1. What do we do with Social Media? Last year was clearly a year that marketers began to pay attention to Social Media in a big way, and began to explore in earnest what Twitter, Facebook, and the like can do for brands and business. In other words, social media has evolved from the passionate early adopters to the mainstream marketing agenda of the CMO. Many of the content categories covered here are clearly dominated by social media, both from a strategic angle Jason Baer’s “Putting the Why Before the How” was the top seminar of 2009 as well as tactical how to use Facebook was a theme across many content categories.

2. How can we do more with less? 2009 was the year of the Great Recession. So it’s no surprise that marketers were also looking for ways to maximize their budgets. Jonathan Kranz’s two-part story on 10 high-impact, low-budget marketing ideas was a clear winner last year, and one of the most-read Get to the Po!nt quick-read newsletters was on that topic. Of course, looking to do more with less also made marketers curious about what free social media tools were capable of. See No. 1, above.

3. Two words: Digital marketing. Online was a key driver of marketing in 2009, at least for our readers. Even in a newly social world where Twitter and Facebook are the brightest and newest toys, things like email, landing pages, and website conversion remain the backbone of digital marketing. It’ll be interesting, in 2010, to see increasing convergence of social tools with the rest of the digital toolkit.

via The Stuff of 2009: The Most-Read, Most Downloaded, Most Watched at MarketingProfs : MarketingProfs.

– Bill