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Seth Godin's Blog
Bestselling author, Entrepreneur and Agent of change. Seth's blog can be found at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
July 2007
Tuesday July 31, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 8:37PM EST on July 31, 2007
Toxic employees are the ones that have difficulty with their co-workers, or worse, far worse, with your customers. They make two big confusions:1. They confuse How can I help this prospect/customer? with How can I get rid of this person...
Monday July 30, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 8:59PM EST on July 30, 2007
Marine iguanas swim. They eat stuff in shallow water, which is surprising behavior for an iguana. How is it possible for there to be marine iguanas? Ordinary iguanas washed onshore of some of the Galapagos Islands a few millenia ago...
Sunday July 29, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 11:55PM EST on July 29, 2007
You've probably seen it. The customer who's just waiting for you to screw up. The tour passenger who is itching for one thing to go wrong, the legal client who has a whole list of complaints just waiting for the...
Saturday July 28, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:03AM EST on July 28, 2007
I've been a fan of RSS for a long time, and I've been just waiting for it to reach its potential. Most of the readers of this blog read it via RSS, (if you don't, click here--more confusing than it...
Friday July 27, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 10:45AM EST on July 27, 2007
Marketers of all stripes are discovering that acquiring a reputation and permission to market to people isn't as expandable as they might hope. A PR firm, for example, might have some terrific clients. These clients give them credibility to talk...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 10:27AM EST on July 27, 2007
The seminar on 9/6 in New York City is 85% sold out. Details are here. Thanks....
Thursday July 26, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:14AM EST on July 26, 2007
As promised, I've posted almost a dozen Community Organizer Jobs. If you missed the deadline and want to add one, feel free. There's even a job at Squidoo available....
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 8:22AM EST on July 26, 2007
A study out today shows that obesity is contagious. If your best friend gets fat, your chances of gaining weight more than double. Malcolm Gladwell fans will recall his reporting that suicide among teenagers can be contagious as well. So...
Wednesday July 25, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 7:25AM EST on July 25, 2007
Fifteen years ago, I used to frequent a movie theater in Yonkers, NY. It puzzled me that all the teenage girls hanging out front seemed to look alike. Similar hair, similar clothes. Who, I wondered, was their role model? If...
Tuesday July 24, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 7:49AM EST on July 24, 2007
Since I wrote Permission Marketing in 1999, marketing has changed more than any of us could imagine. One of the biggest changes is the ubiquity of search. The idea that people would seek out marketing, ads and content the same...
Monday July 23, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 4:44PM EST on July 23, 2007
My post on this job title got a lot of response. So I figured I'd put together a job anthology. If you've got a job opening for a community organizer, write it up. Post it on your blog or your...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:20AM EST on July 23, 2007
A flurry of unsolicited questions came in on Friday, including two please review my blog letters, and a please review my book package. (For the record, I'm totally useless at reviewing your blog, sorry.) One person was very honest and...
Sunday July 22, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 3:20PM EST on July 22, 2007
Today, in Brooklyn, I passed a woman wearing a large red t-shirt. It said, in full, Celebrate Life with Ketchup. And last week, in the middle of a crosswalk (18th and 8th Ave., I think) I passed this item, embedded...
Saturday July 21, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 5:25PM EST on July 21, 2007
I stopped by a garage sale today. The guy had thousands of CDs, most of them in their wrappers. $3 each. I was excited. Two boxes in, I felt like I was in a different universe. Every single artist was...
Friday July 20, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 6:43AM EST on July 20, 2007
By now, the Harry Potter hype machine has told you all about the pre-shipped copies, the scanned book and the spoilers. No doubt it'll sell a few copies, and no doubt the reported $20 million on security (not to mention...
Thursday July 19, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 11:07AM EST on July 19, 2007
If you want to hire a union organizer, you probably know what to look for. Someone with resilience, passion, persistence and excellent interpersonal skills. What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 8:01AM EST on July 19, 2007
Well, most of us anyway. This terrific article about a study of eBay buyers and sellers proves it. In some categories, more than 40% of the auctions went for more than the Buy it Now price. Hmmmm. Two tips from...
Wednesday July 18, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 7:36AM EST on July 18, 2007
If you've ever written a direct mail letter, you've probably agonized. One more sentence, you wonder, this might just be the one. After all, direct mail has a job to do... you send the letter and you get the sale...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 7:32AM EST on July 18, 2007
If you send out an email newsletter, you may have experienced the hassle of being blacklisted from an ISP or web service. The asymmetrical nature of spam makes this particularly painful--professional spammers don't mind being blacklisted, because they regularly switch...
