(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.

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.

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.

- Everyone should have a web presence
- If you are doing business beyond five miles from your office you need a least a web site
- Word of mouth is critical and the web helps in that
- At the very basic on your site should be directions and information on your business

The complete video is below. It is definitely worth watching a few times to get all these important goodies that these experts in the field can provide.

We recently had an opportunity to chat as she was traveling across the country with her husband (I’ll get to that later) and discuss relationship marketing and social media. Here is part two of our two-part interview (part 1 can be found here):

Steve: Switching gears a bit, you and your husband are seeing the US and Canada by traveling in an RV. You mentioned that you sold your house and are seeing North America in a way that most people would dream of. What was your motivation to do this?
Mari: As DINKs (double income, no kids), my husband and I are fortunate to have much freedom and flexibility. We’ve been debt-free for years, and so when we finally sold his family’s beach home in San Diego after many years of talking about it, we decided to look at an old shared dream of traveling in a motorhome with fresh eyes. The timing seemed perfect. We’d also just read Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Workweek and really resonated with the concept of “doing your dream now,” not waiting ‘til retirement. (Though, as I’m sure many entrepreneurs will attest, we have no real plans to actually retire!).

We sold all our furniture too and put the remains of our personal belongings in storage, in an attic of one of our investment properties. Choosing which RV to live in fulltime was one of our tough decisions. My husband lobbied hard for a twenty-two footer; I knew that wouldn’t be big enough for two larger-than-life people to live in as a home/office. So we got a thirty-four foot motorhome and tow a car behind. It’s been an incredible adventure so far – we got to spend the entire summer up in Alaska and are now enjoying visiting many of our country’s beautiful National Parks. I write a blog about our journey, with photos and videos, at http://befreegomobile.com.

Steve: This makes you a virtual worker in the truest sense. What are the pros and cons of being on the road while managing a thriving consulting practice?
Mari: By far, finding consistent reliable internet access is the toughest challenge. We have a Verizon aircard for extreme mobility – provided we can pick up a strong enough signal – and we often stay at RV parks that offer free or low-cost wifi. For phones, we have three different cell phones with different companies for back up options, as often one will get a signal while another has no signal at all. For mail, we’re almost totally paperless. We do have a mailbox in San Diego and have snail mail forwarded once or twice a month to whichever RV park we’re at for a week or more.

The second biggest challenge is living harmoniously with your spouse 24/7 in a small space. We joke about our lifestyle being our “mobile marriage bootcamp!”

Joking aside, having the ability to travel the country with each other while still running our businesses is one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives so far.

I believe we may see more and more people joining us in the mobile lifestyle, whether living in an RV from time to time, or living in multiple residences, even multiple countries.

Steve: When I close an interview I always like to get a “looking forward” perspective from a person in their respective field. What do you see the next 12-18 months for Social Media? Do you see it becoming an integrated part of everyone’s marketing strategy?
Mari: Absolutely. I believe if you’re in business, if you don’t get involved in Social Media you’ll get left behind. It’s as simple as that. Those companies who are effectively embracing and integrating Social Media into their existing marketing strategies are leading the way.

The key is you really need to take time to fully understand the various options out there before taking the plunge. Plus, you’ll need to decide how you and your staff’s involvement with certain sites impacts your business and your reputation, who’s going to be the voice of your company, and what clear and consistent message you want to broadcast.

Plus, equally if not more importantly, you have to be able to listen to, monitor, and engage in conversations.

The days of Web 1.0 flat/one-way communication are gone. Web 2.0 and social media is two-way, in fact, multi-way. I have huge respect for companies who involve their marketplace with contests and invitations to submit ideas which the company actually acts upon, e.g. Nike, Threadless.com tee-shirts, OneCondom.com, and MyStarbucksIdea.com.

For giant sites like Facebook, over the next 12-18 months, I believe we’ll see more and more creative advertising and business solutions offered by Facebook themselves.

I think we’ll also see a huge rise in both broad and narrow niche social networking sites.

However, at the end of the day, as a business owner, it’s important not to get spread too thin. My advice is to create a profile and token presence on as many social sites as are relevant to your business. But then only focus and be active regularly on the two to three giant sites where the critical mass of your target market participates.

Mari has been called the “Pied Piper of Facebook” but that really just scratches the surface of her talent and knowledge of social media and its application. Her specialty is called “Relationship Marketing”. She is also an Internet Marketing Consultant and Facebook® Business Coach. Everything she does, according to her “revolves around people and relationships – fostering new ones, building and maintaining existing ones, helping others with their relationships.” Her business and her mission is to help entrepreneurs or small business owners figure out how to monetize all these new social media tools and platforms.

