Seth Godin has gotten more than 70 people to contribute a one-page essay with a one-word title to form an ebook called What Matters Now.  I just finished reading it.  Here is the link to it and I highly recommend that everyone read this ebook:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html

Some quotes from the ebook:

• “When times are tough, vision is the first casualty.  Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover.” – Michael Hyatt
• “Today, with so much change and uncertainty, so much pressure and new ways to do things, the middle of the road is the road to nowhere.” – William C. Taylor
• “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – John Wood
• “Never stop learning. Read books. Learn from others who have done it before. Learn by doing.  Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.” – Tony Hsieh of Zappos
• “Power comes from an ability to build your reputation, create efficient and effective networks of social relations, act and speak in ways that build influence, and from an ability to create and employ resources—things that others want
  and need.” – Jeffrey Pfeffer
• “Harmony is a springboard. Harmony supports teamwork. And teamwork creates energy. An energy that fuels creativity.” – Jack Covert
• “Never tell a lie. Credibility is everything for an evangelist. Tell the truth—even if it hurts. Actually, especially if it hurts.” – Guy Kawasaki
• “The real way strong communities are built is through the compassion we extend to others. Both to those we
  know, and to those we don’t know.” – Mitch Joel
• “I believe the thank you economy will become the norm in 2010 and beyond, and brands that fail to adjust will be left out in the cold.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
• “You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excites you and what scares you everyday, not by trying to find your passion.” – Derek Sivers
• “Don’t worry too much about getting things done. Make things happen.” – Gina Trapani
• “Mistakes happen. How you apologize matters.” – Jason Fried

What I love about this is Seth took the time to gather acquintances to submit pages to the book.  This could be done by anyone.

I am working hard to become a Digital-Age Leader and I spend a great deal of time with my TLN (Twitter Learning Network), view reading recommendations of my network on LinkedIn and connecting with those mentioned on Twitter for #FollowFriday. I realized what is missing is a resource of blog recommendations. My iGoogle home page, Google Reader and email is filled with notices of updates to what I believe are some of the best blogs. Most social media users are aware of Seth Godin, Mashable, Chris Brogan  and Unmarketing. Below I will list a few that I believe should be part of the best of the best in blogs!

Steve Cunningham, CEO of Polar Unlimited offers free book summaries through his ReadItForMe page. Most of my recommendations on my ReadingList on LinkedIn have been recommended by Steve.

Ken Colburn, CEO of The Data Doctors has a weekly radio show in Phoenix. Each segment is saved as a podcast and can be found on iTunes or on his blog The Computer Corner. I like to listen live through streaming on his website but when I miss a show I will download and listen when it’s convenient. Ken is a techie and is very entertaining providing what’s new in technology and helpful hints.

Sue Young is originally from NJ and moved to TX. This may be what got my attention to Sue but it’s not why I recommend her blog Get in Front Blogging. She offers sound advice on blogging and how to build business buzz.

The Business Makers Radio Show is local to Houston. I met Esther Steinfeld at a TweetUp and started following her show. I had the honor appearing on the show earlier his year and enjoyed my  interview . She and the team at The Business Makers provide a great resource for entrepreneurs.

These are a few of what I believe are the best in blogs. Read and judge for yourself and don’t forget to visit their Twitter link and Facebook fan page!

A side-effect of us Social Media students all pulling from the same well, is that everyone student appears to have one outstanding ‘response to blogger blog‘ or discussing the the 2012 Presidential.   I worked on the Obama campaign (will likely work for the campaign in 2012), work in politics now, and have an interest in social media as it relates to civic engagement, so I will hold off on posting about the 2012 cycle until tomorrow.  I also feel weird posting a response blog to another response blog.  Thankfully Glorymar saved me on the Will it Blend post that is hilarious and weird.

A few weeks ago in my grassroots class we were discussing a “weird” case of marketing and how the scarcity factor help them. Of course we were talking about Will it blend? A product that has no traditional advertising. Will it blend?, has a website and many videos on Youtube. The sales of this product are based on pure word of mouth.

But Glorymar missed the most relevent video in the Will it Blend channel that is relevent to our Social media class:

Seth Godin is the self-proclaimed ‘agent of change,’ is a social media thinker who is credited for such memes as: ‘Permission marketing,’ ‘Purple Cow,’ and referring social networks as, ‘Tribes.’   His blog is also on our reading list.  He is like the Ron Popeil of social media to Shirky’s Asimov, in a good way (Comparing Shirky to Asimov may get me in trouble but I can’t think of a more respected futurist, comment if you can).  To have Godin actually participate in the Will it Blend viral marketing campaign is like Wright Brothers punking people in hand-gliders.  I am admittedly late to the weird addictive and must see things on the web, so thank you Glorymar for bringing me up to speed in the things that distract us.

