I’m going to be sitting with a good friend of mine this weekend about starting a blog.  In preparation I thought I would take a minute and do a little extra homework for our conversation.   I thought I would share some of my finding below, as I think they are fantastic resource for blog development.

Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips

by Daniel Scocco

1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

Seth Godin explains that its all about quality relationships rather than quantity.

There are times when there should no elaboration, no commentary…  You just let the great writer and the great writing speak for itself.  Here it is, from Seth Godin:

From time to time, I like to take a little poll when I write this blog. Here’s today’s poll question: for Americans at home or abroad, raise your hand if you have already (or plan to) use the Internet to search for recipes for your Thanksgiving Day meal? OK, here’s the second question: for those of you who need a search engine, how many will use Google?

My reasons for asking these questions are simple. I read this blog post from ZDNet today and was entertained by the notion that a media titan has hopes of blocking his company’s content from the all-encompassing reach of Google.

The book to which the blogger refers is one that we’ve covered at Soundview. If you’ve never checked it out before, it’s an excellent exploration of the secrets that caused and continue to extend Google’s impact on the globe. Actually, this post drops a few of Soundview’s favorite names, including Seth Godin, who had a particularly nice quote about what happens when you attempt to charge people for their attention.

However, the company that made “search” one of the most important marketing terms of the past decade, continues to innovate beyond its beginnings. Chris Anderson, author of FREE: The Future of a Radical Price, also an upcoming Soundview Summary, discusses in his book the power of Google’s Web based software as one avenue in which the company continues to grow and influence the online world.

Google’s dominance in the Web landscape is enough to easily land it a seat at the head of the Internet’s Thanksgiving table. Although, I’m sure there are some Web-based companies who continue to wish that the company would pass the potatoes (both big and small).

A final, more personal note, as we prepare to celebrate our day of thanks tomorrow, I want to take a moment to thank the men and women of the Armed Forces who will be apart from their loved ones on this holiday. Let’s save our greatest thanks for them.

“The reason that they want you to fit in …

…is that once they do they can ignore you.“

Seth Godin

Isn’t it time our past will stop trying to prevent a better future?

Seth Godin writes:

You don’t charge the search engines to send people to articles on your site, you pay them.

Maybe Murdoch should learn from others how to re-invent his business model. Maybe we all will. Trying to resist is just futile. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be able to do it (link in Hebrew).

Elad

En lisant le billet quotidien du gourou marketing Seth Godin, j’ai eu un petit malaise ce matin. Il traite des accents. Comme dans cet extrait, il décrit ce qu’il entend par accent qu’il soit parlé ou écrit.

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 Miami Beach.

Je comprends très bien qu’il parle des accents “marketing” ou des différents angles que nous pouvons donner à nos messages pour créer une différence mais, je ne peux m’empêcher de penser aux accents “québécois” dans le paysage d’affaires nord américain. Le passage qui m’a fait titiller est celui-ci:

Generally, though, if I think you’ve got an accent, it’s more difficult to trust you.

Seth Godin ne fait aucunement référence à l’accent québécois dans son billet et c’est ce qui le rend si percutant à mes yeux. En gros son discours se résume à ceci:

• Perception d’un accent= exotique=différence= crédibilité+ confiance affectés négativement

Il décrit un comportement humain tout à fait naturel. La différence est souvent difficile à supporter. Imaginez, le New Yorkais trouve que le Texan a un accent et ils sont tous deux citoyens américains. Le trust factor du New Yorkais face au Texan est affecté et vice versa à cause de cela. Le québécois a l’air tout droit sorti d’un autre continent dans ce contexte! (j’exagère à peine.)

Après avoir oeuvré pendant plus de 12 ans au sein de PMEs ayant pour marché l’Amérique du Nord, force est d’admettre que Seth Godin est assez représentatif de l’homme d’affaires nord-américain moyen.

