I might also have mentioned that’s what old seems to be new again—just revamped for the Internet age. Our parents clipped coupons, we use Groupon. Our parents had garage sales, we have Craig’s List and eBay. We used to make collages, and now we make them online, using sites like Pinterest. However, I can’t really discuss these topics with (Pinterest) authority because I’m still waiting for my invite to join the Pinterest community. When I requested an invitation last Thursday, here’s the message I received:

Hi! Thanks for joining the Pinterest waiting list. We’ll be sure to send you an invite soon. In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter. You can also explore a few pins. We’re excited to get you pinning soon!

- Ben and the Pinterest Team

They get points in my book for giving me more information—“pins” to explore and a link to the site’s Twitter feed. The email isn’t just a dead-end. However, I found the message to be a big missed opportunity. Here’s why:

I requested an invitation, but that doesn’t mean I know much—or anything—about the site. This is Pinterest’s chance to tell me why it’s cool and why it’s worth waiting for. It doesn’t need to be five paragraphs—I appreciate short and snappy—but give me something. And give me a clue about when I’ll get an invite and why there’s a waiting list in the first place. Is it to create more buzz and excitement? Is it because the servers can’t handle the potential onslaught of traffic caused by the site’s increasing popularity? There might be strategic reasons that the company doesn’t want to share with users, but it can’t be too tough to think of a customer-friendly explanation to provide to people who have expressed an interest in your business.

Also, who’s Ben? Clearly, he’s an informal kind of guy, but should I have to do a Google search to find out that he’s most likely Ben Silbermann, one of the site’s cofounders? A little context in the email would have been helpful.

Lastly, and most importantly, the email omits the fact that if you have a friend who’s already joined, that person can send you an invite. Wouldn’t it make sense to mention that? Had I known, I would’ve emailed a handful of friends or posted something on Facebook to find out if anyone I knew had already joined, thereby spreading the buzz about the company.

Every communication with your customer is an opportunity, especially if it’s potentially your *only* communication with that customer. Don’t blow it.

1)    Bank of America announces debit card fees
At a time when consumer anger about bank bail-outs and the economy was on the rise, a number of banks, including Bank of America, announced new debit card fees for its customers. The response was outrage, online petitions, and action—thousands of customers left the big banks in favor of credit unions and smaller community banks. On November 1, Bank of America, which bore the brunt of the negative press, abandoned the proposed fee (JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, and other banks already had). However, as one PR specialist told the NY Times, had the bank road-tested this idea before announcing it, the bad publicity could’ve been avoided entirely.

2)    Netflix raises fees and announces Qwikster spin-off
My colleague Bill Golden wrote about this gaffe, which has been compared to the New Coke debacle of the mid-1980s. Netflix increased its prices and then announced that the company was going to split into two parts: streaming video to remain with Netflix, and DVDs-by-mail to morph into a new company called Qwikster (no one consulted us about the spelling). Customers and Wall Street responded negatively: Netflix’s stock dropped by nearly 50 percent and the company lost more than 600,000 customers. In October, just weeks after the announcement, Netflix nixed Qwikster.

3)   Facebook hires a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google
Unhappy about the Circles feature of Google+ and its use of “private” Facebook data, Facebook hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to plant negative stories about its rival—a PR blunder in the most literal sense. A reporter figured it out quickly and Facebook ended up looking petty and hypocritical for trying to slam Google on privacy when Facebook itself is the company that frequently angers users for playing fast and loose with their data.

4)    Kenneth Cole: Inappropriate tweet, Take 1
For some the Arab Spring was about the fight for democracy. For Kenneth Cole, it was a way to sell more shoes and accessories. During the demonstrations in Tahir Square, the company took advantage of the popular “#Cairo” hashtag and tweeted this: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo-KC.” The financial implications may have been minimal, but the social media universe was unhappy with the designer, who quickly tweeted an apology. A fake Kenneth Cole Twitter account didn’t let the company off the hook—pranksters started sending out inappropriate mock tweets (example: “Our new slingback pumps would make Anne Frank come out of hiding! #KennethColeTweets.”)

5)    The Red Cross: Inappropriate tweet, Take  2
Non-profits are not immune to controversy, though in this case, the Red Cross turned lemons into lemonade. When an employee mistakenly sent a personal tweet out to the Red Cross Twitter account, it was embarrassing. The tweet read, “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch Beer…when we drink we do it right #GettingSlizzerd.” The social media team at the Red Cross took the tweet down in about an hour and decided to combat the incident with a humorous tweet of its own: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

The best part of the story is that Dogfish, the subject of the tweet, quickly sent out its own message asking its beer fans to donate to the Red Cross. In just a few hours, an embarrassing situation turned into a fundraising opportunity.

Don’t risk the goodwill of your subscriber base—make sure you’re not guilty of the following four “don’ts.”

Don’t make it difficult to unsubscribe. I received a newsletter recently that only had a link to my account information. To unsubscribe, I had to enter my user name and password. However, I had never ordered anything on the site and I didn’t even remember creating a user name and password. And when you want to unsubscribe from something, the last thing you want to do is jump through hoops for a user name and password that you don’t want. I shouldn’t have to say this in 2010, but every newsletter should have a simple and painless unsubscribe button (and when people do unsubscribe, you should make sure they are actually removed from your mailing list). It’s irritating—and illegal—to force your newsletter on people.

