Blasting the Technology and Marketing Elite
Occasionally I will write about certain posts that Seth Godin has thrown up on his blog. I am a huge advocate of his ideas and strategies surrounding the world of marketing and communication. Yesterday, Seth had a blog post entitled: The small-minded vision of the technology elite.
The blog post immediately caught my attention because I know Seth and a couple of the “technology elite” are not the best of friends. The post talks about the narrow outlook of innovation (Chris has some amazing ideas toward the innovation of Social Media, this is clearly a link to define what true innovation could look like) and advancement that some of technologically savvy individuals possess. From his post:
Take a look at the geek discussion boards and you’ll see an endless list of sharp-tongued critics, each angling to shoot down one idea or another. And then take a look at the companies that show up at the various pitch shows, and you’ll see one company after another pitching incremental improvements based on current assumptions.
The problem with getting stuck in an innovation paradigm is rampant over every area of business whether social media or marketing. When something works we will always see a huge entry into the market of products and services that are enhancements of the original creation.
We can fall into the trap of rejecting new ideas because of what works at the given moment. I see it happening on a daily basis in the social media because I have been guilty of doing it myself. When new services are being launched daily, it is hard to balance trying the innovative idea with being productive.
I tend to rely on the technological elite to give me information on new services being introduced into the market. Whether you are following Louis Gray, Mike Fruchter, Hutch Carpenter, Douglas Karr, or Mashable (the people I rely on) it is easy to categorize what works and what doesn’t.
My only warning: Keep an open mind. When testing new social media services don’t get caught up in opinions and reviews. I suggest trying it out for yourself. It may take 15-30 minutes of your day but at least you will know it either is innovative or it failed.
I am not an early adopter. I am an adapter. I will follow and collaborate with people who are better at social media adoption than I could ever be.
That is where the truth is hidden between the lines of every service. Does it work for me?
What Would Seth Do? Seth Godin and Compendium.
Most of the readers of my blog know that I am a huge Seth Godin fan. I have devoured every single book he has released, as well as, keeping updated on his blog. Whenever there are videos or blog posts about the brilliance of Seth Godin, I try to prop them up or comment. It just so happens that a company here in Indianapolis has started a video series on corporate blogging. It also just so happens that Seth Godin is featured in the first video!
Chris Baggott, Co-Founder and CEO of Compendium, is featured in the video talking about his WWSD way of life: What Would Seth Do?
Check it out. See what you think! I would love to know what everyone loves/hates about Seth Godin.
Pikaba Flips the Internet Buyer Model
(hat tip to Mashable for the post)
Mashable randomly has a post where they feature an Internet startup. Most of the time I breeze through the post without it catching my eye but Pikaba caused me to slow down.
20 word description from Mashable: Pikaba is a social shopping community offering a reverse auction model where merchants bid for your shopping needs.
Brilliant! Talk about permission marketing at its finest! Pikaba is following the model of Insurance shopping companies on the web where you enter in what you want to pay and the Insurance companies quotes to GAIN your business.
When you join the Pikaba community you can submit a request of an item you are searching for and just wait. This gives sellers the ability to produce a service or product direct to a buyer. If the user base is large enough on Pikaba, this should be a simple decisions for merchants and sellers. This simple decision will only be simple if the buyers make up a large portion of the website.
From Mashable:
Pikaba is hoping to benefit both buyers and sellers by providing a marketplace that is built around consumer needs for defining an actual point of demand. The ads placed by those requesting items to purchase are similar to a regular classifieds ad, with description and images, etc.
I will be keeping my eye on Pikaba. It looks like a great example of social ingenuity at work!
Godin and Social Media: Don’t Just Do it. Sing it.
Many marketing and business professionals alike follow Seth Godin’s blog from time to time. We have been inundated with his brilliant marketing mind and tend to put his strategies to practice. I am an avid reader of his daily blog but there are many times in which I wish he spent more time on social media community platforms. I try to take his thought on marketing and business communication and apply them to a social media format.
Tonight I had the pleasure of catching up on some of Seth’s post. He has a post entitled; Sing it (please S I N G I T), which is absolutely brilliant in the context of business communication. In the post he talks about attending a concert where a band was playing a classic rock cover song to perfection (note-for-note, chord-for-chord). He talks about how the musicians just stood there with no energy.”
Excerpt:
A concert isn’t about the music, is it? And a restaurant isn’t about the food.
The funny thing is that learning to Sing It is a lot easier than learning how to play the guitar. For some reason, we work on the technique before we worry about adding the joy.
He goes onto say that many times we care more about the technique than we do the actual delivery. It made me debate the online communications strategy deeply embedded in the message: Don’t just do it. Sing it.
The key is not deciding which networks to join or how many profiles created. It is about the time involvement in a niche number of networks. When you join a social media network follow Seth Godin’s rant, “Don’t just do it, sing it.”
A blogger can be an amazing writer but if personality is not involved in the post it will fail. A musician can perfect guitar chords and solos but without passion the performance will go unnoticed. A business owner can have an MBA and know all the techniques in the world but without drive the door will close.
Add some passion, personality, and drive to your social media experience. Devote time and energy to the process and you will experience return.
The Web Doesn’t Care About You
Seth Godin has an amazing post, yet again. He never ceases to amaze.
In the past when an information medium was invented it was built by marketing. Advertising has supported every information medium since the inception of radio, newspapers, and television. When a specific medium was invented marketers asked the question. “How does this help me?”
Seth Godin adds to this by saying:
If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.