The premise of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is that “talent” is really just the culmination of extraordinary amounts of practice.  Everyone is talking about it. “Put in 10,000 hours doing what you love.”  But what happens if you’re interrupted in the middle of becoming great?  Maybe you just graduated and you’re trying to break into advertising/marketing, maybe you got laid off.  For all my fellow unemployed marketers out there, if you’re like me at all, you’re worried about losing “it”, that creative spark that let’s you know you were made to be a marketer.  How can you prevent this from happening while you’re out of work?

So the big question is how do you hang on to everything when you’re out of work?

1. Exercise

All you have to do is a Google search on “Exercise and Cognition” and you’ll get more than a million results.  I don’t need to prove that from a science standpoint.  But from another perspective, one of the keys to success is confidence, and regular exercise makes you feel great about yourself.

2. Recreational Think Tank (or Get Together and Collaborate with Friends)

Not long ago, I was working a job that provided me virtually know mental challenge.  I was “losing it” even though I was employed!  I got two of my friends together and we met on a regular basis, just to pitch ideas to each other.  We called ourselves a think tank just for giggles.  Most of our conversations were about new business ideas.  We’d go talk to experts on how to best accomplish certain ideas, even wrote marketing plans, and did market research.  None of the ideas ever became businesses, but it kept my mind working.  The more excited I got about our ideas, the more my mind poured over them.  It didn’t matter that I wasn’t employed; I was challenged nonetheless.  All of you know more people like you.  Screw up your courage and ask someone to get together just to pitch ideas around.  Nothing has to come out of it, all that matters is that you keep the wheels turning.

3. Volunteer

Volunteer opportunities abound, and I encourage you to go build a house with Habitat, or hand out blankets to the homeless for the upcoming winter.  But I also encourage you to additionally seek out a very specific kind of volunteering.  Reach out to non-profits and see if they need any help from the marketing side.  Marketing is one of the areas that usually gets neglected in a non-profit’s budget, so chances are they will jump at the chance to bring you in.  Once in, take it seriously and do good work.  You’ll be able to add this to your resume, but more importantly you’ll be gaining real world experience and making contributions that hopefully will continue past your time volunteering.  Talk about building confidence!

4. Read (Duh!)

This one is the most obvious, but also the one I have failed at the most here.  I have Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing and Purple Cow, Zig Zigler’s See You At The Top and Secrets of Closing the Sale, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, QBQ! The Question Behind The Question by John G. Miller, and James Collins’ Built to Last.  All gathering dust.  Don’t be like me; do as I say, not as I do.  These are great titles that have been recommended by many people I respect.  You (and I) would benefit from reading them.

5. Mentorship

For some people, this comes easily, but for others it is bloody hard.  I’m in the latter, and still working on it.  However, the glimpses of successful mentorship I’ve experienced have unlocked my creativity and reignited my drive.  In fact, Unemployed Marketers Group is an idea I began developing out of one such relationship.

6. Remember What You Learn

This idea isn’t mine, but comes from a designer named Alan Knox over at a great agency called redpepper.  He has a great process for hanging on to what he learns.  He sums it up with Capture, Process, Categorize.  But that summary doesn’t  do it justice.  Watch his presentation here and get the slideshow here.  Seriously, do it.  I’ve got to start putting this into action.

—

The ante has been upped.  Nowadays, it isn’t enough to have good interview skills and even just networking may be insufficient to get by.  You have to keep growing, keep getting better, even when you’re out of a job.  The Unemployed Marketers Group came out of that very need.  Check out the below post, and if you want to be a part, drop me a line!  Plus, your complimentary or constructively critical comments are always welcome.

Apparently several days off with no planned activities = lots of reading.  So here are a few more readings to add to the list:

First off I finished Starfish and the Spider.  I would recommend this book if you are looking at the attributes of a decentralized organization.

Next I read Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin.  This is a small book that reads more like a string of catch phrases and parables.  It is thought provoking, but does not add to much to the readings that it references (Godin reference Gladwell’s books, Age of Heretics, and Here Comes Everybody).

Today I finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  Although my least favorite of his three, it is still a worthy read.  I read the acknowledgments before reading the book and I think that made it even more interesting.  Basically, Gladwell had the experience of being stopped by police and questioned about looking a lot like a rapist that they were looking for.  In actuality the only thing he had in common with the rapist was his hairstyle, which he kindly and carefully pointed out to the police officers when they showed him the sketch.  Gladwell uses that experience as a jumping off point for looking at our snap judgements and examining ways in which they serve us well and ways they do us a disservice.

