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Bestselling author, Entrepreneur and Agent of change. Seth's blog can be found at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
March 2009
Tuesday March 31, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:00AM EST on March 31, 2009
Ten years ago, you had a wide range of excuses for being a lousy visuals person. Starting with no talent, leading to no skill and going from there. But now, in a world where you it is expected that professionals...
Monday March 30, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:52AM EST on March 30, 2009
The first mistake marketers make is that they want more. More customers, more noise, more ads, more shelf space, more customers, more customers. Almost all of their actions are driven by the search for more customers. The reason this is...
Sunday March 29, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:49AM EST on March 29, 2009
If you find 100 comments on a blog post or 100 reviews of a new book or 100 tweets about you... and two of them are negative, while 98 are positive... which ones are you going to read first? If...
Saturday March 28, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:39AM EST on March 28, 2009
If you make something remarkable, that's because there's something to talk about. But often, if you've created something worth talking about, it's something that hasn't been done before. Which means it needs a name. So name it. That extra sharp...
Friday March 27, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:21AM EST on March 27, 2009
Why spend $10,000 to do a photo shoot for a magazine? After all, all your profit is in the ads. Sometimes it seems like people who build websites and magazines that take the high road aren't paying any attention at...
Thursday March 26, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:10AM EST on March 26, 2009
Do you have one? Some folks are going to eight hours of meeting a day. At Ford, they used to have meetings to prepare for meetings, just to be sure everyone had their story straight. If you're serious about solving...
Wednesday March 25, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:46AM EST on March 25, 2009
I've been thinking a lot about issues of scale and units of measure. Many businesses that are in trouble are in trouble for a simple reason: they're the wrong size. A newspaper that only had a few dozen employees would...
Tuesday March 24, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:52AM EST on March 24, 2009
Why people choose to visit online social sites: Who likes me? Is everything okay? How can I become more popular? What's new? I'm bored, let's make some noise None of these are new, but in the digital world, they're still...
Monday March 23, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 1:50PM EST on March 23, 2009
Five months ago, I built a social network on Ning. No ads, all free. I briefly opened it to the readers of this blog as a place to talk about leadership and connection. A few thousand people bought my book...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:35AM EST on March 23, 2009
The failed bankers on Wall Street have been whining that if they have to cut bonuses and salaries dramatically, they'll be unable to recruit great talent, and they need great talent to fix the situation. And for years, boards have...
Sunday March 22, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:14AM EST on March 22, 2009
In business to business sales, you will encounter three kinds of people: The vast majority, empowered to stall, to ask for more information, to delay, to send you after the broomstick of the wicked witch of the west. A smaller...
Saturday March 21, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:15AM EST on March 21, 2009
Every organization worth its salt has at least one guy like this. Someone who knows every technical detail, or has vast expertise in the parliamentary procedure. Perhaps he's the coot who knows every verse of the Bible or is the...
Friday March 20, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:27AM EST on March 20, 2009
You won't have any trouble at all finding someone who can tell you how to fit in. They can tell you what to wear to that restaurant or this conference or that funeral. It's not that difficult to figure out...
Thursday March 19, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:38AM EST on March 19, 2009
A friend asked me to help him think about how to split the equity in a company he was starting. His colleague is contributing office space and some key technology. My friend is responsible for where the business goes from...
Wednesday March 18, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:51AM EST on March 18, 2009
Marketers are good at looking ahead. We predict/create the future, working to build an idea or a product into something that will matter more tomorrow than it does today. The focus on the future, though, encourages us to take our...
Tuesday March 17, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:02AM EST on March 17, 2009
Travel agents... gone. Stock brokers... gone. Real estate brokers... in trouble. Photographer's agents, too. Literary agents? The problem with being a helpful, efficient but largely anonymous middleman is pretty obvious. Someone can come along who is cheaper, faster and more...
Monday March 16, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:15AM EST on March 16, 2009
The internet loves parallel projects. Linux development is parallel. Thousands of people can work on it at once, none of them waiting in line. Wikipedia is parallel, because a large group can go at millions of articles, side by side....
Sunday March 15, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:38AM EST on March 15, 2009
When I was a kid, I loved the Legion of Super Heroes and the Justice League of America. These were comics for slumming comic book writers, fun and sort of stupid stories where a whole bunch of superheroes would get...
Saturday March 14, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:01AM EST on March 14, 2009
If you haven't read his book turned into a blog, time to catch up. The Rorschach test question is this: When you read big ideas online, do you nod your head knowingly, do you argue in favor of the status...
Friday March 13, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 3:34PM EST on March 13, 2009
The only thing worst than starting something and failing... is not starting something.
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:43AM EST on March 13, 2009
The closer you get to someone, something, some brand, some organization... the harder it is to demonize it, objectify it or hate it. So, if you want to not be hated, open up. Let people in. Engage. Interact.
Thursday March 12, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:33AM EST on March 12, 2009
When industry norms start to die, people panic. It's difficult to change when you think that you must change everything in order to succeed. Changing everything is too difficult.Consider for a minute the pivot points available to you: Keep the...
Wednesday March 11, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:43AM EST on March 11, 2009
There's a story in the bible with very specific instructions for building an ark. Included in the instructions is a call for using tanned dolphin leather. Regardless of your feelings about the historical accuracy of the story, it's an interesting...
Tuesday March 10, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:05AM EST on March 10, 2009
Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity...
Monday March 9, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:36AM EST on March 9, 2009
A lot of corporations have seen dramatic decreases in revenue and have cut back projects as well. In many cases, this is accompanied by layoffs, and so everyone is working far harder.But in other organizations, and for a lot of...
Sunday March 8, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:45AM EST on March 8, 2009
Return on investment is easy to measure. You put money in, you measure money out, divide and prosper.But return on design? (Design: graphics, system engineering, user interface etc.)Design can take money and time and guts, and what do you get...
Saturday March 7, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:16AM EST on March 7, 2009
It's amazing that people have so much time to fret about today's emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow's.A glimpse at the TV and internets shows one talking head after another angsting about today's economy. These are...
Friday March 6, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:48AM EST on March 6, 2009
Drug companies have coined an acronym for the marketing they do that bypasses doctors: DTC. Direct to consumer. Those happy face ads you see in Readers Digest and other magazines, or the erectile dysfunction ads during the Super Bowl.What they...
Thursday March 5, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:25AM EST on March 5, 2009
1. Respect (from the audience)2. Love (to the audience)There are no doubt important evolutionary reasons why this is true, but in my experience, every great presenter earns the respect of the audience (through her appearance, reputation, posture, voice, slides, introduction,...
Wednesday March 4, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:10AM EST on March 4, 2009
Meetings are marketing in real time with real people. (A conference is not a meeting. A conference is a chance for a circle of people to interact). There are only three kinds of classic meetings: Information. This is a meeting...
Tuesday March 3, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:26AM EST on March 3, 2009
Is everything okay?Well, do you mean in my house? My neighborhood? The home office of my company? The entire industry?Thanks to airplanes, television and the internet, the scope of our experience continues to widen. Now, we're concerned about wildfires in...
Monday March 2, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:06AM EST on March 2, 2009
I hate going to the post office in the town next to mine. Every time I go, they look for a reason not to ship my package. "Too much tape!" "Not enough tape!" "There's a logo!"On the other hand, I...
Sunday March 1, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:46AM EST on March 1, 2009
I am not a member of the Author's Guild. Please don't blame me for their ludicrous positions. They have spoken out against public libraries, against used book stores online and now, against the Kindle reading books aloud.I used to have...
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