It’s time for a party — Spare Change is one year old today!! Boy, how the year flew by, and look how much it’s grown. I just want to pinch its cheeks. Here’s the blog’s vital stats:

When I started this, I didn’t know whether I would have enough interesting things to say each week or whether people would care what I had to say. But look! You’re here! So, thank you for giving me the honor of your time, comments, and in many cases, friendship. I truly feel that I am part of a community, and even though we may not ever meet in person (though I hope we will!), I’m glad we’re connected through the ether.

I’m going to have fun today and share with you some of my favorite blog posts from the past year that you may not have seen. These are presented in order, according to when they were published. You can also take a look at the list of the most popular posts in the sidebar to make sure you don’t miss the biggies like the CDC’s Second Life, Marketing to Introverts and others. So, without further ado, here is the Spare Change Retrospective:

1. On Challenges, Change and Cellos – How I learned humility along with the cello, and the social marketing lesson that some skills do not always come naturally. (Postscript: Finally, after about an additional year of lessons from the time I wrote this post, my playing is starting to sound more like a cello and less like a dying goose.)
2. Tune in Tomorrow: Soap Operas for Social Marketing – I’m fascinated by the possibilities in both broadcast and new media for providing education and role modeling for health and social issues.
3. Why Can’t Social Marketers Sustain a Professional Association? – I’m still wondering about the answer to this question. I think we have a critical mass of people who would be interested, and the technology exists to connect ourselves fairly cheaply. The profession already has a listserv, conferences, and an academic journal – it should just be a matter of formalizing alliances and putting a membership infrastructure in place. We need a unified voice to speak out about issues like…
4. Dueling Social Marketing Definitions – Jupiter Research’s misuse of the term “social marketing” is just the tip of the iceberg, with more and more people using the term to refer to social media marketing or social network marketing. Just since this post was written, I find myself having to clarify more often which type of social marketing I work in (whereas people used to have no clue what the term meant, now they think they know what it means but are incorrect). Also see the handy chart I made to help you tell them apart.
5. Marketing to Terrorists – The day after the State of the Union address, this continues to be relevant. An apparently well-meaning funder created a PSA designed to appeal to the humanity of potential suicide bombers and thereby dissuade them from their mission, but ended up reinforcing just how effective bombs are in destroying a street full of infidels. Nice thought, wrong strategy.
6. Branding for Social Marketers, Part 1 and Part 2 – A series on what branding is and how it is used in social marketing.
7. Dove Soothes Our Fragile Egos – Unless We Are in China – A look at the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty in the US and in China, with an interesting cultural twist.
8. Friendly Fire: Stigma & Social Marketing Redux – Recent social marketing campaigns addressing HIV/AIDS have generated a backlash among the target audience. How could this be avoided?
9. Search Engine Marketing Fun – I cracked myself up while looking at the search engine phrases that people used to find my blog. Hopefully you are as amused as I was.
10. Metamorphosis – Unless you are brand new to my blog, you probably saw this post from around New Years. But I wanted to give you an update on the butterflies. A couple of weeks ago, on a very windy but warm day, we let all the butterflies go that were able to fly away. Two were left, one of which had one good wing and one shriveled one, and the other that had two defective wings. We became the butterfly nursing home, feeding them sugar water and orange slices, and sadly, the one with only one bad wing died. My 6 year old daughter buried it in the dirt outside and when asked if she had any words she’d like to share, said with a pout, “I wish it didn’t die.” The other butterfly, whom we dubbed “Crumplewings,” has been going strong and is still alive, despite the fact that pieces of its wings keep falling off and it now has about one-third of one wing and half of the other. I’m thinking of changing its name to Tenacious B. This is one persistent butterfly – we could all learn a lesson from it about not giving up.

Are there any posts I didn’t mention that you particularly like? Let me know in the comments.

Here’s to the coming year. I hope you’ll watch with me as we see together what 2007 brings.

Photo Credit: plus with hat uploaded by FunnymanSE30 – it’s awfully appropriate that this picture is of a Mac Plus – the first computer I ever owned (not counting the Commodore 64 my parents bought us). I’m still a Mac girl, by the way.

Technorati Tags: blogiversary, spare change, blogging

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