I am also listening to A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink on CD.  I am interested that Pink defines “knowledge workers” in a different way than they have been described in Mark’s class.  He seems to be making a lot the same main points as Mark, but using a different lens to examine the issues.  He focuses quite a bit on the argument that “knowledge work” (which he describes as left-brained professions such as accounting, law, medicine, etc) is being outsourced or replaced by machines.  He uses that assessment to assert that the new area of job possibilities will be for right-brained professionals in careers that require creativity, emotional intelligence and design.

In addition, I just started Freakanomics on CD as well as Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, which is a very thought-provoking read by a PhD in philosophy who left a Washington think tank to run his own motorcycle repair business in Richmond, VA.

The complete interview of Clay Shirky (Nora Young on CBC) is here on Spark:

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2009/11/full-interview-clay-shirky/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cbcradiosparkblog+(CBC%3A+Spark+Plus+(blog+%2B+audio

It’s great stuff, and he answers my groupthink question

http://elizabethtweets.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/more-on-websquared-and-how-we-make-decisions/

something I’d posted about a few months ago and then sent to Nora when she requested questions for Shirky.

Awesome communication! And his answer is great. Groups are not so much about conformity now — open source makes it easy to walk away and do our own thing if we don’t like our group’s direction. Sort of the Seth Godin and the fluidity of tribes idea… http://elizabethtweets.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/tribes/

Uno no le cobra a los buscadores en internet por llevar gente a los artículos de tu sitio web, uno les paga para que esto ocurra.

What is a meatball sundae? It’s something messy, disgusting and ineffective, the result of combining two perfectly good things that don’t go together. Meatballs are the basic staples, the things people need, the stuff that used to be marketed quite well with TV and other mass market techniques.

The topping is new marketing: MySpace, websites, YouTube, and all of the magic that CEOs wish would shine atop their companies. The problem? New marketing is lousy at selling meatballs. When confronted with the myriad opportunities presented by new marketing, people usually ask ‘How can we make this stuff work for us?’

This, as Seth Godin explains in his remarkable new book, is exactly the wrong question. Mapping out 14 trends that are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer – and by extension transforming what we make and how we make it – Godin shows how the question for any thriving 21st century business must be: ‘How can we alter our business to become an organization that thrives on new marketing?’ Meatball Sundae is an essential guide to the fundamental shift taking place in the marketing and business world, and shows you how to align your business to it.

I had the pleasure of reading some of Seth Godin’s book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, and was really struck by some of the very simple revelations he outlines. Mainly, I realized the amazing power for communication we currently enjoy. My generation is among the first to ever have so many people voicing their opinions on a worldwide scale. With the creation of a free blog, anyone is given the ability to have their ideas viewed on a massive scale. Obviously, the challenge is to create quality content and get involved with the right people to encourage the spread of your ideas.

One of the most interesting aspects of having access to the vast library of information that is the internet is the potential for learning and development as a human being. For example, people have been playing musical instruments for a very long time. In the past, one’s ability to play an instrument relied on what they had been exposed to; either in musical training or seeing others play. In stark contrast to this, we now live in a world that provides access to thousands of videos of people playing and teaching how to play musical instruments in every style that exists.

Urging you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable, this book is a manifesto for anyone who wants to help create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.

I haven’t bought this book yet, but it’s probably essential, to me, so I will buy it soon =)

« Stéphane Godin, représentant de la majorité invisible sans aucune particularité, expose son concept de la “moyennitude” à travers son univers totalement (extra?) ordinaire. »

Etre « moyen » est un concept : ni trop bon, ni trop mauvais, ni trop riche, ni trop pauvre, ni trop beau, ni trop moche. Les “moyens” sont cette catégorie de personnes transparentes : pas de gratulations, pas de bourses,  pas de copines mannequins… On se rappelle rarement du prénom du moyen car on ne le remarque pas.

1H30 de one man show retraçant des anecdotes sur le français moyen : le foot, le bistrot, le romantisme. Cette descrption peut laissé croire que ce spectacle est « beauf ». Non ! Godin met en avant notre côté insconscient ou inavoué beauf.

Entre humour et interaction avec le public, Stephane Godin est remarquable, dynamique et drôle.

Pendant cette heure et demie, Stephane prend à partie chaque femme de la salle. Sans embarras. Sans doute grâce au côté convivial de la salle : pas plus de 80 personnes.