The problem, nay the beauty, of the Internet is the fact the shameless advertising does not support this medium of communication. But (being a marketer myself) it begs the question, “How do I use this medium to help my business?”
The question Seth Going asks, which business owners should ask themselves is this:
“How are people (the people I need to reach, interact with and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?”
Help your clients first and you will reap the benefits of the amazing power of the Internet.
Sometimes Doing Nothing Pays Off.
(hat tip to Seth Godin for this wonderful post)
Mr. Godin is right when he says:
The irony, of course, is that they’ll (Wall-E, Pixar) make plenty of money. Bravery often pays off, even if paying off is not your goal. Especially if that’s not your goal.
Marketing isn’t always about pandering to the masses and shooting for the quick payoff. Often, the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all.
Is Mr. Godin speaking on one of my favorite topics: marketing authenticity? I am not necessarily sure. If you read the full post here , you will find that he is referencing the fact that QUALITY directly relates to the overall success. More often than not, you will not need to hook up the crack wheel and act like Robin William’s in Patch Adams. Sometimes all it takes is a quality product (Wall-E) and a quality communication tool (the Internet).
I can’t imagine the extreme amount of stress seeping from the Pixar offices. You have ONE movie a year to make a splash and to make money. ONE. Talk about a huge gamble!
Honestly, I envy Pixar’s trust in their product.
Take note! Take note business owners, entrepreneurs, product managers, and salesmen. This is a great example of confidence in your product offering. We should all have this kind of confidence.
Do It Well OR Do Nothing At All.
As business owners, salesmen, and entrepreneurs we are inundated daily with worthless marketing material. We may even have some worthless marketing material ourselves. Pages of mindless jargon thrown on a page because we feel the need to fill something. We feel the need to GIVE away something. What is worthless marketing material?
A. If you used Microsoft Publisher to design your brochure or sales piece.
B. You have placed a 13 page book on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper
C. You have written a page about YOURSELF and your company and placed it in your sales brochure.
There are many, many other things that make marketing material worthless. Seth Godin has a great example of crappy design and marketing in his blog Silence is a Virtue. He makes the point that sometimes silence is better than creating something that makes you look cheap and amateur. In the world of marketing and authentic communication between client and company, sometimes it is better to be quiet than handing out worthless marketing material to the masses.
Quit kidding yourself. We know you didn’t spend ANY money on it. You designed it yourself. You wrote the copy yourself and it is terrible.
There are plenty of companies out there who do great marketing. Find one.
1. Make sure you can afford the cost of the professional creating your marketing pieces. Truly afford the cost of marketing material. If you can’t justify the cost, the last thing you need to do is sit down at word or publisher and create one yourself.
2. Hire a professional. Unless you are Seth Godin, in that case you can pay yourself untold amounts of wealth. Seth Godin
Small Pox and Smaller Indiana
Seth Godin has another great blog on gimmicks. I didn’t pull much from the actual blog pertaining to gimmicks but he had a great thought at the end:
As you sit down to consider ways to be more remarkable, the challenge is to be worth talking about… at the same time you are adding value for the person who’s talking about you.
I encourage all members in Smaller Indiana to invent your “gimmick” for Smaller Indiana. Does it add value when you are virally spreading? What will it take to create a Smaller Indiana that is worth spreading like an epidemic from city to city? Are we already there?
I will leave you with this:
I was playing Oregon Trail on Facebook and well, I died from a virus (my body was probably eaten by a pack of ravenous wolves but that is beside the point). It made me chuckle and ponder on how a virus spreads and infects.
And much like a small pox outbreak on Oregon Trail, Smaller Indiana is turning into a virus.
Is that a GAP in your knowledge?
Curiosity is monumental when it comes to marketing. In the fast paced world of today where marketing is being droned down to a dull roar and people are ignoring everything they come in contact with, curiosity always reigns supreme.
A good “marketing definition of curiosity would be: Curiosity happens when someone feels a gap in their knowledge (Made to Stick, pg 84). It can be detrimental to a psyche when you feel the gap of knowledge when hearing, conversing, or seeing something you don’t quite understand.
Learning in the pursuit of knowledge is a universal trait in most human beings. When you feel the knowledge gap you scramble around trying to find something to fill it.
So many times companies try to throw the facts at their consumers without telling them why they need to learn it in the first place. “This is what makes our product work! It is a semi-conductor flex conductor.” Eventually they get to the need statement of the product but all the facts are thrown into the face of the consumer. I don’t care about the flex mumbo jumbo. How will it make my life easier!?
You can’t fill a hole that has already been filled. You need to dig the hole first to fill it in again. Dig a hole. Create a need and fill it.
Seth Godin Action Figure? It’s true.
I couldn’t imagine a scenario where Seth Godin would surpass my view of him as a marketing/blogging/new media GENIUS, and yet he strikes again. In his post, Hey Kids! It’s finally here he introduces his new state-of-the-art, plastic fantastic, branding guru action figure. No joke, it even comes with the “superpowers” of built Brandomatic® and PurplePower®.
I have always been impressed with the creative process of Seth Godin whether it is the packaging of his books or the outlandish ideas of an Action Figure or the coveted Purple Cow.
This should serve as an example of making marketing and “self-promotion” fun again. A plastic, Seth Godin action figure, Why not? If you want another route to create a word-of-mouth, word-of-key viral process, take note. Seth Godin has always known how to do it, and he strikes again.
I am actually looking forward to a Marc Gobe or Sergio Zyman action figure. Hopefully Sergio comes with an “Terrible Advertising Killer” sword or plasma gun.