photo by ausiegall

As you might expect at the end of the year AND decade, lists were among the most popular tweets in December. No New Year’s resolution lists, though … guess everyone’s saving those for their January posts.

What the Hell Are You Waiting For?

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

The 4 Cornerstones of Social Media Monitoring

Is Your Nonprofit’s Story a Call to Action?

Three Reasons Why Storytelling is the Key to Social Media Marketing Success

BNET’s 10 Worst Ads of 2009

The Best and Worst Identities of 2009

Measure the Impact, Not the Influence

What Matters Now, Seth Godin?

10 Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About

Why Print Isn’t Going Anywhere for a Long, Long Time

Storytelling Through Social Media

Website at a Loss as to Why It Disappeared From Google

The Best Business Books of 2009

When It Comes to Online Content, More Niche Usually Trumps More Masses

100 Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions for 2010

Social Isolation and New Technology

5 Qualities of a Good Social Media Manager

Volunteers Give 10 Times More Than Other Americans

10 Best and Worst Internet Company Names of the Decade

photo by edu_phon

I’ve decided to expand my normal 10 tweets to 20 from now on because there’s just too much good stuff to share each month. Running through the list of the most popular links I posted on Twitter last month is almost like a Rorschach test that helps me take a dip into the minds of those following me there. My main takeaway is that people are hungry for good, actionable information on communications in general and social media specifically.

So in case you missed any of these the first time around, here in order are the tweets that drew the most attention:

PR Gaffe Delivers Unintended National Press

How to Astonish Your Audience With Statistics

10 Best Practices in Social Media for Nonprofits

Aspire to This: an Example of a Great Website

8 Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed

Emotional Messaging Works; Rational Messaging Hurts

5 Fresh Ideas for Social Media Marketers

Why Don’t Tweens Tweet? We Asked Over 10,000 of Them

Are You Antisocial in Your Social Media Efforts?

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less

ROI of Listening: 17 Things to Do With What You Hear

Your Web Site: Less is More. Really.

Being Helpful is the New Black

10 Common Writing Mistakes Your Spell Checker Won’t Find

73 Ways to Become a Better Writer

Time for a Twitter Reality Check

Your Company is a Media Company

45% of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates

A Child’s First Hitchcock: Psycho

What’s So Scary About Marketing Strategy?

Check out any you may have missed last month on Twitter. There’s lots of good food for thought in this list (although my favorite, A Child’s First Hitchock, is just for fun … great storytelling example, though).

Enjoy!

photo by terwilliger911

Last month’s most popular tweets focused on everything from social media for nonprofits to Twitter trends to innovation. Here they are in order of popularity:

Twitter’s 10 Rules for Radical Innovators (Umair Haque on one of the Harvard Business blogs)

Social Media for Nonprofits (Wild Apricot’s great compilation of Slideshare presentations)

Their Right. Its True. Your Stupid. (my subtle reminder that things like spelling and grammar do count, even on the internet)

5 Biggest Things I’ve Learned About Using Social Media (public info officer Kelly Huston’s thoughtful advice from what he’s learned on the job)

Only 22% of 18-24-Year-Olds Use Twitter (kinda shocking, given that 99% of them use social media)

LinkedIn Drives More Direct Blog Traffic Thank Facebook, Google or Twitter (interesting info for business pros wondering where to invest their social media time)

Content Marketing Cheat Sheet (another great resource, this time from Ambal Balakrishnan)

New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets (a real conversation starter from the Harvard Business blog)

Tweeting the Bookstore (thoughts on how one retailer might use Twitter)

Great Communicators Are Great Explainers (great advice from leadership consultant John Baldoni)

If you missed any of these the first time I posted them on Twitter, check them out now. There’s a lot of valuable advice and information contained in these 10 links.

photo by ehnmark

I try to tweet daily links to content I’ve run across that I think is worth your attention. Thought it might be a good idea to post the most popular of these in case you’re not following me on Twitter. Here are the 10 links I tweeted in May that attracted the greatest attention:

8 Key Elements for Effective Internal Communications (courtesy of Nancy Schwartz, whose Getting Attention blog is one of the top nonprofit marketing reads)

Twitter a Bigger Threat Than Bloggers to Newspapers? (an op-ed by Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University)

Why Communicators Don’t Get LinkedIn (by Geoff Livingston, a PR strategist whose blog should be on your reading list)

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business (a great list by social media expert Chris Brogan)

Twitter: A Marketer’s Duct Tape (both are incredibly simple, flexible, available and cheap, says Harvard Business blogger John Sviokla)

Nonprofit News (the American Journalism Review takes a look at the trend in investigative and enterprise journalism funded by foundations)

Social Media Marketing Example: National Geographic (one in a series by Lisa Braziel of Ignite Social Media)

Push vs. Pull in Media Relations (at Journalistics, a great blog tracking trends in journalism)

15 Steps to Small Business Online Marketing Success (from Joe Pulizzi, one of the leaders of the content marketing revolution)

Developing Social Media Policies (actually fourth in a four-part series on SM policies)

Each of these is well worth a read. Check them out.

If I’m ever in a position to hire someone to help me with my content strategy, the folks at Brain Traffic are on my short list.

As a former (long ago) journalist and longtime communications guy, it’s so refreshing to see custom publishing evolve into content marketing. I’ve always resisted being identified as a marketing guy because I don’t enjoy selling people things that they don’t need or don’t answer their questions.

Content marketing is all about engaging people in a dialogue about their needs and desires, and then tailoring products and services to address those needs, wants and desires.

Here’s a brief slide show from Brain Traffic’s Kristina Halvorson that looks at the value of content strategy.

Here’s an interesting look at digital content marketing from some people who know what they’re talking about. Thanks to Joe Pulizzi at Junta42 blog for the heads-up.

The New Digital Content Marketing from Bob Collins on Vimeo.