chrisbrogan.com» sethgodin

Linchpin by Seth Godin – Video Book Review

ceb — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:30:34 +0000

Are you indispensible? That’s what Seth Godin asks in Linchpin, his new book about the future of work, the break with our industrial past, and what we need to do, individually, to measure up. It’s a Seth Godin book, so of course it delivers. It’s much more meaty than Tribes and more actionable than Meatball Sundae, and every bit as eye opening as his other books.

Here’s a quick video:

Direct link to the video

Depends How You Define Value

ceb — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:50:16 +0000

Seth Godin says Anil Dash has discovered bullhorns are overrated. I agree that bullhorns, as a shouting tool, are not very useful. I disagree that having a larger twitter following is not useful. It depends what you do with them.

I have a hundred thousand followers on Twitter. I follow back about 93,000. I don’t see most of what you tweet about. I use search and lists to keep up with what I can, but the software API can’t even serve all your tweets to me.

But there’s value in that number. I get value in the following ways:

You find the good stuff for me, so I can learn more.
You promote social causes that I support if they resonate with you.
You visit the great voices I share with you, growing their audience and potential for relationship.
You help spread important news like Amber alerts fast.
You support the better of my posts. (Heck, sometimes you support my posts that I don’t even like.)
You keep me in the loop and talk with me when we both have a moment.

I get tons of value from Twitter every day. Heck, just today, I mentioned on Twitter that I’ve made the Roger Smith Hotel my exclusive hotel in NYC, and that spurred a new conversation with a hotel in Boston. I spoke to the folks at Legal Seafoods, after they noticed I recommended them to a friend visiting Boston. Now, they’re going out to buy my book, and so I offered to swing by and sign it and talk.

I get value every day from Twitter. It’s my serendipity engine. It’s my liner notes.

Where Seth is right, however, is that bullhorns are stupid and useless.

But no value in Twitter? Not on my watch.

I Believe Mark Cuban is Right

ceb — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:44:48 +0000

The whole “Free” debate is alive and well, thanks to Chris Anderson. Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell have weighed in, and right behind them, Mark Cuban put out this piece. I want to skip down to the part where my head started nodding like a bobble-head:

Newspapers are also catching flack for saying they dont want their content openly distributed. On this point, they are correct again. They should have complete control over where it is distributed. They should have the ability to choose where it is offered for free.

Not only should they have this control, taking back this control is the exact right business move. Im not saying it will save newspapers or magazines, it wont. But it will make their website offerings stronger in the long run. If Im them, I take the risk that the “printed” content business follows the path of the music industry.

Again, the whole article is here and it’s probably better that you read it before disagreeing with me (or Mark, or whoever).

Distribution Control

Mark frames the biggest point as the right of entities to control where their material is distributed. The point is this: just because something’s available via a distribution method (like RSS) doesn’t mean it’s free for the taking and re-use. Ditto the idea that just because search services (hear me, Google?) can see it and grab it all and index it doesn’t mean that it’s free for the taking and re-use.

At the heart of this is a choice. We can distribute our material and let it loose to the wild and hope to capture value elsewhere, or we can choose to lock our material into containers of perceived value. Model 2 is the way the world has worked for well over a hundred years. There’s a split in our thinking about all this, though.

Seth Godin put it this way:

People will pay for content if it is so unique they can’t get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We’ll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share.

Seth’s right, I believe. I think many of today’s media distribution organizations will either morph or die. (My money’s on people like USAToday/Gannett figuring it out, in the paper world. Not sure who I’d bet on for TV. You?)

Mark’s right, I believe. I think that companies have the right to rein back in their content and that people who think it should all be free no matter what are wrong.

Malcolm? I don’t know. Didn’t read the piece. I’m on vacation. He might be wrong. (I agree with Seth quite often, so maybe I’ll just trust him).

My Take on Free

You might have cottoned to the notion that I give a LOT of what I do away for free. My post on presence management is the kind of stuff that other companies sell to their clients. Why give it away? Because I can keep making new stuff all damned day. And I choose to share because I want you to be able to run with stuff and do it yourself, if you want.

My take? I give away general ideas for free and I sell customized information and execution. I work with really wonderful (and big) companies on their efforts in the business communications and emerging technology space, and that pays the bills. My writing? I give 91.5% of it away for free.

I want you to PAY for some of it soon. In August, for instance. I want you (and 4 of your friends) to buy Trust Agents. I want to sell the crap out of that book. I want it to light up the New York Times and Amazon and everywhere else. Why? Because I’m proud of the work I did with Julien, and I want it to pop!

Should I give you that for free, too? I say no. Because I’ve already given you mountains of stuff for free, and I’ll continue doing this. I don’t want your money for me. I want your money to pay John Wiley and Sons. I want your money to pay indie bookstores and Barnes & Noble and whoever. Because that’s an exchange. I share hard work, and you trade it for some loot.

