3.12.2005

:: Unleashing the IdeaVirus

Seth Godin wrote, in 2001, the most successful ebook of all time. Amazon sells it for eleven bucks.. but I would like for you to have it for free...

It's not all about making money, or building websites, or marketing in general. It's a little of everything - a hogepoge of ideas and thoughts you can use to boost your traffic, your sales, and your skill level.

http://www.sethgodin.com
The notion that an idea can become contagious, in precisely the same way that a virus does, is at once common-sensical and deeply counter-intuitive. It is common-sensical because all of us have seen it happen: all of us have had a hit song lodged in our heads, or run out to buy a book, or become infected with a particular idea without really knowing why.

It is counterintuitive, though, because it doesn’t fit with the marketer’s traditional vision of the world. Advertisers spent the better part of the 20th century trying to control and measure and manipulate the spread of information—to count the number of eyes and ears that they could reach with a single message. But this notion says that the most successful ideas are those that spread and grow because of the customer’s relationship to other customers—not the marketer’s to the customer.

For years, this contradiction lay unresolved at the heart of American marketing. No longer. Seth Godin has set out to apply our intuitive understanding of the ontagious power of information—of what he so aptly calls the ideavirus—to the art of successful
communication. “Unleashing the Ideavirus” is a book of powerful and practical advice for businesses.

But more than that, it is a subversive book. It says that the marketer is not—and ought not to be—at the center of successful marketing. The customer should be.

Are you ready for that?


Malcolm Gladwell
Author
The Tipping Point
www.gladwell.com

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