In an earlier post, Scott Mahler of Datex Media commented asking about the newest strategies of increasing blog traffic. While there are some new aspects, I think for many of us, it's important to first "hammer home" some of the best tips blog owners can use to help ensure traffic growth. This blog post invites your comments! What's new in blog marketing? What works for you? Let us know below. The #1 strategy to garnering more traffic to your blog is: "Write good quality, in-demand content". (Remember you are writing too people, not at them). And of course some of the activities I successfully use are: Use social networking tools such as: StumbleUpon. Run an advertising campaign via StumbleUpon. Use twitter. Ensure you provide tweets of value and customize your twitter page to match the branding of your blog. Never complain needlessly on twitter (do you want to spend your day with a whining sour-puss?) Invite people to follow you on twitter.  You may find my earlier post "Common Blog Traffic Sources?" to be of interest - Hint... Google is NOT my biggest traffic source . Include information about your blog in the signature of every email you send (including the URL). Use subscription systems on ...

I received a message from Erica DeWolf of eMarketing & New Media this morning and read an interesting post on her blog "Word of Mouth Marketing: Measurable?". The discussion revolves, in part, around the various aspects of viral marketing vs. word of mouth. While there are pros and cons to both methods (and they both have their place and uses), I did not agree completely with the statement from Seth Godin: "...word of mouth is a decaying function..." While I visit Seth Godin's blog regularly (it's a valuable resource!) and value the information and resources (he's been blogging longer than I have), unless I've misunderstood, I just can't agree that word of mouth is decaying, instead I think it's a matter that less people are realizing, or learning how to use it effectively (my opinion of that blog post is that Mr. Godin appears to favour viral marketing over word of mouth; in this case). On the other hand Erica DeWolf's post continues to quote Dave Balter, where he surmises that: “Viral marketing is typically reserved for programs where the advertising is talked about as opposed to the product itself. A good example are viral videos, where the humor trumps the brand, ...