Do it like this: Seth Godin

Create a bond of trust,
By providing relevant and insightful content,
That shines light on a useful topic,
Using conversational language and a personal connection,
To help your readers to grow.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

In the age of digital everything, using reality makes you stand out.

Watch the Heart of Sound video by The Softlightes (.mov).

Barry Schwartz presented a very compelling meme at the Google campus, the Paradox of Choice. In a nutshell, choice is good, lots of choice is bad.

His presentation has been bouncing around in my head for a few days now. I strongly recommend that you have a look. The premise that additional choice adds an overhead is something that feels intrinsically right, and Schwartz backs it up with evidence. A good sign.

I was thinking about strategies that I use in day to day life to make decisions simpler in a sea of choices, and the common theme I found - Brands.

My experience with a particular brand reduces the amount of thinking I make about a product. Some have negative connotation, some positive. Apple tempts with with new products as I trust the brand, but I am hesitant to buy a Dell due to what they represent.

Brands make supermarkets simpler, clothes shopping possible and music fun.

In reality, brands are just one level of filter that we rely on in modern life. There is a wide range of other filters. With the advent of the internet exploding the level of information and thus increasing the need for filters, it is an area seeing rapid change in recent years.

Aside: filters is a much bigger topic, but tends to delve in to Web 2.0 examples such as del.icio.us, last.fm, etc - so I thought I’d avoid it for now and talk about branding.

Although, a good example of filters is how I found the video in the first place. I’m using Google’s own staff as a filter for talks I’m interested in. They kindly share their in-house seminar series. Thank you!

From Seth:

If marketing is the art of spreading ideas, then teaching is a kind of marketing.

Atex is a company that understands this very well.

They make a very complex and hard to understand set of products. Training is kept as an in-house competency. In fact, training is often included for a select group of key staff within a newspaper as part of the pre-sales process. The training isn’t conducted by an outsourced company, or by a junior employee, but by the best expert available on the system.

This makes the sales process much smoother, as the customer now understands the product and the value that the product brings to their business.

Do not underestimate the value of training, it may just help close your next deal!

Bonus Links (both from Creating Passionate Users):

• You can out-spend or out-teach - “The most important skill today is… teaching”
• You ARE a marketer. Deal with it. - “You’re in marketing. Now go kill yourself.”

From Seth Godin:

I’m afraid we come back to something that marketers have been struggling with for a really long time—the best way to succeed is to have a really great product.