Wayback Wednesday: Seth Godin

It has been announced that Seth Godin will be speaking in Syracuse on May 17 as part of the Famous Entrepreneurs Series.  Of course, the first thing that came to mind was how Godin rubbed librarians the wrong way in January 2010 (post, post).  I also thought of a blog post I did in 2008 for SLA about his appearance at the SLA Annual Conference in Seattle.  Then searching my older posts here, I've realized that I've mentioned Seth Godin quite a few times.

First, here is an excerpt from my SLA blog post about Seth Godin:

Wednesday afternoon was the closing keynote speaker and the Association's annual meeting.  A year ago, I knew that "the event" of the conference -- for me -- was going to be Seth Godin's keynote.  I had read his book Unleashing the Ideavirus on my PDA and have followed his blog for a number of years.  Godin recognizes that changes that have occurred in marketing in recent years and the need to change our paradigm from shouting our message at everyone to getting people in our niche to spread our message themselves. 

Some people seemed to be typing every word he said, so I hope his points better than my notes (e.g., here).  Here are some quick thoughts from my chicken-scratch:

• "Ideas that spread win."
• "The people who don't know they have a problem aren't listening to you."
• "The spamming isn't working the way it used to." (Meaning that inundating people with messages isn't working.)
• "the amount of noise...is excessive."
• "Every Google search is its own [media] channel."
• "Connect people who want to talk to each other."

Rather than finding customers for our products, we need to find products for our customers.
Rather than insisting on commitment before success, we need to have success before commitment.

The "marketing" cycle is now Be Remarkable --> Tell A Story to Your Sneezers (those who will spread your message) --> They Spread The Word --> Get Permission (from those who are interested in you) --> Be Remarkable {and the cycle continues}

There were four questions asked at the end of his presentation, and I asked one of them.  I had read Unleashing the Ideavirus on my PDA and wondered what he had learned about the future of the book from that experience.  Godin said that books have become souvenirs, memorabilia and artifacts.  He originally disseminated  Unleashing the Ideavirus as an ebook for free and it was quickly downloaded by thousands of people.  After a while, people asked for a print version that they could have on their shelves and point others to.  Do we use all of the books we own?  Not really.  In fact, he had just given away his entire business library because he found that he no longer referred to the hardcopy books.  So what was the lesson he learned?  Give away information.  Write short books and given them away.  Then have people pay for the longer version or a customized version of the book. He said he made more money on a free book, than many have on books that they sold in hardcopy.  "Free" allowed his message to spread quickly and then got people to talk to him and hire him.

 And here are links to other blog posts where I've mentioned Godin while talking about a variety of different topic:  (Enjoy!)

• Wanted: Champions!
• Seth Godin and libraries
• More from Seth Godin on libraries
• My top seven presentation tips
• U.S. Presidential Election
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerrilla marketing in Boston
• Blog post: Godin on Trademark
• Blog post: They didn't get the memo
• Can I have that digital asset to go?
• Book: Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us
• Seth Godin talks about creating bibliographies
• The information life-cycle
• Search is hard (off-topic)
• The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes