(In much of the publishing, business, and corporate world, things just flat out shut down between Christmas and New Year’s. As in, offices-closed-doors-locked. As a blogger and potential social media maven, you could try to take advantage of the lull and blog to help fill this void. Assuming you can find something worthwhile to talk about.)

Anyway, in that spirit, here are my picks for 5 of my favorite entries from this here Solutions Are Power blog from the year 2008 (this is an expanded version of the list that you’ll hear in the Solutions Out Loud podcast — subscribe now!)

(In the interest of modesty, I will omit my own entries from consideration.)

1.) Legal Considerations for the Small Business — By way of Shashi, this entry comes from Statton Hammock, Director, Legal and Business Affairs at Network Solutions, and it covers in broad strokes six steps you’ll need to cover as you work to create an online business.

While this topic is obviously huge (check out the Small Business Administration, your state’s business development department, and local resources like your Chamber of Commerce for more help), it’s a great primer, and I found it to be very informative.

2.) The coverage of the Blog Potomac conference was excellent; if I had to pick one entry, it’s the interview with Lionel Menchaca, of Direct2Dell. It’s always gratifying to see how a big company is working to use social media tools to really listen to customers (especially after they’d taken their lumps for not doing this, previously).

3.) 8 Tips to Protect Your Domain Registration, not so much for the actual content, as to see it in the larger context of Network Solutions’ response to a domain hijacking dustup this spring. It also demonstrates how being un-self-conscious (like providing tips that apply no matter who your domain registrar is) is genuinely helpful.

4.) 10 Reasons to Use Facebook for Business – Coming from Mari Smith, here’s another primer, this one for conveying the benefits of using Facebook to business owners. It really helps focus the issue, especially at a time where some business owners may be flailing around, hearing they have to do something with this Facebook thing, but not sure how or why. Simple, effective, to the point.

5.) Trademarks 101– Another entry with suggestions on how to deal in the legal realm, specifically, trademark issues. I wasn’t able to attend this event, so the event summary done up by Steve was very helpful. (Also, as you can tell, legal-ish things aren’t my strong suit.)

Perhaps it’s obvious, but my strategy for picking the best entries of the blog for 2008 was the same strategy I use when I buy gifts for people — I find the things that I want for myself. If you’ve got your own favorite entries from 2008, feel free to share in the comments.

If you’ve been enjoying the events that we’ve been bringing you, then you will NOT want to miss this one! This one requires no travel you can attend it from the convenience of your office or home! We’ve created a free video conference that’s jam packed with insights & online marketing tips for small businesses!

Mark your calendar because on October 29 at 1 pm we’re providing the Solutions Stars Video Conference! Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone, & Network Solutions Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda met with 32 top bloggers at BlogWorld Expo. We asked them to share their insights & tips on online marketing for small businesses for you. It was all captured on video & now we have a conference features nine different documentary style video sessions:

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

In addition to the Solutions Stars Video Conference site, please visit the event pages on Facebook and Upcoming.

Here are the steps:

a) Bookmark this page – http://www.solutionsstarsvideo.com/

b) Create a calendar event for themselves

c) Choose the event time

d) Come up with good questions for the chat room

We’d love it if you’d grab a badge for your blog or site.

This is part 1 of 3 in the recap of the event.

Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager and Chief Blogger, Direct2Dell

Lionel is a Fortune 50 blogger and is a rock star in the blogging world. He spearheaded the blog and social media effort at Dell 2 years ago. He has been there for 15 years starting in tech support.

He started the blog with as a tech support type of blog and the big challenge was the support issues people had with Dell. Started to look at the difference between supporting one customer and talking to a large audience at once.

His mantra from companies looking to leverage social media is “People want to connect with other people, not a corporation”.

Digg-style features and ideas voting from the broader public to have Dell actually take those recommendations and do something with them.

Microblogging is the next step in our strategy to create discussions in a whole new way.

Strategy for us now is to have our people active on IdeaStorm and touching other blogs and the rest of the blogosphere. We are working to blend these things to make it easier for customers to engage. It is right now the tech-savvy user and we want to bring this to a more mainstream audience.

Washington Post Local Business Editor Dan Beyers

The trend over the next 10 years is that it will all be sent over the Internet in some format. Don Graham, Publisher, is a huge social media junkie and recently they had an intern lunch and he asked for people for Facebook app ideas, which impressed most people because of how the paper is perceived as an old media dinosaur. WPI has 60 blogs that cover every topic under the sun, even an obituary blog….

His strategy is that you should stick to your niche, write quality content, create a new model of audience engagement and that the online content is one big database and we have to unleash it in new and exciting ways.

Our mission is to inform the world and we must move the way the future is going. There is a discussion raging in the publishing world that the print side of the business should move to the non-profit model for posterity and keeps the media alive for the record.

The newspaper still makes more money in ad revenue than the online right now but we are in a transition period where that will be changing. The online advertising revenues are for national campaigns where the print thrives on the local ads.

The difference between the blogs and the traditional articles is that the blogs must be read by a second person and fact checked which is less than the traditional article review process.

Each blogger is responsible for moderating their blog’s comments and it may take a bit longer to review than we would like. It is a good exercise because we are interacting with the audience that people see as extremely important.

Blogs in elections – from a newspaper standpoint, we can deliver content faster which is great. We are also looking to move to tags to make the content more accessible and easily searchable. We are trying to prove that editor driven blogging works to free up the journalists for “higher altitude blogging”.

NEXT TIME IN PART 2

In part 2 we will continue the recap and cover the presentations by Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media Group and Jeremy Pepper of Pop! PR Jots.

On June 13th 2008, Network Solutions sponsored Blog Potomac in Northern Virginia which brought together some of the top minds in social media and public relations. They talked about the current landscape and how companies can benefit from implementing a social media strategy. We had an opportunity to interview Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager and Chief Blogger, Direct2Dell.

Lionel is a Fortune 50 blogger and is a rock star in the blogging world. He spearheaded the blog and social media effort at Dell 2 years ago. He has been there for 15 years starting in tech support.

He started the blog with as a tech support type of blog and the big challenge was the support issues people had with Dell. Started to look at the difference between supporting one customer and talking to a large audience at once.

His mantra from companies looking to leverage social media is “People want to connect with other people, not a corporation”.

Then came IdeaStorm

Digg-style features and ideas voting from the broader public to have Dell actually take those recommendations and do something with them.

Microblogging is the next step in our strategy to create discussions in a whole new way.

Strategy for us now is to have our people active on IdeaStorm and touching other blogs and the rest of the blogosphere. We are working to blend these things to make it easier for customers to engage. It is right now the tech-savvy user and we want to bring this to a more mainstream audience.

Here is the complete interview: