There are still many content marketers who use content marketing and permission marketing interchangeably. However, permission marketing is just a sub-category of content marketing and, unfortunately, most of the current content marketing campaigns do not fall into this sub-category.

Permission Marketing is a term coined by Seth Godin. This approach to marketing is based on a clear and strict premise:

In the permission marketing, we bound our scope to the audiences who have knowingly accepted to get into communication with us.

Thus sending an email message to someone who has not registered herself on our mailing list is a violation of the permission marketing premise. The same applies to the phone calls to potential clients without their prior permission.

Thus, all of the cold calling activities are outside the permission marketing boundaries.

Considering the above definition, SEO based campaigns looking for organic traffic are one of the best examples of content marketing in the digital world. However, paid advertising in search engines does not comply with the accepted definition of permission marketing.

As the term permission emphasises, many of the current content marketing campaigns are just implementations of the old mass media campaigns fueled with the digital content.

Although most of the content marketers confirm that growing a smaller community of the audiences using permission marketing approach would much more profitable and sustainable in the long run, still many of them are not patient enough to wait for the slow-yet-organic growth of their audience base.

P.S.: HubSpot has a insightful article comparing content marketing and inbound marketing that can be helpful if you are seeking more ideas in this regard, although the author’s personal opinion is in contrast to what I have suggested here.

The post Definition of permission marketing: Content marketing is not limited to permission marketing appeared first on webmindset.

Sheepwalking is one of the terms I love in his book. Godin emphasises that many people ignore many opportunities for changing themselves and the world because they are sheepwalking their way through the whole life.

Actually for most of us, it’s easy, nice and fruitful to have a dream. But there’s a large gap between having a dream and turning it into a passion and trying to live it. Sheepwalking and laziness are two of the reasons. But blame and criticism are the other hidden barriers on the way.

In the whole book, Seth Godin has an eye on today’s digital technology as a low-cost and easily accessible platform facilitating great movements.

In the old times, building a tribe was a much more complicated task. You had to rely on the people around yourself and in your neighbourhood. And it was not easy to find like-minded people outside your geographical area.

But nowadays, technology, digital media and social networks can be used as a supporting platform for initiating and expanding such movements.

However, a more serious challenge still exists. Most of the people are sunk in their daily activities and never find time to think beyond the mean concerns of the average people.

By the way, it’s not necessary anymore to claim a big change in the world as it was popular in the last centuries. With the old limited access to the people, old age leaders had to look for simple big ideas in common between most of the crowd. But using today’s technologies, it’s easy to build a tribe around very specific ideas and values.

But the one who wants to build and lead a tribe shall have specific characteristics and skills. Here are some of them:

• An irresistible call to action
• A cause worth fighting for
• Believing in him(her)self
• Motivating others and driving them into commitment
• Enabling followers (tribe members) to get connected together
• Being brave and challenging status quo
• Hard Working
• Being generous
• Not putting money and position as the first priority
• Finding other leaders and helping them to find followers
• Helping lost followers to find desired leaders

As you see through the book, Godin’s idea about the tribes is applicable to both social and business contexts. It doesn’t make a big difference if you are thinking about founding and funding a charity or you are thinking about selling your product.

Complimentary Documents for download:

A companion book for tribes, published by Seth Godin: PDF: Current Cases of Tribes

A document with questions and answers about the tribes and maintaining them: PDF: Tribes Q&A

Another Review by Chris Duker (Not as positive as mine!): PDF: A book review of tribes – We need you to lead us

Two recommended videos:

The first video is a popular one shared many times on the net and you’ve probably seen it before. But after thinking about the tribes and reading about Seth Godin, would be helpful and inspiring to view it for the second time.

It’s about importance of the second and third followers. The ones who have a critical role in the expansion of the tribe but their importance is undervalued by most of us.

And the second one is a TED video. As you may know, Seth Godin spoke the TED conference about tribes. It’s about 20 minutes and worth watching.

The post Book Review: Tribes by Seth Godin – Part II appeared first on webmindset.

