My sleep schedule is unusual. I generally go to bed an hour later each day until finally I’m going to bed way too late and I end up just staying up a full 36 hours or so to reset the schedule.
And that’s where I’m at now. So to fill my day and keep myself awake I read Seth Godin’s blog. Forty pages of it.
You know I’m obsessed with Seth Godin, so this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I subscribe to only 6 blogs, and his is by far the most frequently updated.
As I read the 40 pages I took short notes. Some were direct quotes, others were paraphrases, and a few of them were thoughts I had that were inspired by something he wrote.
Here are the notes. Some might be useless without context, some may be redundant, and my capitalization is spastic, but I can’t imagine someone reading the list and not getting SOMETHING out of it.
- make something excellent
- layer progress on top of progress
- don’t do anything mediocre. Great or nothing.
- interesting is better than perfect
- don’t do gimmicks. It’s a gimmick if it doesn’t add value
- step one – get people to care step two – listen to them
- go after smart customers. they’re worth more
- create new terms that people will talk about
- interactivity can’t be pirated
- celebrity is still underrated
- people are afraid to talk about you. make it easy
- make promises and keep them
- it’s not who you know, it’s who trusts you
- authentic storytelling
- do things that people want to talk about
- offer more than other people… low margin items for free
- Don’t complain. Do something different.
- Every interaction is marketing. What’s the point of it?
- Leave people out. You can’t have insiders without outsiders.
- Good self promotion is promoting useful ideas that are linked to you
- People choose based on comparisons, not absolutes
- make customers feel like they’re right
- let people interact with things in a new way (web design)
- not “look at me”, but “here’s what you were looking for”
- average stuff for average people is no way to make a living
- make things better
- What’s scarce now? Respect. Honesty. Good judgment. Long-term relationships that lead to trust.
- Marketers spend too much time trying to get people to leap over the hurdle of “buy this, right now” and not enough on “it’s yours, here’s how you keep it.”
- Promise big, deliver huge
- Make things immediate, not distant
- Making things inconvenient or imposing is a bad idea, even though it used to work
- create the most remarkable experience you can imagine.
- Win a small community that leads to a bigger market
- Everyone is lonely
- write a manifesto
- Measure the right thing and optimize for it
I definitely am NOT doing all of those things. Work to be done.
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