One of my main beliefs about blogging and marketing is that the title always matters.  It matters in selling a book, driving clickthroughs on blog posts or emails, on placing effective keyword marketing, and the list goes on and on.  For just about everything you can do with marketing, choosing the right title is a big deal. 

NicheGeek recently posted some examples of Unconventional Online Business Ideas. If you review this list you will see a bunch of nifty ideas here. Lots of people are doing these types of sites and carving out a nice niche for themselves.

Over the next week, I’ll posting some of the other insights I will be taking from the event, but in the meantime here are just a few marketing ideas that struck me as remarkable or noteworthy from SxSW:

I had coffee with a potential partner and our conversation ebbed to a discussion about marketing philosophy.  He said something like, "I think companies [like yours] just give away many of their trade secrets on their website. 

They provide too much information.  If I wanted to compete with you… all I would need to do is read your website or blog.  The purpose of a website is to solicit interest… you’ve got to get people to respond… to generate leads."

My response…

As more and more content is created there are more publishers than there are good ideas, which means publishers are hungry to spread the few good ideas that exist. What separates a profitable channel from a money loser is typically two things: ideas and execution.

Because I have been posting about a more diverse set of topics sometimes outside of SEO I get asked lots of business strategy questions.

I missed last week (My laptop started with the “laptop death rattle” – so it was a scramble to do data backups, find and migrate to a new machine). One of the worst parts of being a solo shop is being your own IT guy. Excuses aside – here’s twice the friday favorite goodness for this week.

Time Magazine made me Person of the Year.

Monday’s announcement by Linden Lab that the software you run on your computer to interact with Second Life will be opened up to anyone who wants to contribute to its future development generated wide-ranging commentary in the media and among bloggers.

DMOZ, also known as the open directory project, is the largest human edited directory in the world and one of the most ‘trusted’ link directories on the internet.

However, in recent years it’s been steadily falling in popularity and the search engines no longer regard it as highly as they once did. More importantly for users, search engines have become progressively smarter and more sophisticated, which means that human edited directories like DMOZ aren’t as important.

This session covered things from what a small business owner should be paying attention to, what you shouldn’t, and gave ideas, tips an information for the small business owner.

Never mind the convenient connections, let’s just talk about what happened. Questions just lead to more questions and we’ll never get this article done. Google organized kids the world over to address global warming and how to fix it. The results of the Global Warming Student Speakout were published this week.

Google invited students to use Google Docs & Spreadsheets* to come up with ideas for combating global warming. One of the ideas makes it as full-page ad in today’s USA Today [PDF], Google says. Among the ideas:

I’ve been working with FamousAgents.com, providers of SEO and blogging services to real estate agents, and they’ve put together a great article called 21 Keys to Link Bait Success.

For marketers, publishing your own electronic newsletter can be challenging. Between project deadlines and other things, you’ve already got a lot on your plate.

As hard as it may be, letting go of your website designing ideas and listening to the customer may actually be of benefit in the long run.

A creative company is a must in today’s highly competitive business environment. To build that innovative business, it takes courage on the part of management.