the Most of a Social Media Firestorm

Building and Hosting Your Website

20. While I definitely think of myself as a geek marketer, one who really understands technology, I had to get even deeper into the guts of tech the day my old hosting company disappeared in the middle of the night. Fortunately, it turned into some great lessons learned and led to a continuing focus on hosting issues for small business, best captured in this next set of posts.
21. Comparing Hosted Services for Small Business Websites
22. Comparing Jimdo to SiteKreator, Webnode, Weebly and WordPress
23. Jimdo Adds Social Features
24. Taking a Look at Weebly
25. Who Should Build Your Website?
26. Do You Need to Redesign Your Website?

Strategy and Operations

27. How to Hire the Right Employee
28. How to Select the Right Agency for Your Business

Book Reviews

29. Book reviews have always been popular on thinks, perhaps none moreso than The 12 Most Important Business Books of the Last 10 Years. The rest of this section looks at the most read of the rest:
30. Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”
31. Forrester Research’s POST Study (Book Review of the Week-ish)
32. Being Strategic by Erika Andersen (Book Review of the Week-Ish)

Small Business Link Digests

33. Back before I had clever titles for each Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest (SEO tip, hint, hint), it started out as “This Week In Social, Local And Mobile Marketing.” Later editions simply carried a date, like February 1, 2008 Link Digest, Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest, March 7, 2008 and Small Business E-commerce Link Digest, May 30, 2008.
34. Once we got around to naming them, the Small Business E-Commerce Link Digests looked like this: 6 Down and Dirty E-marketing Tips, This Week In Social, Local And Mobile Marketing, This Week’s Signs of the Mobile, Local, Social Web and Getting More Bang for Your Buck Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest October 2 2009

The last 5 years has gone incredibly quickly; I hope the next go a little slower. But, no matter what happens, we’ll be here. And whether you’ve been reading for the full 5 years, or just found our little corner of the web for the first time today, I want to thank you dropping by. I believe thinks has got the best readers in the world. Thank you for reading. I’ll try to make sure it’s worth your time.

Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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