Sage Lewis offers up some good advice in a column over at Search Engine Watch today. Lewis takes a look at the average pass-rate to find out how likely it is that a viral marketing campaign will last. His post will serve as a bit of a wake up call for small business owners that think they can toss a good idea on their blog and let it go from there.

From his article:

Lewis suggests that businesses remind themselves that even the good campaigns may not last beyond a couple generations of "pass it on." He goes on to suggest that one way to make sure that a viral campaign has a better chance of success is to do a better job planting the viral seeds.

In other words, stop thinking that telling one person the campaign exists will do it and start putting some time and effort into finding multiple channels to launch the idea through.