Don’t write too much. We all suffer from information overload. Because of this, I expect my email newsletters to be easily scannable. But I get one newsletter about San Francisco restaurants and bars that’s excessively long. If Microsoft’s word count feature is correct, it’s close to 6,000 words. Nope, that’s not a typo. I love getting the scoop on the food scene in San Francisco, which is why I don’t unsubscribe, but it makes me tired to even think about reading an email of this length. This newsletter is proof that everyone needs an editor—some may even need two.

Don’t send email too often. Retailers are particularly guilty of this one (Neiman-Marcus and J. Crew come to mind), but excessive email is a turn-off no matter who does it. Perhaps some subscribers want daily alerts, but speaking from experience, I’d like the option of receiving fewer messages rather than having to choose between daily email from a company and no email at all.

Don’t be a mystery sender. The New Yorker recently sent out an email regarding new passwords for the magazine’s digital edition, but the sender was an email address I hadn’t seen before. I wondered if it was really from the New Yorker or if it was spam. I decided to ignore it, and it turns out I wasn’t the only one who was unsure. The magazine sent out a follow-up email later in the day—from a recognizable New Yorker alias—to reassure subscribers that the email was legit. This is an easy problem to avoid. Be consistent with senders and branding and your subscribers won’t be confused.

So what turns you off in the world of email newsletters? I’d love to hear your comments.

But using competition to generate enthusiasm and interaction isn’t limited to Nike, a company with an obvious and direct link to the sporting world. Benefit Cosmetics, a San Francisco-based makeup company, has a sassy Facebook page that’s also taking advantage of users’ love of competition to encourage comments on its page.

Right now, for example, you can vote for your favorite Benefit product in the Beauty World Cup, a clever way to tap into the World Cup hype and also get some feedback from users on their favorite Benefit products. Benetint beat the Eye Bright pencil in last week’s match-up and will move on to compete against the winner of the Hoola bronzing powder vs. High Beam match-up.

The page also includes links to Benefit’s blog content—sometimes they’ll recommend a past blog post to answer a user question, or sometimes they just want to promote an event, product, or other information. There are videos, too, and currently there’s a contest going to share travel photos inspired by Benefit (i.e., “Bad Gal in Vegas,” which is a play on the company’s Bad Gal mascara); the contest could use more submissions, but it’s clearly an effort to address its global audience and to consider the brand’s global reach.

Many corporate Facebook pages suffer from a lack of personality and a lack of active involvement, but not so for Benefit and Nike. Kudos.

More and more, I’m starting to think I’m in the minority. Stats from a new eMarketer report support my “being left in the dust” theory. In early 2009, Twitter’s U.S. site traffic was a few million unique monthly visitors; by June it was more than 20 million. And that doesn’t take into account the users who send and read tweets via mobile devices and widgets.

eMarketer also predicts that if Twitter successfully shifts its focus in 2010 from audience building to revenue generation (read more about that and the company’s new “Promoted Tweets” strategy here), its adult users will grow to 36 million by 2012.

Here are some other interesting Twitter stats:

• Many 2009 Fortune 500 companies have Twitter accounts (though these stats don’t reveal the extent of engagement with Twitter): 27% of companies ranked 1-100; 20% of companies ranked 101-200; 18% of companies ranked 201-300; 16% of companies ranked 301-400; and 19% of companies ranked 401-500. (Source: Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research and Financial Insite Inc., “The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies,” February 23, 2010)
• A February 2010 Pew research report found that 14% of Millenials (ages 18-29) are on Twitter and 10% of Gen X-ers (ages 30-45).
• In August 2008, 29% of U.S. Internet users were using social networks, and 6% were using Twitter. By September 2009, 47% were using social networks and 19% were using Twitter. (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, “Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009,” October 21, 2009)
• Moms use social media and Twitter more than the average adult. Of respondents surveyed between April and June 2009, 60.3% of moms used Facebook compared to 50.2% of adults surveyed. And 16.5% of moms used Twitter compared to 15% of adults. (Source: Retail Advertising & Marketing Association, “All About Moms,” conducted by BIGresearch, September 16, 2009)

I could go on and on with the statistics, but it appears that Twitter is not going the way of MySpace, especially if it can make good on its monetization strategy. So as I was writing and researching this post today, I started following three more people and I set a weekly reminder for myself to check Twitter. It’s a start.

Do you have a Twitter account? Do you use it? If so, have you developed a Twitter strategy? Let us know.

We can’t help but get in on the list action, too, in part because 7 of our top 10 blog posts in 2009 also included lists. What is it about lists? The scannability? The fact that someone prioritized information for us? Our inherent need to weigh in, disagree, and state our own opinion?

As we move ahead in 2010, we’ll be thinking about why some of our posts sparked more interest than others—lists are not the whole story, as promotion, headlines, relevance, and other factors always play a role—and we’ll use that analysis to refine our own best practices for successful Web content and share the results with you. But for now, we bring you the 10 most popular Tendo blog posts of 2009.

10. Learning from success: 4 social media triumphs

9. Twitter click-through percentages: Fool’s Gold

8. 6 good infographics sources–and how USA Today fooled everyone

7. 10 killer iPhone apps for marketers

6. Shock marketing: rolling out the red asphalt carpet

5. 26 jargon words to avoid (like the plague)

4. 9 video highlights from the O’Melveny & Myers social media panel

3. 26 killer jargon words for writing sassier copy

2. 2009’s 10 most embarrassing marketing & PR blunders

1. Martin Eberhard: How blogs helped build the Tesla Roadster