If there’s one thing that’s carried over from old media to new, it’s the tradition of year-end “year in review” and “best of” lists, to help fill the slow times between Christmas and New Year’s.

(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.

So what exactly is the opportunity that social media presents to small business? In this Solutions Stars Video segment, we’ve got 11 more viewpoints from experts in the field for you to consider: The Social Opportunity [6 mins, 24 secs]. Check out the video (and see the full series on available on Blip.tv):

Here are some quick recaps:

Brian Solis, Author of PR2.0, CEO Futureworks: Small businesses now have direct access to the people who can help them make their businesses grow, on a mass scale. Now, small businesses can be influential and become authorities, and build communities around them, based on their expertise.

Rohit Barghava, author, “Personality Not Included“: Small business owners understand the power of word of mouth marketing and customer referrals. It’s cheap, viral, and works.

Tim Ferriss, author, The 4-Hour Workweek: To get online, first get offline — go to conferences, meet people, have credible people online vouching for you — then connect with them online.

Steve Hall, Publisher, Editor, Adrants: Reach out to everyone in your industry, get to know them, and broaden your circle of social friends. Eventually, you’ll be able to use the network to help spread whatever you’re trying to spread.

Toby Bloomberg, CEO Bloomberg Marketing: Small businesses especially build businesses through relationships, which they can do through through blogs, podcasts, video. Social media was built for small businesses, and lets them scale further.

Ryan Anderson, Community Relations, Overlay.TV: It’s an incredible opportunity for small business to bypass filters to get to core customers. The tools let you create conversation that you just can’t do through traditional media.

Darren Rowse, Author, ProBlogger: If starting out again, he’d spend a lot of time defining his niche, establishing self as expert, offering to guest blog in other expert blogs (for free), to get own his content and expertise out.

David Alston, VP of Marketing, Radian6: Small business can use social media to build a brand, in a highly targeted way. Talk to the people in your space and reach out to them.

Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist: Radical Strategic Visibility — your goal is to be ubiquitous, in a way that excites people.

Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog: Use the internet to become irresistible — know which type of people on the Internet they’re going after — readers, people who do, offer and sell things, and people who pass on info to their friends.

Paul Chaney, President, Int’l Blogging and New Media Association: Small business is best suited to use a lot of these tools — an example is a custom signmaker with a blog, who shows the process and tells the story of making the sign, to help customers get to know him.

Find anything particularly meaningful (or offbase) here among our experts’ opinions? Leave a comment and let us know what you think about the social opportunities for small business.

In this next video segment from the Solutions Stars Video series, we’ve got 10 social media luminaries in 5 minutes, telling you, the small business owner, some reasons why You Need Social Networks. Check out the video (and see the full series on available on Blip.tv):

Here are some recaps of what they said:

Guy Kawasaki, founder, AllTop: Twitter is a great way to find and spread information — it’s a way to reach thousands of people, immediately and free (which is great). It takes a little getting used to; give it a month or so — you might hate it for the first few days, but it’ll work out [which mirrors my own experience with Twitter, except I took longer because I am slow]

Ryan Anderson, Community Relations, Overlay.TV: They’re active on Twitter (including the executives), not just for promoting their stuff, but engaging with community. Their CEO will also use Summize weekly (now Twitter’s search) to get feedback directly from users, which is great for businesses, especially young companies.

Wendy Piersall, CEO Sparkplugging.com: You should also use other tools (depending on your business) like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. She doesn’t think you can conduct business online without participating in these types of communities.

Scott Monty, Global Digital and Multimedia Community Manager, Ford Motor Company: People have been networking since the Stone Age, but modern tools let us create networks of subject matter experts. “You don’t have to be the best accountant; you have to hire the best accountant” — online social networks let you tap into people who can help you — you’re not in it alone.

Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog: All this has changed the way she would start a business today. Use social networks to find out who’s out there; start on Twitter to listen to people and watch what’s going on. Open the door by promoting other people.

Tim Ferriss, author, The 4-Hour Workweek: Blogging isn’t for everyone, but there’s no excuse not to be on Twitter. You can use it as a blog, and you can be effective using it as a personality and brand on Twitter (like newspapers, activists, others are using it).

Chris Brogan, VP of Strategy, CrossTech Media: Small businesses should use social media tools to create  outposts where people can get to know you — put your face and presence out there, just like shopkeepers hanging out and meeting people in a town. “It’s all the same, it’s just different… but it’s all the same.”

Jason Billingsley, Co-founder, Elastic Path Software — Retailers need to build relationships and community; once you do that, your message is accepted. There are many avenues, like YouTube — many people are educating consumers by doing how-to and instructional videos. They’re informing, not selling, and by creating trust, then they look to you when they need to do transactions.

Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist: “Radical Strategic Visibility” — using Facebook, social bookmarks, blogging, Friendfeed, etc, — all the tools, in an integrated strategy.

Jennifer Openshaw, President, WeSeed.com: Bringing credibility online is important, and positioning yourself as an expert. A way to do this is to create content on your site, which you can also distribute through partners and social networking sites, so you can add value to people, even when you’re not trying to sell them stuff.

Agree or disagree with something from one of our ten social media experts? Please leave a comment below.