|
Archives
Latest Entries
Links
  |
Bestselling author, Entrepreneur and Agent of change. Seth's blog can be found at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
April 2009
Thursday April 30, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:46AM EST on April 30, 2009
My dad likes to say, "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then." And it's true. You shouldn't pick your strategy by modeling someone else's success. The success might have been strategic and planned, but it's just as...
Wednesday April 29, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:58AM EST on April 29, 2009
If you had a little business in a little town, there was a natural limit to your growth. You hit a limit on strangers (no people left to pitch), some became friends, some became customers and you then went delivered...
Tuesday April 28, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 11:33PM EST on April 28, 2009
If you don't know what to do, and you're frightened, might as well panic. That seems to be the first rule of being a member of the human race. Apparently, panicking is an acceptable substitute for forethought, contingency planning or...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:10AM EST on April 28, 2009
I've been a huge fan of Hugh MacLeod since he first showed up on the web a few years ago. Hugh is a provocateur, a brilliant marketer and a nice guy. He's also a great cartoonist. Hugh's images, combined with...
Monday April 27, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:44AM EST on April 27, 2009
TV advertisers are finally discovering that YouTube + viral imagination = free media. The good news for you is that money is not a barrier, which means that marketers of any size can play. But the rules are different, as...
Sunday April 26, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:56AM EST on April 26, 2009
First rule of decision making: More time does not create better decisions. In fact, it usually decreases the quality of the decision. More information may help. More time without more information just creates anxiety, not insight. Deciding now frees up...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:42AM EST on April 26, 2009
Michael Port's latest manifesto ships tomorrow. If you need a push to think bigger today and tomorrow, here it is.
Saturday April 25, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:47AM EST on April 25, 2009
I'm the first person to admit that compared to you, I have no idea what I'm talking about. You're there, doing what you do, and doing it with skill. Let me be really clear: My job is not to tell...
Friday April 24, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:59AM EST on April 24, 2009
Remember WordPerfect? This word processor dominated the world until Word wiped them out. How did that happen? WordPerfect was the default word processor in every law firm, big company and organization in the land. If you had the DOS operating...
Thursday April 23, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:29AM EST on April 23, 2009
We no longer care what you say. We care a great deal about what you do. If you charge for hand raking but use a leaf blower when the client isn't home If you sneak into an exercise class because...
Wednesday April 22, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:12AM EST on April 22, 2009
Most marketers are busy trying to persuade people to buy their product. Confusion sets in, though, when you compare a pitch designed to get someone to buy any product in the category (you need an mp3 player because you can...
Tuesday April 21, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:19AM EST on April 21, 2009
I did this talk about three years ago. I have to admit that very little in the way of progress has occurred as a result.
Monday April 20, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 11:40PM EST on April 20, 2009
My very first book is no longer in print. It was called "Business Rules of Thumb" and it came out in 1984 (not a typo). My thesis was that if you understood the hidden rules people used in business, you...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:17AM EST on April 20, 2009
Ever notice that most car specs focus on acceleration, not braking? It's more fun to focus on getting fast than it is on getting slow. How would you manage or market differently if you knew that you had to hit...
Sunday April 19, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:51AM EST on April 19, 2009
As discussed before, there are networks of companies planting cookies on your machine and tracking behavior across websites. That means you'll see an ad on one site based on what you did on another. You can opt out for free....
Saturday April 18, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:49AM EST on April 18, 2009
In the ongoing battle between dismissive irony and well-intentioned trustworthiness, the early rounds always seem to go to those that sell snark. Snark is clever and funny and easy to spread. Snark protects us from confronting the truth of the...
Friday April 17, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:54AM EST on April 17, 2009
Blogs have eliminated the reason for most business books to exist. If you can say it in three blog posts and reach more people, then waiting a year and putting in all that effort seems sort of pointless. The chances...
Thursday April 16, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 9:22PM EST on April 16, 2009
Chris just published this free manifesto. This PDF is what generous looks like.
