I am sure many of you are aware of Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire. The other day I came across a post that noted one of Seth’s talks and his advice to startups. The insights set forward by Seth are spot on and I wanted to pass them on to all of you to read and digest
1. Resist becoming “average”
2. Communicate directly with your customers
One way I see a great example of this is by tracking what being said about your product and engage the writter and readers. I saw a great example of this on a Techcrunch post for a review of CollectiveX’s new Groupsites. In the comments Clarence Wooten, CEO of CollectiveX, was directly speaking to the readers to address some issues. No middle man, just direct communication.
3. Let your users talk to each other
provide some mechanism for those that inexplicably find your offering “interesting” (hopefully interesting enough to actually pay you) to connect with each other. Give them easy, convenient ways to connect to each other and then get out of the way.
4. Start a blog
Nuff said, a great way to communicate with your users, let them know whats going on.
5. Stories spread, not facts
You know how they say perception is reality … well they are right. So make sure you keep an ear to the tubes and get out in front of issues and make sure you control the perceptions
6. Beware the need for critical mass
“Failing for small audiences is a loud cue that you will fail even bigger with big audiences.”
7. They didnt call it the Industrial Gentle Change
They called it a revolution and sometimes those are not easy, but in the end you will have persevered and learned.
8. You have to start
I am a huge proponent of this, if you have an idea .. do something, anything to make it come to life. You never know where it will take you.
There were a lot of great insights in the post and I invite you all to check it out.
