Seth Godin Small / Big Part 3 Notes

• Verbs. People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that happen, that change. Nouns just sit there. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes. Is your Web site a noun or a verb?
• Act differently if on camera? Best motivation is self-motivation. That teaching people the right thing to do is far more effective than intimidating them into acting out of fear. It's harder to find people who act the way we might like. 
• People hit the wall. A place where a huge percentage of people abandon the process. 
• Winners are those who treated their customers and their constituents with respect and did it with honesty. 
• Too many companies are afraid to admit they are in the packaging business. 
• The Web, the engineer's revenge, is all about the content and commodities, not sexiness and wrappers. 

Bonus: About Web Design.

• Big Pict #1: A Website must do at least one of two things, but probably both: 1. Turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer. 2. Talk in a tone of voice that persuades people to believe the story you're telling. 
• Big Pict #2: A Website can cause only four things to happen in the moments after someone sees it: 1. She clicks and goes somewhere else you want her to go; 2. She clicks and gives you permission to follow up; 3. She clicks and buys something; 4. She tells a friend. 
• A Web page is a step in the process. The purpose of this step is to get you to the next step. That's it. So what's that Web page for? What about this one? 
• Don't have a home page. Have "landing pages."
• Yes, you can easily show different pages to returning visitors, and you should.
• A website is a series of processes. 
• Each step of the way, you need to stake out a position. Must say, without saying it, "the smart thing to do would be click here. best way to solve your problem is to click here." Must "wax" the lanes of your "bowling" website.
• Need to change your pages all the time. Daily even. 
• Choice is a bad thing. When faced with too many pages, people flee. Contact is good. Eliminate dead ends and error pages. 
• As a device, your page is there to get the viewer from one place to another. From stranger to friend. One or two clicks, in, then out. 
• Three questions you must answer about every page you build: 1. Who's here? 2. What do you want them to do? 3. How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2?

Bonus #2: About Blogs

• No one cares about you. Almost no one even knows you exist.
• Three kinds of blogs: 1. Cat blogs (my blog is a cat blog, according to godin); 2. Boss blogs - used to communicate to a defined circle; 3. Viral blogs - a blog to spread ideas. 
• This is a riff for viral bloggers. It's about how to make your ideas spread far and wide and have more impact. 
• The first principle is to make your entries shorter. Use images and tone and design  and interface to make your point. Teach people gradually. 
• Good ideas, by my definition, are the ones that spread. 
• If you write something great, and do it over and over and over again, then you'll be unstoppable. Whether or not someone helps you. 
• The best blogs start conversations, they don't control them. 
• Marketing is really about two things. Talking and listening. 
• Most important kind of talking is storytelling. Not top-down dictation, but stories that resonate, stories that are authentic, stories that spread. 
• You need a committed group of subscribers, a substantial and influential RSS audience that will stick with you as you tell your story. Then, over time, take your readers on a journey. Teach them what you'd like them to know, and the rest will take care of itself.