Posted by: Seth Godin at 3:43PM EST on April 16, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:23AM EST on April 16, 2009
In the 1950s, Congressman George A. Dondero denounced modern art as a communist plot. Every day, you market ideas that some people are annoyed with or more likely, afraid of. And in the face of fear, we lose eloquence and...
Wednesday April 15, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:16AM EST on April 15, 2009
A presentation is a precious opportunity. It's a powerful arrangement... one speaker, an attentive audience, all in their seats, all paying attention (at least at first). Don't waste it. The purpose of a presentation is to change minds. That's the...
Tuesday April 14, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:21AM EST on April 14, 2009
The one thing that will allow your business to get funded, or to get a business to business buyer to buy from you or a college to admit you is the sense that your success is imminent. If it's a...
Monday April 13, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:35AM EST on April 13, 2009
There are two ways to use SEO to help your organization. One is reliable and effective, the other is a glorious crap shoot that usually fails but is wonderful when it works. I'll start with the second. The most common...
Sunday April 12, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 7:40AM EST on April 12, 2009
Here's an ad for the super-exclusive new Visa black card. "It's not just another piece of plastic. Made with carbon, it's the ultimate buying tool." Amazingly, it's limited to just 3,000,000 people and advertised with full page ads. When mass...
Saturday April 11, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:48AM EST on April 11, 2009
The reason is pretty simple: it's noisy. Lots of organizations have used the downturn as an excuse to trim people who weren't producing. So, if you need cheap bodies, this is your moment. But if you need amazing people, be...
Friday April 10, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:33AM EST on April 10, 2009
The opening act has the toughest gig in town. The audience isn't here to listen to him. They're restless. Perhaps you'll get a few seconds to earn their attention, but not much. Your gimmicks will fall flat and you might...
Thursday April 9, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:40AM EST on April 9, 2009
If you think about the tribes you belong to, most of them are side effects of experiences you had doing something slightly unrelated. We have friends from that summer we worked together on the fishing boat, or a network of...
Wednesday April 8, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 4:57AM EST on April 8, 2009
If a client comes to you for a web site, the first thing you need to know is: "Do you want the people visiting this site to notice it?" It's a subtle but essential question. For artists, musicians and web...
Tuesday April 7, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 10:45AM EST on April 7, 2009
Sasha had an interesting post on his blog about how horrible the typical conference call is. I hate them. He had some good tips, but it's still horrible. So, here's my idea: Conference calls should be accompanied by an online...
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:47AM EST on April 7, 2009
Tom points us to a provocative idea for home builders. If you want to sell a new house, why not offer prospective buyers help in selling their old houses? Send your idle crews to their house to paint it or...
Monday April 6, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:30AM EST on April 6, 2009
Are zippers better? For years, I always wore jeans with a zipper. After all, zippers are better. They're faster and easier and they do what they're told. What an amazing invention! How did we survive without zippers? Last year, just...
Sunday April 5, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:00AM EST on April 5, 2009
If it's important enough for you to spend your time finding and connecting with new people online, it's important enough to get the first impression right. If you use any online social network tool, the single most important first impression...
Saturday April 4, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:28AM EST on April 4, 2009
There's a new class of internet companies that collect cookie data across websites and sell compiled personal data to advertisers. This means, for example, that Mazda can run banner ads on site X only to people who were looking at...
Friday April 3, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 6:00AM EST on April 3, 2009
Judith comments on her frustration in joining a new website, "Sorry I do not provide passwords or birthdate. I would have like to have joined otherwise." Obviously, there's a trust problem here. Frank won't read the instructions that come in...
Thursday April 2, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 5:21AM EST on April 2, 2009
This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing. Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you... Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it,...
Wednesday April 1, 2009
Posted by: Seth Godin at 2:14PM EST on April 1, 2009
Today, as you've no doubt discovered, is April Fools, the official holiday of the web. I had, as I do every year, a fools post written and queued up. (It was about JD Salinger and the Dalai Lama as twitter...
|