We recently had an opportunity to chat as she was traveling across the country with her husband (I’ll get to that later) and discuss relationship marketing and social media. Here is part one of our two-part interview:

Steve: You are a relationship marketing consultant, could you explain that for those readers who might not be familiar with the term?
Mari: Sure. I work with solo professionals, entrepreneurs and small business owners to help them identify and nurture their most profitable relationships.

Since Web 2.0 and social media has become so widespread, the emphasis is on connecting with people. But it has to be the right people. It’s all too easy to waste a lot of time going down “rabbit holes” in the social networking world. I teach my students and clients how to build a network of potential clients, supporters (fans) and strategic alliances and implement creative marketing strategies in a timely manner.

Steve: Does Relationship Marketing center itself on leveraging social media tools and platforms or is there an additional physical aspect to this?
Mari: My version of Relationship Marketing focuses primarily on social media tools, as well as websites, blogs, email broadcasts, radio and teleseminars.

In addition, social sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow us to create what I call “virtual rapport.” Such that, when we do meet our online friends face-to-face, we already have a bond with them and it’s a very natural-feeling relationship from the first in-person meeting.

I do encourage my clients to host and/or attend relevant in-person events to cement the virtual connections face-to-face. For example, you can host or attend what are called “Tweetups” – that is a local group of Twitter members who meet up in-person to network.

Plus, for those who are speakers or wish to do platform speaking, social media sites make it very easy for us to reach out and connect with key decision makers and secure more speaking engagements.

Steve: Do you feel that this is the most powerful and quickest path to establishing and building a personal/professional brand?
Mari: It really depends on the individual or company, their products and services, how established they are already, how much demand there is for what they offer, and other factors. The key is clarity, focus and consistency.

If you have many of the important pieces in place already – like a website and/or blog, products and services, testimonials and case studies, customer support systems, etc. – then, with the right strategy, certainly you could tap into the power of social media platforms and further establish a personal/professional brand.

Steve: What types of services do you provide to entrepreneurs and small businesses?
Mari: I provide three levels of services:
(1) A self-study program, Social Marketing for Professionals, with a 250+ page guidebook, video tutorials, audios, an active forum and lifetime updates. The system is design for professionals to set up their social media strategy, then automate and delegate much of the day-to-day activities to a trained and trusted assistant.
(2) Small group training where we meet weekly in my private webinar room and cover a wide range of social marketing and internet marketing topics. I bring on guest expert speakers on some sessions. And, due to the small group model, there is plenty time for hands-on support in the hot seat.
(3) Private consulting and training. This is one of my more popular services and is designed for the professional, business owner and/or executive who wants a complete personalized crash course on both the technical side of the various social media sites and the strategic integration into their overall marketing plan.

My services – and free offerings – are all listed on my site at http://marismith.com under Services.

Steve: How is this type of coaching different from personal or business coaching that many people are familiar with?
Mari: The coaching I do tends to be more like consulting and training. My goal is to empower my clients to focus on implementation and generating measurable results, typically in terms of numbers of subscribers, traffic, paying clients and bottom line profits.

Having said that, due to my background as a Certified Personal Relationship Coach and a Developmental Coach, I do intersperse my consulting and training with models and concepts designed to help my clients grow personally and professionally.

I also have expertise in many of the personality assessments and often include those in my services. I’m a strong believer in focusing on your strengths – not trying to improve your weaknesses. Also, having a profound understanding of yourself, your preferences and your motivational sensitivities is one of the keys to designing a lifestyle and career that brings you joy and satisfaction every day. Given social networking may not come naturally to certain personality types, it’s important to identify this for each person and design an approach that suits their style.

Steve: You have an excellent e-Course called “21 Keys to Profitable Relationships”. Could you explain what the course is and why someone would benefit from it?
Mari: Sure. 21 Keys to Profitable Relationships is a free online course I offer at my main website http://marismith.com where, each day for 21 days, subscribers receive a solid proven strategy for building relationships that result in an increase in profits. I created the course from many years of experiencing what works well (and what doesn’t!) in both my and my clients’ relationships. In addition, I include a bonus screen capture video that demonstrates many of the 21 Keys in action.

NEXT TIME: In Part 2 of our interview we talk about her travels across North America, being a true virtual worker and looking at the future of social media.