Même s’il y a des milliers d’entrepreneurs québécois et dirigeants de PMEs baragouinant l’anglais qui ont réussi à faire leur place aux USA, il en demeure pas moins que beaucoup d’entre eux sont partis désavantagés par rapport à leurs concurrents qui “sonnaient” mieux au oreilles des prospects américains ou anglo-canadiens. C’est tout à leur honneur car ils ont surmonté cet obstacle.

Même si nos propos sont tout à fait rationnels et remplis de bon sens, que notre offre produits est concurrentielle, que notre service est supérieur à la moyenne, notre accent québécois, lorsque nous parlons anglais, vient affecter le niveau de confiance que les gens nous accorde. Je sais que ce n’est pas rationnel et que c’est ridicule mais je l’ai expérimenté de nombreuses fois. Ce n’est pas que mon accent soit si épouvantable mais que voulez-vous, les francophones qui ont appris l’anglais ailleurs qu’à la maison via les cours d’anglais du Ministère de l’Éducation ont souvent un accent. Une faible minorité ont cette capacité à switcher de l’anglais au francais ou du francais à l’anglais sans que ca paraisse.

Heureusement, plus souvent qu’autrement, j’ai l’impression que le côté européen ou exotique de la langue francaise dans notre bilinguisme nord-américain nous permet de nous distinguer et de créer un élément distinctif qui laisse sa marque et fait oublier les aspects agacants d’un accent franco pour un anglo.

Et vous, dans votre pratique, votre accent vous nuit-il?

Psst….you. Yeah, you. I gotta good deal for you. A fool-proof investment strategy. One that can’t fail.

Scared yet? You shouldn’t be. I’m not referring to placing all your money on black or red or in the latest stock. I’m suggesting an investment that is going to pay off exponentially — an investment in people, your people. In the past, organizations looked for drones who fit the mission’s mold. There was one figure-head who represented everyone and many of those employed by the company or doing business with them had never even had any direct connection to this individual. But with the democratization of marketing and this newfangled thing called social media, where everyone (employees and customers) are brand evangelists, these figure-heads have been toppled.

In a recent post on HarvardBusiness.org,  authors Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd pointed out the necessity for companies/organizations to embrace what is no longer a fantasy land of what could happen in the future (like our childhood dreams of flying cars), but is happening with social media (like Dell selling $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter).

It’s time to think about the future and I don’t mean twenty years from now. I mean this time next year, next quarter even. How are you remaining competitive/relevant? How are you becoming part of the conversations that are occurring in cyberspace? How are you investing in your employees, members and/or customers? How are you empowering them?

We all embrace technology at different rates. Some are beta testers before the rest of us even know it’s available. Some of us jump on the bandwagon after the celebrity endorsement (you know who you are, even if you won’t admit you did it for Ashton), some (like me) need to weigh the pros and cons and talk to people who are currently using it before they invest time and money and others will go kicking and screaming into the new era.

I was on an NTEN Ask The Expert  call recently with Seth Godin and Beth Kanter. It’s impossible for me to recount every gem they shared but a couple of things stuck with me. Godin said we’re in the middle of an industrial revolution…and that new (social) media puts a sharper point on our need to tell our story.  He wasn’t telling us what to do merely pointing out that things are never going to return to the way they were prior to social networking. Things have changed. They will continue to change and you will be called upon to give your advice, story, expertise. If you’re not willing or are unequipped to do so, you may just find that you’ve brought about your own demise and the tradition you’ve clung to on how things have always been done, has relegated you to something of an antique.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

YourMembership.com - The Complete Online Member Community

News item: we now know that Al Franken used the wisdom gleaned from Chris Anderson’s idea about the Long Tail to win his election.

The Long Tail, the idea championed by Chris Anderson, and Microtrends, the book by Mark Penn, converge in this story. And you can throw a little Seth Godin and Tribes into the mix.

