Seth Godin's Blog, page 293

People don't coalesce into active and committed tribes around the status quo.

The only vibrant tribes in our communities are the ones closer the edges, or those trying to make change. The center is large, but it's not connected.

If you're trying to build a tribe, a community or a movement, and you want it to be safe and beyond reproach at the same time, you will fail.

Heretical thoughts, delivered in a way that capture the attention of the minority--that's the path that works.

The typical American buys precisely one book a year.

Ouch.

Of course, this isn't true, because when it comes to books, there is no typical American. There are a lot of Americans who buy zero books for pleasure each year. And then there are people like me who buy 400. The average is irrelevant.

When you can't figure out the best way to treat all your customers, the best way to price things, the best thing to offer, realize that the problem is almost always this: you're trying to treat everyone...

I don't know if you've noticed, but there seems to be a lot more breaking news than there used to be.

The thing is, there's no more news, just more breaking.

If news is stuff I need to know, want to know, stuff that will help me make better decisions or generally keep me informed, then, no, I'm not noticing more of it.

If breaking is stuff that interrupts a TV interview, flashes across a website, breaks into a radio show or just shows up on Twitter, then yep, there's a lot more breaking going...

Robert Bookman from the restaurant industry was quoted as saying that it would violate the free speech rights of restaurant owners if they had to post a health department grade of their cleanliness in the window.

More and more, businesses and businesspeople talk about their rights.

It seems, though, that organizations and individuals that focus more on their responsibilities and less on their rights tend to outperform.

You're responsible to your community, to your customers, to your employees...

Clay Shirky taught me this very cool mathematical concept that shows up in nature, and now in marketing and social media.

An animal that forages will hang out in a small area, looking for nuts or berries, then will realize it has used up all the likely sources in this spot. It will then head off in a random direction, walk many paces, and start foraging again. When you plot the Levy flight, it looks like this:

Someone discovers your site. They poke and prod and join and return and return...

Apple reports that on the first day they sold more than $150,000,000 worth of iPads. I can't think of a product or movie or any other launch that has ever come close to generating that much direct revenue.

Are their tactics are reserved for giant consumer fads? I don't think so. In fact, they work even better for smaller gigs and more focused markets.

Josh Bernoff is a generous guy with an unusual hobby... he likes to make book indices.

Safer than juggling knives, that's for sure.

Josh just posted the missing index for my book Linchpin. Usually, the publisher does the index, and I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't realized it was missing. Now I'm glad it's here.

Two asides about the book: The full-length audio (itunes, audible) is probably the best reading of one of my books. Audio books work (for me) when you can listen to them more than...

The reason you have a front lawn? It's a tradition. Lawns were invented as a way for the landed gentry to demonstrate that they could afford to waste land. By taking the land away from the grazing sheep, they were sending a message to their neighbors. We're rich, we can happily waste the opportunity to make a few bucks from our front lawn.

Conspicuous consumption has a long history. Wasting millions of dollars on a shark in a tank, or on $50,000 platinum stereo cables that sound an awful lot l...

It's absurd to look at a three year old toddler and say, "this kid can't read or do math or even string together a coherent paragraph. He's a dolt and he's never going to amount to anything." No, we don't say that because we know we can teach and motivate and cajole the typical kid to be able to do all of these things.

Why is it okay, then, to look at a teenager and say, "this kid will never be a leader, never run a significant organization, never save a life, never inspire or create..."

Just b...

The best thing to say to an artist of any kind might be, "someday, people will think what you did is really important."

If it's popular with everyone right away, it might not be art, it might just be good marketing. But if it earns attention and respect over time, if it wins over the skeptical, then you've really created something.