If you've spent much time trying to figure out how to market a startup business, you've surely come across one-half of the bald head of Seth Godin. Seth ("still in hardcover, still no hair" he says about his first and most famous book, Permission Marketing) made his fortune by selling a company, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) in 1998, and his fame by capitalizing on this instant stardom by writing iconic and colorful books. Books full of buzzwords and internet-savvy platitudes.Ever heard of viral marketing? "Small is the new big"? The importance of telling "authentic stories"? While Seth didn't exactly invent the concepts, he certainly popularized them, applied them to the web and (most importantly) used them to make millions of copies of his books almost float off Amazon.com's warehouse racks onto the bookshelves of aspiring internet millionaires everywhere.
Fame came naturally to Seth Godin, and it's no surprise he's been named #5 in Forbes.com's "The Web Celeb 25" ranking. But if you ask me the Seth Godin phenomenon is like a pyramid scheme gone legit -- by creating "buzz" around viral marketing, he markets his books virally -- by proclaiming the brilliance of ebooks his becomes the most popular, ever -- by insisting that "All Marketers are Liars" he becomes the most trusted, most "authentic" of all. You could say that he's living (bank account balancing) proof that his marketing schemes work; yes, they work, and best of all for Seth Godin.
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