You probably know the concept of the Long Tail by now. A Border’s or Barnes and Noble store will stock books that have the best chance of selling. Amazon sells the same books, and some 80% of the books sold on Amazon are stocked in a typical physical retail bookstore. But 20% of sales for Amazon are from the “long tail.” (A quick read for this idea, and it is pretty good, is the wickipedia article on the Long Tail).

The traditional way to make money was to market to the masses. But increasingly, the way to reach people is with narrower niche marketing. This is really the end game of the long tail – it enables one to market, very successfully, to an increasingly narrow niche. Mark Penn describes it this way in Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes:

All these people out there living a more single, independent life are slivering America into hundreds of small niches. (The number of households in America has exploded, even though population growth has slowed dramatically).
This book is about the niching of America. How there is no One America anymore, or Two, or Three, or Eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.
You can’t understand the world anymore only in terms of “megatrends,” or universal experiences. In today’s splintered society, if you want to operate successfully, you have to understand the intense identity groups that are growing and moving, fast and furious in crisscrossing directions. That is microtrends.
A microtrend is an intense identity group, that is growing, which has needs and wants unmet by the current crop of companies, marketers, policymakers, and others who would influence society’s behavior.

The number crunchers keep examining the last election. Here is a revealing description about the Franken win (let me recommend, don’t let your politics, one way or the other, get in the way — – pay attention to the marketing implications). I first read this in a Daily Kos post, but the source is Long-Tail Nanotargeting from Politics Magazine.

Thanks to Democrat Al Franken’s Senate campaign, we now have a proven model to move beyond [the old campaign voter targeting] strategies. We do it by tapping into the concept of the “long tail,” an Internet marketing theory popular in the corporate world. It’s based on the idea that the Internet audience is extremely fractured. So, instead of identifying the most universally persuasive messages and broadcasting them to a wide audience, in the long-tail model you take the most persuasive messages and nanotarget each one to the right niche.
People don’t go to one place, looking for one thing. Their whims take them to a million places. The trick is to be everywhere, with tightly targeted messages. It’s about showing them highly relevant factoids/ads tailored to the whim they’re currently indulging, which if clicked, will redirect them to a relevant part of your website or related off-site content. In short, long-tail nanotargeting takes those little gems—be it an endorsement, video, news story, or ask—and shows it to the people who would care. To this end, we ran more than 30 million impressions for the Franken campaign across five horizontal ad networks, two vertical networks and dozens of local news outlets.
We nanotargeted more than 125 niche groups, with more than 1,000 pieces of creative, for less than $100,000. On Google alone, an acquisition budget of less than $20,000 got us more than 20,000 clicks, 5,500 active e-mail sign- ups, and more than 2,500 donors. We were able to reach persuasion niches (this is akin to someone opening up and reading a mail piece) for a fraction of a penny per impression, and less than 50 cents per interaction.
They targeted geographic and demographic niches online. They tested messages to see what worked best. Here’s an example:
In real terms, Minnesotans who were searching for cheap gas or researching fuel-efficient cars saw ads about Franken’s plan to lower gas prices.

The long tail has made Amazon successful, helped elect Al Franken, and, I suspect, will be the way to go for an ever growing number of businesses. It is the internet that makes this possible. But it is understanding the long tail, and implementing strategies that take advantage of the long tail, that will make people more successful.

———

You can purchase my synopses of The Long Tail and Microtrends, and my colleague Karl Krayer’s synopsis of Tribes, with audio + handout, from our companion site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.

Below is a video of Seth Godin discussing YouTube for businesses and marketing.  What are your thoughts?

In Seth Godin’s daily blog last Saturday, he told us to give people the benefit of the doubt.

What he said was that our language is imperfect, especially in a multicultural place like America, or on the web.  We mean one thing and the other interprets it different.  (example:  what my wife meant for me to do and what I thought she wanted.)

Godin suggests that with friends, we give them the benefit of the doubt that what they did was what they thought we wanted, and we excuse reasonable misunderstandings.  Or we take time to clarify what they asked us to do.  But with strangers or casual interactions, “we assume the worst.”

