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The Weekend Reader is posted every Sunday with my favorite eye-catching, inspiring, innovative and informative articles of the week.

The Social Media Marketing List: 45 Things You Should Do,But Probably Aren’t : “When discussing social media marketing, lots of folks, including me, say things like ‘be authentic’ and wave our hands around. That makes you want to kick me in the coccyx, I’m sure. So, here’s a list of 45 specific things you should be doing. [Conversation Agent]

Top Ten Email Marketing Best Practices of 2009: “The fundamentals are the backbone of any great email marketing program. The saying, “it takes a village to raise a child”, holds true to email marketing. It takes an accumulation of specific email marketing best practices to produce a successful campaign. Needless to say, email has come a long way in the last ten years. Blasting and spamming is no longer the thing to do (not that it ever was, but people did it anyway). With the CAN-SPAM Act, industry guidelines, and professional email service providers, marketers now have what they need to succeed.” [Blue Sky Factory]

Alternative Ways for Businesses to Use Twitter : “Most people think of Twitter as either a great way to engage in conversations with individuals, or as a great way for a company to blast out little bits of content in 140 characters at a time. There are also plenty of Blogs and Twitter conversations about how companies “should” use Twitter – as if there is some kind of professional code of conduct for businesses on Twitter. Bottom line, there are some innovative ways to use Twitter that go well beyond basic customer care.” [Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel]

World-Brand-Building Mistakes France’s Entrepreneurs Make : “First, if you meet with journalists, influentials, and bloggers who are coming from outside your country I assume you want to build a world brand. After all, if you only want to be big in France then why waste your time meeting with USA journalists? So, since you were meeting with us and since we’ve spent precious resources getting there and had sizeable opportunity costs, I figure entrepreneurs should be better prepared. In this case you get to learn from their mistakes. [Robert Scoble]

Think Like an Entrepreneur : “It’s easy to get trapped by our own limited thinking. One way small business owners do that is by believing that we have to be directly involved in everything that happens within our companies. This holds us back in a few ways.” [Web Worker Daily]

Tagged as: Business, Marketing, social media marketing, Weekend Reader