I have previously introduced him in my article about TV-Industrial Complex. Actually, TV-Industrial Complex is part of his bigger idea called: Tribes.

The ones who are familiar with McLuhan‘s concept of retribalization may think that Seth Godin is just repeating an old theory dressed as a new story. Well, its partially true.

According to McLuhan, the mechanical world had a culture of detribalization. Individuals had some space to breath and found tools helping them to detach themselves from the tribe.

McLuhan uses book and printing devices as symbol of this culture. Besides schools as old tribal learning systems, now everyone could learn individually by reading books.

But the new media moves the world toward something he called the global village. Where despite physical distance, we are all connected and we can talk about the book we have read last night.

I believe that Seth Godin has this idea vividly in his mind. As you see in his TED talk about tribes, he shows a Kindle, the new symbol of old paper books, and says:

What a shame it’s not organized to help authors to make movements!

Then he continues with the effect of building a network of readers who are reading the same book at the same time.

So you are right if you say his book is based on the old concept of retribalization. But it’s much more. Seth Godin provides us practical instructions for building our own tribes!

Whoever knows Seth Godin would not expect a well-organized operation manual, but an unstructured book with the flood of ideas repeated several times with different wordings in various stories. But that’s the inevitable characteristic of any new idea. The same holds true for McLuhan’s books as the prophet of digital re-tribalization.

Years ago, Factories were dominating people and grouped workers together to change the world. Afterward, in advertising and mass media age, money was the best way to push people through funnels you’ve made for them.

Nowadays, tribes are re-appearing. Seth Godin has a very simple yet applied definition of the tribe:

A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have sought out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical. It’s our nature.

The new digital age has provided us with a very cheap and easily accessible infrastructure to make a tribe. But being cheap and being accessible doesn’t mean that all of us can become a change agent. We need to learn to lead.

There’s a core belief behind Seth Godin’s tribe theory:

People don’t believe what you tell them.

They rarely believe what you show them.

They often believe what their friends tell them.

They always believe what they tell themselves.

So leaders give people stories. Stories they can tell themselves and the others.

I’ve written a separate article about the book, but at this stage, let me finish this short review with one of the book’s ideas I loved most:

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable

The post Book Review: Tribes by Seth Godin – Part I appeared first on webmindset.

Years ago, he started to talk about the end of TV-Industrial Complex. An era in which TV governed every minute of our life and even aspect of our attention.

Being broadcasted on TV meant a powerful commercializing and leaving the TV channels, meant losing public attention.

As he mentions in his article published in FastCompany, TV-Industrial Complex is not limited to the flat-big-box mounted on the walls of our homes and offices. It’s about an idea he calls television thinking.

Television thinking has several characteristics. But here’s the core idea (in my words):

Trying to reach everyone by any means at any time with your message. Even if they don’t buy your product, the least result would be product or brand awareness. By the way, you show them how powerful you are as it’s not cheap to reach everyone.

Television thinking was based on a clear idea: Interruption. It has just one commandment: Try to interrupt audience and grab their attention whenever there’s a chance.

When they are watching TV, interrupt them with a TV ad. When they are listening to the radio, interrupt them with a commercial. When they are checking the emails, interrupt them with a spam message. Interrupt them. Some will care and some will curse and the business runs!

TV Industrial Complex or television thinking as Seth Godin calls is already dead. Although the death will not be announced for years. Just like an old emperor who is dead by the courtiers try to hide the fact just to govern the people for some more time and collect the last collectable taxes!

The old style advertising agencies and media resellers are courtiers of this dead emperor and there are still so many advertisers who are happily in the queue for buying the old interruption tools.

The end of the television mindset is where the permission marketing starts. Nothing clarifies the idea of permission marketing better than the definition he has stated in his personal blog:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

Seth Godin’s idea of permission marketing can be a basis for devising content strategy. As one of the goals are content strategy is building and nurturing an audience group who are ready to grant you the privilege of delivering more contents and even promotional materials.

P.S: You may be interested to take a look at my review of his book titled Tribes: Part 1, Part2

The post Webquote: Seth Godin and the TV-Industrial Complex appeared first on webmindset.