Rethinking Engagement: Facebook and Permission Marketing

If you think of a “Like” as an opt-in, you’re as close to the value proposition of an email list as it gets outside of actually acquiring that email, and you should treat the content you post to your Facebook Page with as much care and attention as you do your email newsletters. Even better, think of your Facebook Page as a key component of your brand’s overall audience development strategy, complementing your website and email program, and as your audience there grows, leverage Facebook Insights as aggressively as your web analytics to inform and evolve your content strategy.

Spinning Dominoes: Don’t Believe the Hype… But DO Learn From It

Not quite one year to the day it was announced, Seth Godin is shutting The Domino Project down, offering the awkward explanation that "it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books," instead of, perhaps, admitting that publishing is harder than it looks if you want to swim at the deep end of the trade pool in the middle of a dramatic transition, as he obliquely acknowledges in many of his noteworthy takeaways.

The Godin Situation: Content, Context, Community

Seth Godin's decision to not publish his theoretical next book(s) via traditional channels has caused a predictable stir amongst the pundit class, with proclamations about "The Death of Publishing" coming from many of the usual suspects looking to scare up page views. Predictably, few have acknowledged the unusually nuanced statement Godin actually made about his situation: "The thing is--now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you."

On Branding, Tribes, and Seth Godin Goes Wild

"If you can just assemble these 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 people who love literary fiction, then you've earned the right to be the ringleader, the leader of that tribe—and you'll never, ever again have trouble selling literary fiction." --Seth Godin, How to Fix the Publishing Industry Seth Godin arguably did not have the Best Week Ever … Continue reading On Branding, Tribes, and Seth Godin Goes Wild

Platform 101 For Busy Writers: 3 Simple Steps

“The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.” --Seth Godin In an era of immediate gratification and information overload, patience is something few … Continue reading Platform 101 For Busy Writers: 3 Simple Steps

Free is wrong for writers; Freemium might not be

What [FREE author Chris Anderson] is proposing is down somewhere, on the scale of ethics, well beneath Wal-Mart's policies of no longer hiring any full-time workers so as to avoid health and unemployment insurance. It is in fact some weird sort of neo-feudal, post-contract-worker society, in which he will create a dystopian and eager volunteer-slave system … Continue reading Free is wrong for writers; Freemium might not be

The Limitations of FREE; Godin vs. Gladwell

For Anderson, YouTube illustrates the principle that Free removes the necessity of aesthetic judgment. (As he puts it, YouTube proves that “crap is in the eye of the beholder.”) But, in order to make money, YouTube has been obliged to pay for programs that aren’t crap. To recap: YouTube is a great example of Free, … Continue reading The Limitations of FREE; Godin vs. Gladwell

Marketing Should be Fun(damental)

Marketers have spammed, lied, deceived, cluttered and ripped us off for so long, we’re sick of it. --Seth Godin I love coaching Little League baseball. This is my son's third year playing and I've been fortunate enough to coach his team each year, experiencing first-hand the beauty of playing baseball for no other reason than … Continue reading Marketing Should be Fun(damental)