C’est pas cher, (10 euros sur Billetreduc.com ), c’est original, et c’est tout sauf moyen.

Pour apprécier encore plus le moment, allez y avec votre amoureux(se) ! Vous vous regarderez et vous direz : « tu entends, il a raison » !

A VOIR ABSOLUMENT !

DU 8 NOVEMBRE AU 27 DECEMBRE

DIMANCHE ET LUNDI À 21H30

AU MELI MELO D’AMELIE (4 rue Marie Stuart, Paris 2^ème)

Je ne suis pas fan de ce teaser, sans grand intérêt, on sourit si on a vu le spectacle, mais il donne une image presque négative du spectacle…

Mais je vous recommande vivement ce spectacle !

Nasty

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so. [watch video on Ted.com]

Also, check out Seth Godin’s book: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

It’s high time.  People around me have known for a while it’s high time, and just yesterday, as a gift, a family member has given me the opportunity to pick out a new one!!!

My Rogue RD-100... after which comes...?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the guitar I have, but it’s one of those “only a mother could love” kind of things.  It’s a black Rogue RD-100, and I’ve played it now for years.  Somewhere in the body, it’s developed a very undesirable buzz.  I had that assessed, and the guitar shop guy told me it would cost more to repair it than the worth of the guitar.  So be it.  I’ve kept on playing it anyway, knowing that I’ll never get rid of it, even once I replace it… my first guitar, you know?

Now what I’m eying is the Seagull / Godin guitars out of Montreal Canada.  I’ve heard they’re a tremendous bang for the buck.  I’ve gotten to play a few of them too, and they seem great… but here’s the catch.  I played them at a Godin-only dealership.  Then I went to a Guitar Center and tried playing some of those $2k or $3k guitars, and quite honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference.

Great, right?  Maybe, but maybe not.

I’ve heard teachers, friends, etc get all geeked out this guitar brand or that guitar brand, and so far, (at least on the acoustic side) I can’t tell the difference in any of them.  (Pretty much.  I can tell a $90 guitar from a $5k guitar, but those are the extremes)  Am I an idiot?  Am I missing some big secret?  Or is it something you’re supposed to learn after weeks and months of playing a set of guitars over and over?

If you had somewhere between $400 and $600, what kind of acoustic guitar would you buy?

In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.

View Video on Ted.com

Author Seth Godin has brought us books like Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, All Marketers are Liars, The Dip and most recently Tribes to name a few.

Tribes is not only about change – its about leadership. Seth Godin, whether consciously or not – is leading his growing tribe of followers- book by book, lecture by lecture. Why? Because he is never afraid to challenge the status quo (and you can too).

Godin defines a tribe as a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea that inspires their passion. He argues that human beings have a need to belong, “to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like-minded people. We are drawn to leaders and to their ideas, and we can’t resist the rush of belonging and the thrill of the new,” he writes. Source: USA Today

Tribes is about a new kind of leadership – the kind of leadership that has emerged through the Internet, in chat rooms, in social media and in communities. If you’re ready to be remarkable – to lead a tribe – put on a pair of army pants, buy Seth’s book and get ready to pursue something that matters (to you).

Marketers rarely think about choosing customers… like a sailor on shore leave, we’re not so picky. Huge mistake.

Your customers define what you make, how you make it, where you sell it, what you charge, who you hire and even how you fund your business. If your customer base changes over time but you fail to make changes in the rest of your organization, stress and failure will follow. [read]

We just finished up an exceptional customer facing event in Miami…In Seth Godin’s book, Permission Marketing, he explains what effective marketing is; the different between interruption marketing and permission marketing.  You can’t effectively mass market solutions and consulting services using interruption or typical marketing strategies.  Instead you must gain permission through things like education, providing value to  the client.   Combining this with something as urgent as data security provides a winning combination, allowing you to continue growing the relationship, increasing permission levels, as you provide trustworthy advice (the ingredients of being the trusted advisor).

In this case we brought together a group of clients, people already working with a solution provider, and gave them the next phase in curriculum…this builds the next level of permission.  We now have permission to meet with executives to discover assets and risk, where as before we only had permission to sell “products and install” to IT.  Using risk analysis, I can gain permission to talk to almost anyone in the organization, without wearing my sales hat. I’ve moved from vendor to adviser.  This is the next step in taking your business to the next level.

Une reprise de la chanson de Francis Cabrel, Petite Marie, avec ma Godin 5th Avenue…

Red Dirt Road by Brooks’n'Dunn – What can I say, I am just fooling around with my Godin 5th Avenue tonight… having a good time.