So what do you think of it all? What’s free mean to you?

Special thanks to Tim Sanders for getting me started on this tonight.

Shaving My Head for Charity

ceb — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:21:54 +0000

Once, a while back, I said to a few people that if I got to #1 on the Advertising Age Power150, I’d shave my head in tribute to Seth Godin, a true mentor and leader in my space. I didn’t figure I’d ever get to one, and quite honestly, I think it’s a technological glitch. That said, Justin Levy is keeping me to my word.
UPDATE: I did it. Now will YOU do it?

Live video of this will be here

I’ve decided to raise money to give kids laptops. I’m going to find the specific program, but why not do the raising first?

We’re in contact with various companies to see who wants to support the charity. But I’m asking you, too. Will you donate a little bit for this charity? The goal is to give underprivileged kids educational tools. I’ve already done a One Laptop Per Child drive. I wanted to do something different. Are you in?

Current Corporate Matching Sponsors

Citrix Online (who is also a client).
Radian6 (who is also a conference sponsor).
AMD
Crocs (thanks for 200 or so pairs of shoes!)

You? (This part will be updated).

Do You Have To Touch Every Conversation

ceb — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:49:50 +0000

There’s a recurring thread in the social media circles that goes something like this: “Seth Godin doesn’t use Twitter. He doesn’t get it.” And “Seth Godin doesn’t allow comments. He’s not in the conversation.” Okay, first, Seth explained why he doesn’t have comments 2.5 years ago. He’s probably explained why he doesn’t use Twitter, and he told me why at the Inbound Marketing Summit a few months ago.

I get asked these things sometimes, too. One reason is that I don’t like Plurk. I also don’t like Pownce, Jaiku, and several other platforms that people all like and think are perfectly serviceable. I hang out a bit on FriendFeed, but not as much as the allstars. I don’t hang out on SocialMedian, but that’s not too bad a service either.

I belong to several Facebook groups where I don’t really comment that often. I belong to a handful of Ning groups, too. Some Yahoogroups, some Google Groups.

Getting a feeling yet?

You and I are doing business in Twitter. You and I are doing things on XYZ platform. There are gazillions of other conversations that I’m not touching, that Seth isn’t touching, that Scoble or Kawasaki or whoever the heck you want to put in the *.person.who.should.join.the.conversation should be touching.

But is that really the goal? Or is the goal to fish where your fish are, to do what you plan to do, and to do it well?

Photo credit, Gaetan Lee

Actually WATCH These Videos

ceb — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:47:46 +0000

Seth Godin posted links to a series of videos up on the AMEX Open site, but I know what happens. Sometimes, we see the links, we recognize that there’s something there, but we don’t actually DO the next step. Well, you’re missing out if you don’t click. The videos are brief. The questions are segmented. Seth is Brilliant. And Tom Peters is on stage, too. It’s all top shelf stuff.

So go here and watch the videos (the little links in the post).

(And Battelle’s team on AMEX Open: wouldn’t you entertain embed codes? I get the goal, but please?)

Thinking About Trust Agents

ceb — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:50:54 +0000

I’m struggling through a little crisis of self-explanation, which is difficult to admit, as someone who writes thousands and thousands of words a day. When I introduce myself at events, I have two fake answers I like to give: “combat helicopter pilot” or “typist.” B is closer in truth than A. The real promise is that Julien Smith and I haven’t fully defined the term that best fits what I do: trust agent.

Julien and I have a book coming out in May 2009 (earlier, if we can type faster) from Wiley tentatively titled Trust Agents. The premise, and we’re still working to define this word more succinctly is, “people who use the web in a very human way to build influence, reputation, awareness, and who can translate that into some kind of business value. That’s my definition at the moment. Julien and I send each other countless little emails a day that say, “What about THIS definition?”

It’s a business book, not a tech book. We talk about the web, but we discuss it as a tool, not in terms of how great Twitter and Friendfeed are, but rather, what someone can do with the tools of the moment with regards to the web at large.

Here’s the thing: though a company like Microsoft spent millions and millions of advertising and marketing dollars trying to improve our perception of the brand, none of us gave a sh!t until Robert Scoble came along and put a human shape around their online and event presence for us. Robert acted as a real human, with thoughts, opinions, and – gasp – he sometimes agreed with us that MSFT didn’t have something right. It was brilliant.

Lionel Menchaca at Dell is a trust agent. Pam Finnie at HP is a trust agent. Matt Cutts at Google is a great example of a trust agent. Caterina Fake when at Flickr was a great trust agent. Kathy Sierra is one of the ultimate trust agents.

Are these things related to tech only? Hell no. I’m just listing a few that we have batted back and forth a lot. There will be more.

