So, how’s the economic meltdown treating you? Excited about the opportunities, or sick to your stomach worrying about how your bills will get paid? Exhilarated or freaked out? Maybe a little of both? It’s impossible to really see massive change when we’re still in the middle of it. But there a...

There’s a great divide in the online marketing world at the moment. On one side is the Tribe of the Cool Kids. They’re part of The Conversation. They use the niftiest open-source tools. They have trendy haircuts. They’re about voice and influence and attention. They’re gettin...

I was a little surprised this morning when, after I’d given a talk on business blogging, a seminar attendee asked if I’d seen the Newsweek article this week on why it’s impossible to make money with blogs. “Guess I’ll give it all back, then,” was my off-the-cuff answe...

Sure, your content needs to be useful. Yes, absolutely, it needs to improve your readers’ lives. And without a doubt, it needs to strengthen your relationship with your content community. But sometimes, you just want to get some sizzle going. Here are some ideas for when you want to create con...

The key to online success is authority. The key to authority is knowing what the heck you’re talking about, and being able to express it well. So what’s the key to knowing what the heck you’re talking about? One of the things that holds people back from creating information-based b...

2009 promises to be a year of profound change. Millions of people around the world are having a tough time, but periods of dramatic upheaval are also the best time to start or grow a business. Extraordinary times create extraordinary opportunities. Now we can’t help you lose 20 pounds or learn...

What’s the secret trick to creating a really successful online business? Investing in the latest how-to information, right? Or maybe it’s a complicated new piece of software? Could it be the liberal use of fake yellow highlighting? The secret to online success isn’t so different fr...

Many people (including some sales and marketing coaches) think selling is a matter of manipulating, pushing, or tricking customers. And some selling is just that. Con men and boiler room operations are at the extreme edge of persuasive communication, and they give the rest of it a bad name. But in t...

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes. No, this is not going to be a post about what kind of bloggers Morpheus, Trinity and The Archit...

Technorati indexes 133 million blogs. According to their statistics, about 900,000 blog posts get made every 24 hours. Every topic, every theme, and every subject has been exhaustively covered by hundreds of blogs. So why should anyone read yours? Getting noticed might seem impossible. But there are...