Seth Godin's Blog, page 308

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There used to be one hundred people who mattered.

That's true in a lot of industries, but particularly in books.

One hundred people who could make a book a hit. These were key buyers at bookstores, reviewers and editors at newspapers, the person who booked time at Oprah or the Today Show.

So publishers courted these people. If the one hundred loved it, the book launched as a hit. Of course the 100 all get free copies. Lots of free copies.

Today, of course, those one hundred people matter a lot...

How to be a great client

As a client, your job isn't to be innovative. Your job is to foster innovation. Big difference.

Fostering innovation is a discipline, a profession in fact. It involves making difficult choices and causing important things to get shipped out the door. Here are a few thoughts to get you started.

Before engaging with the innovator, foster discipline among yourself and your team. Be honest about what success looks like and what your resources actually are.

If you can't write down clear ground...

Shocking Tiger Woods video (exclusive)

You should be careful about headlines.

It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to forgive your spam, and perhaps even to open your note (CyberMonday! 85% off...). It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to click through on their RSS reader. It's even easy to write a tweet that will get a click through.

But is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?

The mindset of the brazen copywriter is, "well, even if o...

Watch the money

"How much life insurance do you have?"

Zig Ziglar liked to say that with that one question, you could tell if someone was a successful life insurance agent. If they're not willing to buy it with their own money, how can they honestly persuade someone else to do so?

If you're in the music business but you never buy tickets or downloads, can you really empathize with the people you're selling to?

My favorite: if you work for a non-profit and you don't give money to charity, what exactly are you...

Getting meta

Wikipedia contains facts about facts. It's a collection of facts from other places.

Facebook doesn't have your friends. It has facts about your friends.

Google is at its best when it gives you links to links, not the information itself.

Over and over, the Internet is allowing new levels of abstraction. Information about information might be worth more than the information itself. Which posts should I read? Which elements of the project are at risk? Who is making the biggest difference to the...

Boundary makers

Some artists continually seek to tear down boundaries, to find new powder, new territory, new worlds to explore. They're the ones that hop the fence to get to places no one has ever been.

Other artists understand that they need to see the edges of the box if they're going to create work that lasts. No fence, no art.

Can't do both at the same time.

My guess is that you're already one kind of person or the other. When people present you with an opportunity/problem, what's your first reaction...

The people you should listen to

Who do you listen to?

Who are you trying to please?

Which customers, relatives, bloggers, pundits, bosses, peers and passers by have influence over your choices? Should the Pulitzer judges decide what gets written, or the angry boss at the end of the hall so influence the products you pitch? Should the buyer at Walmart be the person you spend all your time trying to please? Your nosy neighbor? The angry trolls that write to the newspaper? The customer you never hear from?

Just for a second...

The only holiday that really matters

No gifts, no guilt. Universal, even if it's not celebrated on the same day everywhere.

Whenever I sit down at this keyboard, I feel humbled and quite lucky to have the privilege. Every day is Thanksgiving, because without the people we love and depend on, there'd be nothing.

Thanks for being here, for making a difference and for doing work that matters.

Thank you.

Thirsty

I've noticed that people who read a lot of blogs and a lot of books also tend to be intellectually curious, thirsty for knowledge, quicker to adopt new ideas and more likely to do important work.

I wonder which comes first, the curiosity or the success?

What sort of accent do you have?

Not only the way you speak—but the way you write and act. More than geography, accents now represent a choice of attitude.

Let's define an accent as the way someone speaks (writes, acts) that's different from the way I do it. So, if I'm from Liverpool and you're from Texas, you have an accent, I don't.

Occasionally, an accent is a marketing advantage. Sounding like Sean Connery might be seen as charming in a New York singles' bar, or sounding like a Harvard man might help a neurologist in...