Preface: Linchpin is a new book by Seth Godin the premise is that you must make yourself indispensable to your employer, clients in order to truly have job security. “A linchpin is the essential element, the person who holds part of the operation together. Without the linchpin, the thing falls apart.” quoted from Mashable interview.

For those who attended yesterday’s Seth Godin Linchpin event they received a workbook called ShipIT. It’s a small guidebook to make sure the high you get inside the event doesn’t turn into a reality hangover when you go back to work the next day.

For those that need a frame of reference, Godin is a combination of Dr. Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, and Dr. Wayne Dyer, but truly that’s only for those that need a reference. Godin is uniquely Seth.

Seth Godin is navigating his way in uncharted waters. His brand as I see it is – Marketer for the new century – but his words and passion in the presentation I attended yesterday in Minneapolis (see on Twitter #sethgodinmpls) is one part marketer, two parts motivational speaker, and one part rebel, kind of like Peter Finch rebel in the movie Network.

I’ll cover separate parts of Godin’s message in several blog posts here. Let’s set the stage with these points.

Brilliant Points for Marketers

These are Seth’s ideas filtered through a Maruggi perspective (yes it may be a little twisted but that’s why you return here) : )

1) Figure out the world view of your audience and use it to frame your discussion. Example, say you are trying to sell NBA Timberwolves tickets to a fan upset by the number of blowouts last year. Now it becomes a question of selling the youth, athleticism and hustle (and yes the product actually needs to produce that expectation) as opposed to some notion of playoff contender. Plus I would not make a big deal out of seeing Wade, Bosh, and that other guy.

2) Lizard thinking. The ability of some people in an organization to protect their species called status quo. You run into Lizard think in many larger organization, usually because smaller organizations don’t survive with many Lizard thinkers on board.

I worked as a political appointee in the Federal Government and the agencies are loaded with Lizard thinkers on both sides of the political spectrum. They know their species has lasted a hell of a lot longer than you. The thinking goes like this, “I’ll just bake here in the sun and watch you try to change the world, then your kind will die off and they next generation come in. Democracy is great ain’t it?”

Godin’s guidance about the Lizard thinker – distract them, appease them, remove them. Details of doing this are unique to every situation and past success does not predict future performance with Lizard thinkers, but suffice it to say the world is full of them, don’t let them get you down.

Funny on the topic of people who are protective of the status quo and resist change, I asked Robert Scoble years ago whether they can stop social media from growing and he said no. I asked why and he replied, “they will eventually die off.” As a 51 year old social advocate and believer in the current revolution, this was a bittersweet statement.

Brilliant Personal Note

Godin talks about following your passion, making a difference and creating art. His palette is comprised of words, so it is easy to get caught up in the moment of “Yes this is my destiny.” Godin, more so than others who talk the “follow your passion talk” does include a healthy reality check. Thank God.

He acknowledges the parameters that most people face, family obligations, work constraints, time, money, etc. In fact, when he talked about these he gestured by placing them around his body as if they were walls of a box. And without any sugar coating he said one of these may need to get blown up, he also used the word sacrifice. Yup, that’s it. Sacrifice, and for those in the audience who have built a career, family, obligations, those walls are higher and thicker than for others, that’s just reality. For those individuals, Godin’s words are no less inspiring, but the path to implementing them is more arduous for you and those that depend on you.

Brilliant Perspective

The lens through which the reality check should be seen is Godin’s comment about the revolution now underway. Godin said each of us is both worker and factory owner. The digital factory which each individual now owns is a computer, each enriching asset a person owns is an idea, and the myth many of us need to shed, is the myth of needing to ask permission to succeed.

You don’t need permission to pursue your art. This was the most enlightening, realistic and sad concept of the presentation. Given today’s ability to create and share we don’t need any one’s permission to believe and work towards a dream. The industrial system rewarded conformity, bastards. It’s a yoke the anyone born before 1990 may well be carrying around. I’m not talking rebel with long hair and torn jeans, I’m talking, as I interpret Godin here, the ability to create anything, period. A book, a Tshirt, a store, a widget, anything. I submit to you this mindset is more important to success than talent, an idea, a network, anything. The myth is the first thing to blow up, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Now so I don’t go too far a field from the readers of this blog, this myth of permission is also true for your potential competition and for your customers. They have few if any barriers to implement their ideas about themselves or about you. So if you have linchpins make sure the Lizards don’t get them down or they can become your competition. If you deal with consumers directly, understand their ability to share their perspective, right or wrong. Doctors, are you listening? Hotel front desk people do you get this? Wall Street, your next because the cost for this revolution are magnitudes less than 10 years ago so do you know what that means? Conformity to your short-sighted view of the world may not be in my world view.

Thanks Seth, more in the days ahead as we get deeper into the Linchpin revolution. I recommend you attend a Linchpin event in your area.