Know who’s the non-web equivalent of a trust agent? Oprah Winfrey. To a lesser degree, so is Paris Hilton. We’ll talk about that, too.

Book writing isn’t exactly the same as blog posting. Julien and I are doing a lot of talking, a lot of reading (well, Julien is), a lot of research (again, more Julien than me- he digs that stuff), and a lot of storytelling.

I spoke with Seth Godin over lunch today. A little later, I spoke with business partners David Meerman Scott and also Paul Gillin. We talked about books and publishing and the business overall. It’s some tricky stuff, but it can be rewarding, if you do it with passion and get a decent book turned out.

While I’ll be putting lots of this information into the manuscript, I wanted to open up some conversations about trust agents, about who you think fits that description, and about what you think it means before knowing more than what I’ve written about what goes in the book.

(Side note: I’ve written in some form or another since age six. I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life, and never realized on the way up the scale that I *was* a writer. It all changed when I stopped worrying about BEING a writer and just started writing. If this is an aspiration of yours, you can do it. The key? Practice. The other key? Practice. Third key? Read a LOT of books. )

What do you think? Your ideas mean the world to me, and to Julien as well. We’ll ask you bits here and there from time to time. You know me. I ask questions. Right?

Creating Honest Content Marketing

ceb — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:30:21 +0000

Content marketing has an opportunity, should you decide to take it. Instead of going the route of old marketing, you who create content with the intent of building business relationships could try going the route of being honest, being genuine, being human. It’s no more difficult than the alternative: crafting something that’s dishonest but perhaps shinier. The thing is, if you start with honest and genuine, there’s a chance that people will give you extra points for it, in the longer run.

In a recent post, Seth Godin offers some storytelling suggestions, and the best of it is at the bottom of the post:

Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That’s your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell truth that resonates.

In her post about a series of viral videos created by OfficeMax, B.L. Ochman quotes Vinny Waren about how words get shifted one notch higher in marketing speak: “..funny becomes HILARIOUS. and interesting becomes FASCINATING.”

That’s exactly where the troubles start.

Keith Burwell writes on Better Closer about GM’s employee discount pricing program, and the fact that we all know that just means they’re not selling enough cars.

See a thread here?

Make your creations honest and open. Why not? It strikes me that most things would work better that way. Am I wrong?

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

Small Is a Weapon

ceb — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:30:25 +0000

Seth Godin nailed it in yesterday’s post about a small business making an excuse for slow service. Only, I think the last line is the post in a capsule.

“Small is a weapon, not an excuse.”

I work for a reasonably small company. My president also helps fix paper jams. My CEO and I grab lunch at Subway often. It’s small. We work our faces off.

And yet, the very best parts of being there relate to us being small. We try new things. We respond rapidly. We write (and try to follow) processes that are streamlined and made to move us faster towards the next business step.

What are your thoughts? Are you at a small place or a big place? Where are the good and bad parts of that?

Musicians Play for Tips- The Importance of Comments

ceb — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:30:17 +0000

This is not a plea for comments for THIS blog. This is a post thinking about how comments matter to bloggers in general. I use my blog only as a reference point. Instead, this is a reminder that commenting is good, and that if you can’t comment, you can still help out bloggers that you like.

At the time of this blog posting, over 5,300 people receive this blog in their RSS reader (or via email). Another 2,000 – 4,000 come to the site directly, depending on the day and the post. Add those up, and let’s say that around 7,500 people come here daily to read my stuff.

If 1% of you commented, that’d be 75. (I’m bad at math. Did I do that right?) The average post on here gets a respectable 20 or so comments, but that’s about 1/4 of 1% then, of the folks who get a copy of each post. This got me thinking about other great blogs that I love.

I read several hundred blog posts a day. I comment on maybe five or six. So I’m in there with you. I’m not commenting much, either. And yet, if I’m able to leave a decent and thoughtful comment, I know that the other person will appreciate it. Sometimes, it’s a matter of time. If it’s that, here’s some other ways to help:

If You Don’t Have Time to Comment

Bookmark the post in a social bookmarking site (so others might find it).
Share it in Google Reader.
“Like” it in FriendFeed.
Stumble it in StumbleUpon.
If it’s *really* good, Digg it.
Note it on Facebook.

You get the picture. If you enjoy something, but don’t have the chance to comment due to time, another great way to be helpful is to move it along to others in your network. That’s why there are social software tools to begin with: to facilitate that very experience.

I could probably list 100 blogs that deserve more comments without breaking a sweat. You probably could, too. One might even be yours. If you want to talk about your blog in the comments section here, what it’s about, and why someone might want to come by and comment, that might be fun. Want to?

And now that I think about this, because he has comments turned off (for his own reasons), how does Seth Godin know when he’s hit one out of the park? Del.icio.us? Links? Hmm. I love my comments. It’s often better than the post, and it usually tells me when I’ve hit a mark.

—