Social Media B2B

Author Seth Godin is known for thinking about his ideas in unique ways. He does not believe in selling his ideas. He would rather give away his ideas for free, so that they can spread more easily. But Godin is someone who has sold a lot books by giving away his ideas online through his blog and web sites set up to promote each one of his books. Why do people buy his books if all the ideas are freely available? Sometimes people purchase them to have a souvenir of the ideas, in Godin’s words. Another reason is for convenience. Until very recently, it was not possible to read online books on an airplane or by the pool. And people as bought his books to share his ideas with others.

With each new book, Godin comes up with new and more disruptive ideas to promote them. His new book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible, is coming out in January and he has enlisted the help of others to promote his book. Yesterday, Godin published a free e-book called What Matters Now on his blog. It is free to download and he encourages you to share the ideas of the book. But here’s the disruptive part. He asked more than 70 smart, well-connected people to provide their thoughts on one idea for the e-book. So who becomes the biggest promoters of the book? The contributors.

The e-book is filled with great ideas, and you really should download it and read it, but think about what he did. He asked people to share their own ideas with him. He created a platform that allowed him to share their ideas, and in return they promoted the project as well. And in typical social media fashion, this e-book from Seth Godin is one grand, free promotion for his book coming out next month. There is only one small ad for the book in the back, but everyone who talks about this e-book (as I did in a presentation yesterday) mentions Godin upcoming book.

So the first lesson we can learn from this e-book is that there is great benefit from having others produce your material. If you ask a well-known person in your industry to write a guest post for your blog, you can be assured that they will promote the content to their network, which expands the reach of your blog. The second is you can use one thing to promote another, even if they are not related. You could call this promotion by association. And finally, by freely sharing your ideas, people will incorporate them into their own ideas and write blog posts like this.

After reading Godin’s e-book, let us know in the comments what one idea matters to you and include a couple of sentences describing it.

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