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I’m just going to come right out and say it.

Groundhog Day is bullshit.

Look, I get that it’s a longstanding tradition that dates back to the 1800s and it’s based on a fun little bit of superstitious lore. But haven’t we moved past all that as a society?

Think about it. An old white man from The Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club holds a rodent up in front of the sun, interprets the “Groundhogese” said rodent speaks in order to relay his thoughts on future weather patterns, and then makes sure ol' Phil gets his yearly dose of the "groundhog punch" that has kept him alive for the last 130 years so he can keep repeating this pattern every February 2. And a ton of grown adults turn out every year to watch it all go down. 

2017 was a big year for us. We called for the reinvention of an industry, went public with NeboCMS, and published our first post in another language (if you count emojis as a language). And that was just on the Nebo blog.

It’s no secret we use the blog to blast our thoughts into the universe. We talk about our industry and pop culture, the things we love and the things we hate. It’s our opportunity to write about what interests us, without the weight of client expectations or KPIs to live up to. So every week, we publish a new post about email marketing, open letters to our coworkers, or why it’s important to have fun.

And, based on the numbers, you all actually care about what we have to say.

With the help of a top secret and very complicated algorithm — taking into account things like views, engagement, and how many times it was talked about in the office kitchen — we narrowed down the 54 blog posts of 2017 to only the best of the best. (And maybe a few personal favorites because this is our list, damn it, and we’ll do what we want with it.)

Our top 10 posts tell the story of what was important to us this year. These are the ones that made us laugh, inspired us, and helped us understand things like AI and programmatic advertising. And we hope they did the same for you, too.

Picture it: A sunny Atlanta afternoon — certainly not the hottest all year, but, still, a solid summer day. It was August 27.

I was having friends over that night to watch the Game of Thrones season finale, so I popped into Kroger to pick up some beer. My heart was set on something light and refreshing, the kind of beer you want to drink when you’re crammed in a room with 10 other bodies overwhelming the air conditioner. But instead of the wall of Leinenkugel Summer Shandy and Anderson Valley Summer Solstice I was craving, I was faced with a wall of bullshit pumpkin beers.

Spiced, heavy, unwanted pumpkin beers.

As another year comes to a close, we’re taking a break from our year-end holiday shenanigans serious client work to reflect on everything 2016 brought our way. Like everyone else, we celebrated our wins, mourned our losses, and drank a lot of beer in between.

Per usual, we documented our thoughts on the Nebo blog. We tackled everything from personal lessons learned to digital trends, with a few posts about how awesome we are tossed in the mix for good measure. What we learned was that the things that are important to us were important to you, too — like naming our new President, commenting on opportunities in our industry, and playing a lot of Pokémon Go (shoutout to the dedicated people still trying to catch ’em all).

Before we officially say goodbye to 2016, let’s take a moment to celebrate the top 16 posts on the Nebo blog. Then we can pop some champagne and ring in a new year!

“Content marketing” in the digital sphere has been around since the Internet became a household staple, when users slowly started to grasp how they could leverage the World Wide Web to share information. In the 2000s, blogs rose through the ranks to become the go-to resource for anything you needed to know, whether it was personal style tips or how to remodel your house on your own. Fast-forward to 2016, and content marketing is at the top of everyone’s to-do list, from Fortune 500 companies to Aunt Jane with her handmade soaps.