Time 31:36

Creative marketing takes time to, well, create, and time to execute. So when I saw a case study about Hubspot’s inbound marketing system on Marketing Sherpa I was intrigued by their approach. Instead of a typical “we are greater than sliced bread” marketing, the Hubspot internet marketingcreated a unique website that invited businesses to use a small part of the Hubspot system. That part of the system is called website grader and businesses by the thousands visited www.websitegrader.com to enter their website. The website is then graded on a series of attributes that search engines look for in ranking sites on a scale of 100. We start this conversation at about the 4:00 mark in this podcast.

Provident Partners, thank God, first pulled an 85, however, still room for improvement. That’s why we have on this podcast Mike Volpe, Vice President of Marketing for Hubspot. We get into the 5 key areas essential to getting a passing grade and increasing the odds you’ll achieve your search ranking goals. And yes, we use the www.providentpartners.net site as the “patient” in this visit to the search engine doctor. Volpe starts this commentary at about the 19:00 mark in the podcast.

5 Key Areas to Improve your website’s rankings are

1) Title on all pages can change
2) Keywords and descriptions meta tags of page content for each page
3) Put blog on a company URL and integrate into your website
4) Domain renewal – sign up for as many years as you can afford
5) Permanent redirect for yourcompanydoman.com and the other for www.yourcompanydomain.com

This Example Can Apply to Other Businesses

Volpe is an excellent marketer who realized Hubspot needed a way to break out in a crowded field of marketing platforms. I believe the tactics used in this campaign can be replicated by other marketers for a variety of product launches, professions and industries. The keys are as follows:

1) Create a web presence that allows prospects to experience part of your product or service.
2) Product needs to have remarkable elements
3) Take the time to understand the interests of the bloggers that write about your space
4) Include was to invite comparison between the status quo and life with your product or service

Some readers might say, well this works for a web-based software product, but how can it apply to other areas. Ok, let me take that one on.

A business consultancy can create an assessment tool in their area of expertise. Technomic Asia a consultant group has an China Readiness assessment tool to measure a company’s ability to compete in the China market.

A winery can have a dinner selection with multiple choice of wines to select, your choice will be compared against what a famous Sommelier recommend with that same meal.

A furniture store, design, or organization consultant can allow users to help themselves using your website. For example Ikea has done a great job with their space planner portion of their website. They depict your space and you manipulate their furniture in it. This is slick and it worked for me two years ago when we redesigned the Provident Partners office space.

If you have other tips on getting good search rankings, we invite you to share them here with other readers.

January 2008 Book Drawing Giveaway

This month we are holding a drawing to win the book The New Influencers by Paul Gillin. Here’s my review of the book posted on Media Bulleye . To be in the drawing, email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net Good luck. For every entry, comment, and completed survey Provident Partners will donate a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelter.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, Seth Godin author of Meatball Sundae, and Steve Mann head of social media for SAP doing a webcast at noon central today. http://tinyurl.com/yutq4b I’ll live blog it here. Just the highlights please, OK

Owyang outline to consider and approach social media POST = People, Objective, Strategy, and Technology. Bottom line point – think it through for the long term. Jeremiah’s blog is http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/

Mann – excellent point about the correllation between those who engage in the community or your discussion early will be more likely to convert as the sales cycle moves forward.

Godin – Classic Godin line, you can’t be like that brother-in-law life insurance salesman at parties who only goes to hit you up for insurance. Remember that this holiday season.

Owyang refers to Lego community to embrace customers to help build new products http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/community/default.asp – He is very clear that this is not about giving away product ideas, no it’s about getting product ideas. And the pay off for them is to be a part of an inside group that then become advocates. Passion is the result of asking for opinions (that last one is my line, so if you don’t like it don’t blame Jeremiah)

Mann makes excellent point again – not every conversation is going to be positive or rosey. However, there can be positive that comes from that, whether its improvement to the product or customer service. It is so refreshing to here someone like Steve who answers to a corporate structure speak like this. It is both a reflection on him as a leader and on the management of SAP.

Godin – Social media is not for every company. I have said this for awhile (listen to Great Blog Debate November 2006) The issue for me is that some companies need to evolve into social media as opposed to “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business” which is the title of this webcast.

You gotta love this one from Owyang – An eye opener ready?

So it used to be that sales managers would take a win/loss report and marketers would pull out the wins to put in their communications. Enter social media, and buyers are taking about the every same things that are in your win/loss reports in the open. Agh! imagine that. Now what?

Companies using social media correctly

http://www.ideastorm.com/

http://www.threadless.com/

Lastly the panel was asked in a couple of words what advice would you give to companies about considering social media (I paraphrasing here on the question) And they said

Owyang – Let Go

Mann – Evolution not revolution

Godin – Be remarkable

Anyone commenting on this post we’ll have a drawing for Seth’s new book Meatball Sundae, Those of you who don’t feel lucky can get it here http://www.squidoo.com/meatballsundae