I used to love lists.  I have been a card-carrying list maker since 1980.  I still prefer a good pen-and-paper list on a notepad to a Word doc, wiki, or whiteboard.

List-makers used to be somewhat unique, and kind of freaky types.  Now, everyone makes lists.  People Magazine publishes the Most Beautiful People list.  ESPN publishes the Top Athletes of the Century list.  Less known publishers distribute some really fascinating material, like the 50 Best SEO Blog Posts of 2009 or the Top 10 Most Important Tweets of 2009.

I am taking a stance against lists, if only for about one week.  My only prediction for 2010 is this: marketers will publish lots of lists in 2010.  They will do this (and the “they” includes me) because:

• Everyone loves a good list

• Everyone loves predictions

• Everyone loves being right

However, I will use this post to comment on the lists that have already been published.  I used this magical tool (and it is a tool, and just a tool) called Twitter to pull down a search of 2010 marketing prediction lists.  Not unlike holiday shopping or holiday greeting cards, the 2010 predictions lists start earlier every year.  If I weren’t taking a break from lists for a week, I’d just go ahead and write my 2011 marketing predictions now to get ahead of everyone else.

So after reading 6 or 7 2010 marketing prediction lists, here are some predictions I agree with and disagree with:

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Often when we discuss social media, one of the first questions that comes up is something along the lines of “That’s great, but where’s the ROI?”  We talked about this before in Businesses: Stay Away From Social Media If You Meet The Following Criteria and Social Media: Justify Your Love With the Right ROI Approach.

There are many reasons companies are involved in social media, and many find great value without even thinking about measuring ROI.  Recently though, I saw this video from Socialnomics, a social media blog as well as a book by Erik Qualman.  I’m about halfway through the book now — Socialnomics: How social media transforms our lives and the way we do business — and I’ll post more about it when I finish.

One of the things that grabbed me about this video was its tight, fun presentation including clear ROI examples from B2C, B2B and nonprofit uses of social media including brands such as Burger King, Dell, Genius.com, Intuit, Susan G Komen for the Cure and more.

Many thanks to Kevin Lynch from Banking on Social Media for being one of the first to bring Socialnomics to my attention (That’s a strong hint to go check out Kevin’s blog).

As the audio track says, “check it out..”

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

I deal with a fairly broad range of clients, prospects and partners on a weekly basis.  Don’t get me wrong – I am not part of the iPhone runs my life, 8 meetings per day or die, if you need me you better schedule me 4-6 weeks in advance crowd.  I can’t operate at that pace.  Some can, and a few can even do that and still call themselves productive.  For me, that approach is not good for business.

Instead, I like to pick and choose my spots, and that is what leads to this broad range of clients, prospects and partners.  My business partner once told me that he likes to work with and on “interesting clients and projects”.  It seemed like a fairly vanilla statement at the time, but I think that statement is what drives some of our business choices.  If you work with the same types of companies over and over – same size, same industry, same challenges – then you’re not really expanding.  You may be expanding your revenue base, but you’re not expanding your learning, you’re not expanding the solutions you can offer, and you’re certainly not expanding your ability to help organizations solve their unique problems.

That being said, in dealing with this broad range, I’ve come across a distinction that can be applied to just about any marketing organization.  Organizations are either advertisers or marketers. And it’s become pretty easy (for me at least) to tell the two apart.  The organization’s attitude towards marketing, the people and companies they hire to handle their marketing, and the way they execute and measure their marketing tells the whole story.

• Advertisers build media plans.  Marketers build strategic plans…and then media plans.

• Advertisers always buy on price.  Marketers buy on value.

• Advertisers focus on impressions and reach.  Marketers focus on outcomes and optimization.

• Advertisers love good creative.  Marketers also love good creative, but only if it leads to outcomes.

• Advertisers say they’re testing.  Marketers actually test.

• Advertisers love numbers but rarely do anything with them.  Marketers actually try to interpret and make decisions based on numbers.

• Advertisers buy things.  Marketers plan things.

• Advertisers talk to every vendor of every type of media, just to keep up with trends.  Marketers optimize what they’re doing with their current media before moving on.

• Advertisers hire glorified traffic managers.  Marketers hire valuable data managers.

• Advertisers love reports.  Marketers actually know how to read them.

And the list goes on and on…

Obviously I am generalizing a bit here for effect.  That being said, if I created the above list as a lead qualification document and used it internally, I am pretty certain that within an hour-long conversation I could place any organization in either the advertiser or marketer category.  It goes without saying that we prefer to work with the marketers.   They make for those “interesting clients and projects” that I discussed earlier.

Being an advertiser is easy.  Being a marketer – not quite as easy.   Comfort zones are nice, but they are built to be expanded.

We talk a lot about social media on Marketing Trenches.  And for good reason – Social media seems to be at least one item on the agenda for about 90% of the meetings we have these days.  Everyone wants to run 100 miles an hour to do something on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  I wrote about this previously in Want to Succeed In Social Media? It Sure Helps to Have a Strategy.

A big part of any strategic plan is revisiting that plan –  Making sure you are doing all the things you should, adjusting the pieces that aren’t working and continuing to optimize the pieces that are.  Sometimes though, we get so excited for the newest, shiniest, brightest, sparkliest things that we neglect the basics.  Herndon Hasty’s recent article in Search Engine Watch, That’s so 2004: Everything Old Is New Again, reinforces this – both from  a Social Media and Search Engine Optimization perspective.  I encourage you to read the whole article, but here’s one quick excerpt:

Blogging: The Oldest Social Media

In the midst of the discussions about Twitter strategies and how to build a Facebook fan page, the huge value that a company-driven blog offers has gotten lost in the shuffle. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to think about reaching out to potential customers in 140-character snippets, maybe it’s because these sites have already built the platform for us rather than having to create one ourselves, but keeping a blog for your company still brings value to your site and your brand that these newer social outlets can’t.

Combine a drive by the engines for fresh content with SEO value that newer social media can’t touch. It’s an invaluable channel that’s frequently overlooked and neglected — in many cases because it’s not the word on everyone’s lips at the moment. Remember, if you have enough news and content to Twitter about, you have enough to blog about.

I couldn’t agree more.  We like to view a blog as the hub for your social media efforts.  It serves as the platform that feeds the rest of those efforts, and it has undeniable SEO value.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly important to have a social media strategy that encompasses all the places you should be — just don’t neglect our old friend the blog.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in our comments section.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.