Tuesday July 17, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 8:07AM EST on July 17, 2007
Everybody knows that the big winner during the 1849 gold rush was a guy named Strauss, who made jeans (he changed his first name along the way). He figured that he might not find gold, but everybody needed pants. Win...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 6:19AM EST on July 17, 2007
Brice points us to TOMS Shoes. I like several things about this approach. The simplicity of the offer, first of all. If you buy a pair of these very inexpensive shoes, he gives a pair to a kid in the...
Monday July 16, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 2:44PM EST on July 16, 2007
That's what marketers do, after all. We spend time and money to change the role of our products and services sometime in the future (whereas salespeople try to change the now). Changing tomorrow is really, really difficult. It's expensive and...
Sunday July 15, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:34PM EST on July 15, 2007
As you may have noticed, farmer's markets are springing up all over. The combination of organic and local is proving irresistible to many towns and consumers. The market in my town is now twice as big as it was just...
Saturday July 14, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:51AM EST on July 14, 2007
Very good ends up being worth a lot more than just good. And yet some goods and services only seem to offer one level of quality... good. What can you transform into very good?...
Friday July 13, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 4:01PM EST on July 13, 2007
...but it'll do. Sure, it would be great if IDEO could design your next product or the CEO of Texaco would introduce your sales guy to his purchasing department. It would be great if you had the resources to have...
Thursday July 12, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 10:28AM EST on July 12, 2007
One of the luxuries of being in a low-cost business or in having access to capital is that you can scale quickly. You can go from one salesperson to a hundred, one store to twenty, no franchises to a thousand....
Wednesday July 11, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 12:00PM EST on July 11, 2007
Before you start firing customers, you better be committed to satisfying the rest of your customers. The giant flaw in Sprint's logic, as many readers have pointed out, is that plenty (almost half) of their customers don't like them. Getting...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 11:55AM EST on July 11, 2007
Just about everything in civilization works on the honor system. No armed guards at the local grocery store, no pat down as you leave the library. Most people cross the street without fear of crazed hit and run assassins. Great...
Tuesday July 10, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 6:49AM EST on July 10, 2007
I've gotten a lot of email about: Sprint may cancel your service if you call customer service too often. Apparently, about 1,000 people got this note. They weren't delinquent in their bills, but they were calling in and complaining approximately...
Monday July 9, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 3:24PM EST on July 9, 2007
Thanks for all of you who have asked for this. I'm trying a slightly different format, which should be interesting. I've found that most people who come to my sessions have read enough of my work to be up and...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:32AM EST on July 9, 2007
On Friday at 2 pm, I was standing in a small room, about 100 km outside of Delhi, talking with a young man who shared his home with a water buffalo. Less than 20 hours later (thanks to the miracles...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 6:53AM EST on July 9, 2007
If you've got more than one product or service, you have a problem. You need to decide if there's going to be an architecture to the way you name things. General Motors has a division, Chevrolet. Chevrolet makes cars, and...
Sunday July 8, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 5:55PM EST on July 8, 2007
Word of mouth comes directly from expectations. Low expectations are a terrific shortcut, because when you exceed them, people are so amazed that they can't help but talk about it. But low expectations are dangerous, because if you fly too...
Saturday July 7, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 5:09PM EST on July 7, 2007
Why all the hoopla about a date? (Marriages are up by 30% year on year for today over a similar Saturday last year, for example). Simple. People are meaning machines. We look for hints about what the future will hold...
Friday July 6, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 11:48AM EST on July 6, 2007
The staff and doctors at the LifeSpring hospital told me that they have to do exactly three things:1. Realize that their customers* have expectations2. Exceed those expectations3. Do better at it every day That's as good a marketing plan as...
Thursday July 5, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 4:02AM EST on July 5, 2007
Politicians, social-cause marketers, health product marketers and others have a particular problem that makes marketing difficult: The closer an issue is to the purchaser, the easier it is to use it with impact. People care about a fire in their...
Tuesday July 3, 2007
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 9:49AM EST on July 3, 2007
I got a lot of feedback from my post about reorganizing for profit. It broke down into several groups: non-retailers explaining why it would be impossible logistically to do this retailers explaining that making it hard to find related items...
Permalink Posted by: Gregory Ferrell at 5:17AM EST on July 3, 2007