Fav posts of 2004

I thought I had a slow year blogging, but in reviewing my posts I was surprised by the quality of what I found. Check these out (newest posts first):

• Great case-study in B2B marketing gives my take on an article from MarketingSherpa
• Juicy info on B2B web searchers summarizes another MarketingSherpa article
• CRM project moving ahead outlines basic steps taken to get our CRM project started
• Business.com--home of click fraud? Is a expose using my personal experience.
• Three free prizes are examples of WWSD (What Would Seth Do)
• SEO as a branding tool tells a truth for B2B websites that should be heeded.
• We try harder...being #2 is a link to one of my most inspiring reads this year...

A #2 brand should never try to emulate the leader

• Dilbert is right about marketing links to an article in an engineering mag creating white papers from your engineers.
• Website Critique takes a B2B company to task for their 'new' website.
• Edgecraft with Alton Brown is an analysis of what makes a Free Prize.
  

But now that I understand more about him (thanks Wired), I am raising him to hero-status. That isn't a casual statement to make. He saw the edge, and made it happen.

• Scum alert! is my first post regarding the very evil Traffic Power SEO company. Its generated a number of emails from victims to me.
• Is email sabotaging your sales efforts? asks the question--when should you reply by phone to an email from a prospect?
• Old news and red herrings provides some analysis by yours-truly regarding the impact of Google on trade publications. All of my posts should be this good.

Trade pubs need to provide new information (including product info) that readers want to learn about. Engineers are not going to search the net to see if Agilent has a new impedance analyzer, but they'll be thankful if it is presented to them. Google can't do this--that's the red herring.

• Building useful site navigation points to an article that focuses on navigation designed to generate more conversions--such a simple idea, but runs contrary to your sense of organization.
• From the master Guru Jakob Nielsen takes B2B websites to task. Great advice on creating 'advocate tools' to help during the purchase process.
• Back to the basics Things not to do on your sites (about half the examples have been fixed)
• Who's your best salesperson? is a little story about how I bought a new washing machine at Best Buy. If you think this is about them not being on commission, you are wrong. This is an 'ah-ha' moment, so worth reading.
• Marketing: It's a puzzle is a great post not because of my prose, but because of the great article I found. It tells it like it is.
• Another marketing nitwit tells of a email newsletter sponsor whose landing page is a Word document!
• Can CRM survive the handoff has to be one of my longer, more rambling posts. I dare you to read it.
• Getting control of the calendar is a quick introduction to the power of the ical file format. (Nowadays I have Goldmine which speaks ical!)
• From Mailbox to Trashcan is just a link to an article about getting your direct mail read.
• Is anybody out there? (like me?) When yours truly gets his head blown-up (literally) in the local paper in an article about blogging.
• Top ten posts of 2003 in case you liked this list!