People will come to your church, not knowing your language, not responding the way you’d expect them to.  Or someone misunderstands during a church business meeting.  Or they come at a passage with a different interpretation based on a different background set of circumstances.  Your job, as a member of the body of Christ, is to treat them like a friend and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Assume they don’t know they’ve offended you, and be less easily offended.  It will go a long way toward creating unity in the body.

It’s been said before, but the biggest problem facing any organization that wants to use social media is striking the right tone.

Tone (which includes everything from the mediums/platforms chosen to the words/media used) is terribly important because interactions within social media are highly personal and yet lack many of the nonverbal channels that face-to-face communication provides.  As a result people are hyper-sensitive to what few nonverbal messages they can glean from an interaction.

The best metaphor I’ve come up with so far to describe the ideal tone is to think of every social media interaction as (1) a conversation at (2) someone’s kitchen table, and (3) the media is standing in the doorway listening in.

Breaking it down:

1. A Conversation: every interaction online is a conversation because people have come to expect that communication is now individualized and two-way.
2. At a Kitchen Table: social media is more personal than even the front porch or the foyer, it’s taking place in the interior of one’s home.  People are disclosing more personal information about themselves, and they expect reciprocity.  They also control the venue; if they don’t like your message or approach – they can have you forcibly removed (so behave yourself and be respectful).  Finally, being up close and personal means that both you and your message had damn well better be authentic or they’re going to be able to tell.
3. The Media Listens:  sunlight can fall on virtually every aspect of an interaction with relative ease (most times all it takes is a Google search) – and the evidence of one’s behavior has a virtually infinite shelf life.  [Actually, "the media" is more of a placeholder for those who don't fully comprehend the power of social media to make transparent the opaque.  Up until the last decade or so, the only other entity that could easily assemble a mass audience was the traditional media - to hell with individuals.  Now the opposite is rapidly becoming the case - "audiences" are too diffused for the traditional media to reach and the power now lies with those whose messages have merit (which can come either from relevance of the message or the credibility of the individual speaking).  Citizen journalists can expose disingenuous behavior ].

Apropos of the idea of tone, here are three bits of suggested reading:

• Metaphors we Live By: Words are important ( (it’s a classic and still worth a read) and the way we frame the world with them can determine how successful we are.
• Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge have an excellent section of their new book “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” where they describe the gravity of the changes PR professionals are facing by arguing that we need to change something as basic as the words we use to describe social media (they suggest striking the words “pitch,” “message,” “audience,” and “user” from one’s vocabulary).  I agree: thinking of the world in those terms threatens to derail the tone one must strike within social media.
• How to Lose an Argument Online:  in this blog post, Seth Godin perfectly encapsulates the consequences of not heeding the new conventions of social media.

- Seth Godin

is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

Lifted wholesale from Seth Godin cos’ it’s that brilliant

or: if marketing was regulated in certain industries.

From Seth Godin, who shows both his innate genius for marketing and his ability for conversation starting punditry!

During the first week of swine flu vaccines in New York, most parents (more than half!) chose to keep their kids out of the program.

Interviewed parents said things like, "I’m not sure it’s safe," and "I wanted to see if it affected other kids…"

No mention of longitudinal studies or long-term side effects. No science at all, really, just rumors and hunches and gut instincts.

So what?

The news here is not that people are irrational, giving too much credence to the dramatic and the local and the short-term (that’s not news), but that people have added a veneer of scientific rationality to their irrational decisions. Armed with Zagats or internet data or some rumor off Snopes, we act as though now we’re supremely rational choicemakers.

And the pay off is:

If I was marketing the swine flu vaccine, I’d name it after a kid who died last season and put her picture on the release form.

Its a genius idea but not one I think would (ever) be approved by a regulatory body. Pharmaceutical marketers from around the globe can chime in in the comments section below!

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

There is so much to learn from the top bloggers worldwide. To start with, they are individualistic with iconic style and quirks. Secondly, they are interesting people with something valuable to say. Often opinionated, they say things with panache – a little sugar and a little salt. Who are these fascinating people? Is there something we can learn from them?

