At the end/beginning of a year, some bloggers like to publish a "Best Of" post of the favorite/most popular posts from the previous year.
I am not going to do that.
Sure, it’s an easy post to write, and probably something of an ego-boost, that you can have a "Top Ten" list. But something of a cop-out too, Ithink. If you have past material that you’d like to revisit, by all means do so, but add something new to the conversation as you do. Don’t just give us a list.
Instead, my year end posts are going to touch on some areas of the marketing plan that I haven’t written much about in the past year. Advertising, trade shows, discounts, channel marketing. I’m sure I’ll touch on my fave topics of PR, direct mail, integrating sales & marketing and blogging as well, but I thought it’d be a nice change of pace. Expect the first posts early next week.
In the meantime, later today I’ll be wrapping up a few other random bits from the past month’s accumulated bloglines.
Is it any worse than doing a series of top 10 hacks that have no real relevancy to anything?
Jeremy:
I don’t mind “Best Of” posts as long as the writer adds new content. Tell me how your opinion has changed since the first post. Give me something new. Then it’s not just a list, it’s new material. But a straight list with no new material? On some level, I think it insults the reader’s intelligence, to think that we can’t find the interesting stuff ourselves….
Top Ten lists are unfortunately part of our culture now, in no small measure thanks (no thanks?) to David Letterman. I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other — I assume some readers like ’em, otherwise why do ’em ??
As for straight link blogs, they no longer interest me that much. I’ve stopped reading them for the most part.
I think you place the blame on the wrong culprit: it’s People magazine. 😉
Well whether it was People or David that spread the meme of the Top 10 List, we can lay much of the blame for the “culture of celebrity” on People and for the “Best Of” stuff on the print media in total, who did it for the same reason bloggers do — easy content.
I know Letterman did the Top 10 to poke fun but I think that’s what made it cool, hence why it spread so far. 🙂