This is Marketing — by Seth Godin

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I’m giving this one 4-stars out of 5. Godin continues to do what he preaches: get better at what you do.

While I’m still occasionally struck by the thought that Godin’s writing strength is blog-style format rather than full-length books, that’s my biggest complaint about his thoughts and writing.

As someone who finds myself in the role of an accidental marketer for my library, I’ve been following Godin’s advice now for a number of years and it seems to be working. The Spokane Public Library recently passed a $77 million dollar bond measure (with a 65% approval rating). Prior to that we passed a levy lid-lift with nearly a 73% approval rating. We’re doing something right.

I certainly can’t take all the credit (or even just a fraction of it… I have some amazing co-workers) but here are 13 questions from Godin that address how to go about sharing valuable work.

Who’s the work for?

If your answer to this is “everyone,” you’re screwed. Go find the “smallest viable audience” that you can and build something for them. For me, it’s the Spokane business community. And even more specifically, it is the business startup scene in Spokane.

What’s it for?

Shrinking the scope of risk facing startups. If I can throw a pile of data at a new startup and shrink their risk by a certain percentage, that’s a win for them, a win for Spokane and a win for the library.

What is the worldview of the audience you’re seeking to reach?

It’s a mix of folks seeking affiliation/belonging and folks looking to dominate a particular line of business. Mostly though, it’s those looking for affiliation.

What are they afraid of?

Failure. The unknown. Looking dumb. Or the worst: not knowing they are looking dumb while failing.

What story will you tell? Is it true?

That the Spokane Public Library has one of the best business research collections of any library in the nation. You can look it up. And yes, it’s true.

What change are you seeking to make?

The culture that I’m trying to shift is the Spokane business culture. I want to move it from a competitive-minded entity to one more based on co-opetition, with the library firmly rooted at the hub of all collaborative efforts that can benefit the local business community.

How will it change your status?

At this point, I’m not sure. A decade ago I would have hoped to be where I am today in terms of having the library viewed as a trusted and valued community partner. Where it goes from here? Hmm. I’ll have to ponder.

How will you reach the early adopters and neophiliacs?

By showing up, over and over and over and meeting the business community on their turf. I can’t wait for them to find me. I have to go find them.

Why will they tell their friends?

An opportunity to be associated with something unique, uniquely good and uniquely valuable.

What will they tell their friends?

That the library has an amazing set of business research tools and they have a business librarian whose only job is to help Spokane’s businesses find what they need.

Where’s the network effect that will propel this forward?

A number of avenues here, but we’ve moved past the purely word-of-mouth advertising (which continues to be awesome) and are now positioned to be the go-to resource for all things business research related in the Spokane community. Industry trends? Go to the library. Market research? Go to the library. Competitive analysis? Go to the library. Sales lead development? Go to the library. Demographics research? Go to the library. Workforce training? Go to the library. And so on.

What assets are you building?

Right now, the base is spokanebusiness.org. That’s the bread and butter. But I do have plans to pull together my own blog so that I can communicate directly to my users without needing to go through some other platform to reach those who are excited about what the library is doing.

Are you proud of it?

Hell, yeah. And it’s only going to get better.

Caregiver

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As a parent, that’s primarily what you do in the early years. You’re a caregiver. You feed, bathe, clothe, transport to medical appointments, etc. Every basic caregiving task falls to you. That’s your life.

But then, at certain point, kids generally start doing most of those things on their own. So I had to get a new job.

Rather than a caregiver, I find myself being the giver of cares.

I know an adorable young man. I have great hope for his future. And yet, his most consistent contribution to any conversation these days flows in the vein of “I don’t care.” It turns out that this line has many synonyms: Cool (said in a completely flat, even tone). Mhmm (again, no vocal inflection). That’s so great. So on and so forth.

So it’s now my job to pass along to him those things that are worth caring about. And yes, kiddo, you are right. There are things that aren’t worth caring about. Many of them. But teaching how to filter out the things that are worth caring about and giving them the attention they deserve, that’s the parenting task for today. And it makes caregiving look super easy.

 

The ethics of quitting Facebook

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Well, damn. Within a blink of the eye (on the geologic time scale) of me quitting Facebook because of my issue with the company’s seeming inability to treat its users fairly, this comes out: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/opinion/delete-facebook.html

In short, the author argues that Facebook users shouldn’t be faced with quitting or not quitting the platform based solely on privacy or ethical reasons. Rather, it is a case of whether lawmakers will step up and exercise their regulatory powers or not. By making the decision to quit Facebook rather than lean on my elected representatives to do their job, well… hmmm. That’s a good point. But for me, it comes down to who my elected representatives are. While I trust Senators Murray and Cantwell to land on the right side of the decision, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, my House representative and the closest connection to me and my life, well, she is a complete loser on this (and most other) regulatory issues. So… yes, the current Facebook issue could be and should be dealt with at a regulatory level. But so should climate change.

Until such a glorious day arrives, I just have to do what I can do at the individual level and carry on. And it seems, unless I’m mistaken here, that that glorious day might arrive sooner if the companies I’m railing against have less clout and less money to peddle their influence. That’s where individual action comes in.

Facebooked

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Well, it finally happened. I was clinging to the edge of the Facebook cliff, looking for every reason to hang on. I really did enjoy using the platform. I liked staying in loose contact with a whole host of people that I don’t see on my day-to-day ramblings around town. Whose kids are graduating from high school, who is traveling to Italy, who is getting engaged? Those sorts of things.

But the Facebook B.S. just kept rolling and I finally had to pull the plug. Beyond the shenanigans of Facebook’s C-suite of decision makers, here’s the thing that bothered me the most about Facebook: it forced me to communicate in the same way to my co-workers as I would to my Mom as I would to my kids’ friends as I would to my college roommates. That’s silly. And unnatural. Each of those populations needs and deserves its own dialect and tone. Will this site solve that problem? Probably not, but at least I can deal with those issues and not have to worry about how complicit I am in Facebook’s latest round of moral shortcomings. I don’t like to worry and there are enough things in this world to worry about that are outside my control that it strikes me as somewhat reasonable to scratch one — just one! — thing off my list of things to worry about.