Seth Godin is one of the top bloggers in the world and a marketing guru. He provides fascinating insight on things like running your business and quirky, interesting ideas on how to get ahead. An interesting and highly intelligent person, Seth is a much loved figure in the blogging world.

Leo Babauta writes a hugely popular blog on simplicity and productivity called Zen Habits. Through hi sincerity and hard work, he has won hundreds of thousands of supports worldwide. Its a strange and endearing story of success attained through humility and hard work.

Penelope Trunk provides counter-intuitive advice on careers and all other sticky things in life: sex, boyfriends, abortion and how they impact work. Thousands of readers are encouraged to gather courage by her thoughts on why the conventional workplace is so uncool.

Then there are the Mommy Bloggers – writing about all aspects of parenting, relationships, families and home business aspects.

There is the inimitable Guy Kawasaki, the former Apple Evangelist whose hugely popular blog is called “How to Change the World: A Practical Blog for Impractical People”. Guy has a lot of experience changing the world one person at a time from the time he worked on the Macintosh project.

In fashion, there is the one and only The Sartorialist blog by Scott Schuman that has come to define fashion and taste on the street. His blog was named among Top 100 Design Influencers by the Time magazine.

In the world of blogging and entrepreneurship, there are guys like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse - somewhat persistent but nevertheless knowledgeable, successful, and visible.

In my blogging course, I analyze the success mantras of such bloggers. What’s inside their brain, behind the door, under the hood, wrapped under cover or on the drawing board, away from your eyes? How did they attain their spectacular success?

What’s the secret success mantra? How do adapt or adopt, take away the useful stuff, how to apply it to your own style, how do you up your game and take it to the next level?

Let’s discover it together in my blogging course:

Blogging the Ayrton Way!

One of the unique aspects of this course is the personal attention  and individual feedback you will get as we work together to help you attain blogging success.

Register today to benefit from my blog course!

I totally have nothing to write about right now.  I am just going to babble for a little bit.  Hubby is going beer hunting.  The high holy days of deer hunting start on Saturday and Hubby and his brother S go beer hunting.   They have a good time and that is the most important part of the weekend.  I am planning on doing really exciting things like shampooing carpets and studying.  Not as much fun as beer hunting but fun enough.  I might go out with some friends but not sure about that.  I worry about drinking and driving and crowds and socializing and not being able to hear.  It’s hell getting old!

I read a bunch of blogs about marketing and stuff.  I have some of them listed over on the left.  I have been subscribing to one by Seth Godin.  His blog today is short and to the point.  At it kicks you in the teeth.  This is his blog today in its entirety

The reason they want you to fit in…is that once you do, then they can ignore you.  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/11/the-reason-they-want-you-to-fit-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

How is that for a kick in the teeth?  It is so true too. 

Ok I really have nothing else right now.  I will write again tomorrow.

Happy thoughts for a happy day!

Hammer time by Seth Godin

So, if it’s true that to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, the really useful question is, “what sort of hammer do you have?”

At big TV networks, they have a TV hammer. At a surgeon’s office, they have the scalpel hammer. A drug counselor has the talk hammer, while a judge probably has the jail hammer.

Maybe it’s time for a new hammer…

One study found that when confronted with a patient with back pain, surgeons prescribed surgery, physical therapists thought that therapy was indicated and yes, acupuncturists were sure needles were the answer. Across the entire universe of patients, the single largest indicator of treatment wasn’t symptoms or patient background, it was the background of the doctor.

When the market changes, you may be seeing all the new opportunities and problems the wrong way because of the solutions you’re used to. The reason so many organizations have trouble using social media is that they are using precisely the wrong hammer. And odds are, they will continue to do so until their organization fails. PR firms try to use the new tools to send press releases, because, you guessed it, that’s their hammer.

