The Wisdom of Seth Godin
14 Knowledge Bombs Dropped at the 2015 Local Video Summit in NYC
Seth Godin is not only a best-selling author, writer of the most popular marketing blog on the planet and a business revolutionary. He is also an inspiring speaker and storyteller. I typed into my smartphone as much of Seth’s speech as possible. Here are some highlights from the 2015 Local Video Summit in New York City:
1) The internet is the first medium in 100 years that wasn’t made for advertising. We can’t think of it in the same way as advertising mediums.
2) Your clients’ first challenge is interrupting people with solutions for problems they don’t have. That model isn’t going to work on the long run. We’ve branded ourselves to death. Consumers don’t want to hear from us anymore. Now we have a supercomputer in our pocket in addition to keys and coins (the first new device in our pocket in 3,000 years). And we don’t want to be interrupted and sold to.
3) Turn strangers into friends before turning them into customers. That’s “permission marketing.”
4) Now you can treat different people differently because of the internet. You don’t force people into your box; you go into their box and talk to them.
5) In a connection economy, value is created where connections are made, and not when acting like a broadcast network. You go to the edges. The edges care. You don’t follow leader. As marketing, we build a product or service that people like and care about.
6) People aren’t interested in average. They are interested in different and exceptional. They will stop to look at a “purple cow” and tell others about it, but not so for a regular, average, unremarkable cow. It spread horizontally through sharing. And you can only charge more for that which is exceptional.
7) We are all guilty of flying too low. We’ve built this transformative thing (the internet) and are still flying too low, watching cat videos and getting buzz.
8) For local business, the internet means it isn’t enough to be best in town. You have to be the best in the world and you can’t be the best by doing same thing as everyone else.
9) The connection economy scales with abundance.
10) Tribes are groups of people who share an idea or goals and and want to be part of a community of like-minded individuals. They want to be part of something. We get in sync with others because that is what we do. Reaching tribes is different from sponsoring something on NBC. Find a tribe and lead them.
11) What is actually going on now is a million tribal behaviors. It looks the same as before, but it’s very different.
12) A manager seeks to get a little faster at doing what was done yesterday. A leader is not sure where we are going but will figure it out and help get us there.
13) A job can no longer be a boss telling you what to do all day. If a job can be done that way, they can replace you with someone cheaper.
14) You will succeed. Will you choose to matter? Will you choose to lead us?