Notes from Seth Godin’s Site

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.