I have been enjoying my copy of Seth Godin’s latest book, Meatball Sundae.
It discusses fourteen marketing trends that we all face this year, in thought and action-provoking signature Seth style.
The Meatball Sundae metaphor refers to boring company brands (meatballs) throwing whiz-bang new marketing strategies (ice cream sundae toppings) on top of their business, and expecting "magic" results. The intro to the book says:
"Maybe this is familiar. It is to me anyway:
You go to a marketing meeting. There’s a presentation from the new Internet-marketing guy. He’s brought a fancy (and expensive) blogging consultant with him. She starts talking about how blogs and the "Web 2.0 social media infrastructure" are just waiting for your company to dive in. "Try this stuff," she seems to be saying, "And the rest of your competitive/structural/profit issues will disappear."
The same could be said for the brand new entrepreneur. There is a stunning array of marketing tools to choose from, many of them free, but all time-consuming. What should you implement, in which order?
And sometimes, new entrepreneurs, groomed by "meatball" culture, think they have to create complex operational structures in order to be a "real" business. Examples like:
- A former Deloitte consultant believes he has to create obtuse 150-slide "decks" to impress his new clients (we should sic Garr on him)
- Former HR bigwigs, setting up shop as independent consultants, spend 6 months and $30,000 for a website that gets them zero clients. (Meanwhile, a colleague setting up the same business uses LinkedIn one evening and gets 10)
- Talented and sincere bloggers spend endless hours creating wonderful content that no one reads
Last year, I tried to dip my hand in every New Marketing, social media, Web 2.0 bucket I could find, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Podcasting, Internet Radio, YouTube, Blogging, Vlogging,(ok, I did one poorly recorded video greeting) and Squidoo . I put a lot of effort into it and learned a lot, but didn’t do anything besides blogging justice, creating a rather stretched and anemic web presence. It is also not sustainable … at least the way I have been doing it.
This year, I want to be more deliberate and effective in the tactics I use to reach out to my "peeps," frustrated corporate employees who want to break out of their cubes. I would love to do fewer of the right things that serve my core objective: bring people to this blog. For here is where my heart lies, and what I will continue to do regardless of any other distractions. {edit 1/22: by "fewer of the right things" I mean fewer things, and the right things. When I re-read this in the morning light, it sounded like I didn’t want to do the right things. 🙂
So next Tuesday, January 29 at 1pm Eastern I am delighted to participate in a call about Meatball Sundae with Seth and the following cool cats:
* Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App and The Likeability Factor
* Andy Wibbels, expert blogger and author of Blogwild!
I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Tim yet, but Andy and I are buddies. I harass him every few days on Skype with a whole bunch of Meatball Sundae-esqe, Web 2.0 questions, on everything from writing a book to technical blogging questions. One of these days, he is going to realize that our friendship is just a thinly disguised way for me to get free consulting, and will stop returning my calls.
If you haven’t yet grabbed your copy of the book, go to your local bookstore and buy it, get it from 800CEORead, or Amazon. (The last time I reviewed a book, a kind reader who owns an independent bookstore reminded me that I should encourage people to "buy independent." It was a good point, given the topic of my blog, but also a good question for the call, since I am not totally convinced that Amazon is the evil empire. To prove it, I used an affiliate link. What can I say, diapers ain’t cheap! Byron, if you want to weigh in, please do!)
Do you have any specific questions or topics that you want me to cover on the call? I can’t promise to get to all of them, but I would like to come prepared with a good synopsis of what my blog readers worry about when marketing their emerging businesses this year.
Drop your comments here, or send me an email.
If you can’t attend the live call, sign up anyway because it will be recorded.
Hope you can make it! Sign up at www.sethgodinbooktour.com.
Just found your site and registered for the call. I read and enjoyed Andy Wibbels’ book and just started reading Seth’s book last week, so this is very timely.– Have been reviewing the micromedia world and would also be interested in the panelists’ views. — My experience so far has me very intrigued. I think it depends on how you expect to use Twitter and who you have decided to follow.
Pam, for no particular reason I want to say “good times” — picture your discussion Meatball Sundae = Schwety balls ala SNL/A.Baldwin — where is my mind today??
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/nprs-delicious-dish-schweddy-balls/3970026270
I picked up on something you said “…he is going to realize that our friendship is just a thinly disguised way for me to get free consulting, and will stop returning my calls.”
That is a kind of interesting take on all this — candid we are all in this web2.0 to promote something –our biz, our hobby, our self (mostly) — the magic of web is that I can email, comment, trackback someone like you, Seth, Asacker et al and they reply — connect — have not really formulated a question perse but curious about the etiquette, expectations etc. of this “power”. I once asked Seth if I was emailing too much? classic; “No, but you’re close” just a thought sounds like you face a little of same dilemma with Tim et al.
Great job!
Although I’ve had 20 years to prepare for the sutainability revolution, and a year to prepare for the recession that may have officially started today, I find that wrapping my head around living in this new world is more difficult than I thought.
Does Seth or the others have this (these) problem(s), too?
What a great opportunity Pam! Let’s see-I’d love to see how Seth’s advice can be catered towards the “independent professional” or smaller firm who may not have the big marketing budget to begin with.
Hi Pam,
Glad this will be recorded as I have a prior engagement…can’t wait to listen though.
As for specific question…it’s bound to come up somewhere in the discussion, but I sure would love to hear either Seth, Tim or Andy (or all 3) weigh in on the Twitter debate. Do they see it as a useful marketing tool? How? A waste of time? Seth tweets his posts. Useful? My own jury is still out and I would like other perspectives.
Thanks!