It’s not just about new vs. old. Inveterate community-focused social media mavens often bring that particular hammer to other venues. So they crowdsource keynote speeches or restaurants or board meetings and can’t figure out why they don’t have the impact others do.

The best way to find the right tool for the job is to learn to be good at switching hammers.

More from Seth Godin’s blog

Can't. I never really did much in the first place.

There’s buzz building around the new book, REWORK, by 37Signals founder Jason Fried, due to hit stands in early March.

In fact, there’s enough buzz to make omnipresent super-marketer/deep-thinker/bald-guy Seth Godin say of it, “This book will make you uncomfortable. Depending on what you do all day, it might make you extremely uncomfortable.”

Brought to you by the guys that created the hit web-based project manager Basecamp (and similarly web 2.0-ish apps), I can only gather the book is designed to let us simple people in on the rule-bending philosophy that Fried and company have used to help revolutionize how design and business is getting done.

I knew to stay away from that dirty ASAP.

Whatever the content – and I’m sure it’s going to be great advice on par with Godin’s own works – the design of the cover is intriguing enough to get us to pre-order it at Amazon.

The bold disestablishment maxims on the back cover – rather than the usually self-serving blurbs and author bios – set the stage for what I hope will be a thought provoking “FU” to the way things are currently done.

We’ll stay tuned to see if the words inside are just as bold in spirit as the ones on the cover.

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog (great by the way) and I came across this post

“Painless and quick are rarely associated with successful”

How about that. This is one of the ultimate vices of my life. The accountant inside me is constantly crying out for efficiency and minimal cognitive effort, but the innovator side is begging me to calm down and allow myself to be driven by quality. So, I realize that many failed attempts are primarily due to my lack of effort. Why don’t I want to put forth the effort? I don’t care that much about most things.

Now that I’ve finally found something to be passionate about, will I start seeing measurable results? Or will my obsession with efficiency prevail once again?

At points of high confidence, I feel like my ideas and opinions are pure gold and the fact that they can’t fit on a balance sheet doesn’t matter. However, at the opposite end of the spectrum, I hang my head and realize that most innovators fail. Even if I am among those that can actually change the world, do I have the stamina? Or should I just give it up and go back to public accounting? Ouch. I suppose my aversion to being a public accountant compounded with my passion for strategic thinking might be enough to maintain my drive. Maybe. Hopefully.

Seth  started a blog years ago and it culminated into a book called “The Purple Cow.”  He practices what he preaches.  It took years for the momentum to build but his book sold 250,000 copies and continues to sell to this day.  I estimated based on the cost of the book, there has been over $5,000,000 in revenue generated from sales.  He practices what he preaches: consistency earns trust and attention.

If you are are going into business for yourself, you must have short and long term goals. It’s the long term that sometimes gets overlooked in the marketing plan.  And it’s the first to get “cut” out of marketing budget when times get financially tough.  Take note and take charge of your marketing, today.   You have everything to lose if you don’t.

Here’s his thought of the day:

Breakthroughs and drips

There are only two ways to win in the market.

You can create a breakthrough. A promotion so powerful that people can’t help but engage. An innovation so remarkable, people can’t help but talk about it. A pricing strategy or ad campaign that breaks the mold and is worthy of attention. This takes huge guts and substantial investment.

Or you can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust. This might take years.

Almost all marketing attempts to do neither of these, and of course, fail. Painless and quick are rarely associated with ’successful.’

So I thought I’d start off by sharing some (5 to be exact) of the total time suck blogs currently in my life.  These are the reasons I stay up too late, don’t get as much work done as I want and how I end up staring at a computer for 15 hours everyday.  Since they suck time from my life, I thought I’d share them with you, so they can suck time from your life as well.

A few are funny, a couple are relevant to our culture, some are relevant to marketing and advertising and others are just blogs that I can’t stop looking at, no matter how hard I try. Let time stand still:

Wend Magazine

Seth Godin

Fail Blog

AdFreak

Design Sponge