If you can get it, word of mouth advertising is the most powerful form of advertising. It's delivered by trusted advisors (a.k.a. friends), and costs you nothing.

But attempts to intentionally ignite viral marketing campaigns usually fall flat on their faces. Why? And what can you do to improve your odds of success?

A few...
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The conventional wisdom is that some subjects are dangerous to your business (like touching the electrified "third rail" of the subway): politics, religion, etc. But is that true, or might you use these to carve out a sub-niche that you can dominate?

If you've visited Ray Edwards' blog recently, you know that Christianity isn't just...
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As I've discussed before, Blog Riffing is a way to build content for your blog more easily, get more backlinks, and build relationships with other bloggers at the same time. Since last September, a little over half of the posts on this blog have been Riffs on ideas I found on other blogs.

I recently...
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If you enjoy this blog, I have a small favor to ask -- it'll only take a few clicks.

The other day, I was checking out the blog of one of this blog's frequent commentors, Rick Hendershot, and I learned something new:

When you create a Facebook Business Page it will have an address something...
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In today's episode of Battle of the Marketing Maxims, we'll pit Henry Ford against the elusive Deep Throat to explore the question: is it smarter to innovate, or should you "follow the money" and stick to markets where people are already spending?

Representing Deep Throat, we have a quote from Marketing Coach Terry Dean:

Step...
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Ah, the great dilemmas: cat vs. dog, steak vs. chicken, blonde vs. brunette...and the one I want to talk about today: automatic vs. manual.

Before you start thinking about cars, let me remind you that this is a marketing blog. The question is, should you automate your business, or run it manually?

Several factors come...
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A while back, I got an email from an unhappy subscriber. Among other things, he complained that the last email he'd gotten -- a "blog broadcast" message announcing my latest post -- was all about me, and thus not interesting to him.

I've been at this long enough to have developed a reasonably thick skin,...
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I learned a new word last week: gustnado. It's sort of like a tornado, but doesn't last as long, and doesn't reach up to the cloud base. We had a few blow through Grand Island, knocking down trees and trashing some mobile homes (uninhabited, thankfully) and storage units.

When a friend of mine first heard...
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Which would you rather do: convince someone to buy, or take orders from people who already want to buy? We'd all love to have the world beating a path to our doors to buy our mouse traps. But in the real world, they don't come just because you built it.

Once you've got a product...
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Niche selection is one of the first steps every entrepreneur has to take.

Sometimes you just fall into your niche -- for example, if you created a product, made some sales, and decided to stay where you were. But even then, you'll do better if you spend some time getting to know who you're selling...
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