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seth godin

The Flinch- A Great and Free New Years Read From The Domino Project

I just finished reading, The Flinch, by Julien Smith. It was published as part of Seth Godin’s  Domino Project, which he named after the domino effect—where one powerful idea spreads down the line, pushing from person to person. It is free to download from Amazon. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Kindle or you can download the kindle app to your computer or your phone. The Flinch is short. You can read it in one evening, and I promise it will expand your horizons for the New Year. It is such an important idea that I wrote the cliff notes below in case you don’t get around to reading the book right away.

You know that reflex we feel when confronted with something unpleasant? Uh huh, that one. Smith named it, the Flinch. We flinch when confronted with real physical threats and that reflex actually has an important role in keeping us from danger. But notice that we humans also flinch in the face of anything unknown that creates a bit of anxiety.

There is a Korean spa that I go to that has saunas and steam baths and right outside the sauna door there is a cold pool that will take your breath away just thinking about jumping in. That is the Flinch. If I stand there and think about it, I will never go in. I have to feel the Flinch and do it anyway and I am always glad I did because it is so invigorating that it makes me laugh out loud. [click to continue…]

Seth Godin’s Linchpin Inspired Art by Hugh MacLeod

I just finished reading Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin and one thing that struck me was his focus on the need for right brain activities in the business world. In fact he said, “All Artists are entrepreneurs and all entrepreneurs are artists”. What he is saying is that what we need and is now valued in society is work that you put your heart and soul into, work that matters. I then saw these prints that artist Hush MacLeod did of some of the concepts in Seth’s book.

Why Re-Design Your Website?

I  just read a great post called Why Redesign Your Website? by HubSpot which is a SEO marketing Company that is pretty darn on target. I really liked what they said. One of the main points is that sure you have to have a well done site that is polished and put together, but…. the point is getting more visitors and leads, So you do a redesign if you are not on a Content Management Site (CMS) platform, not because you are bored with the design or because your CEO wants a new logo design.

Marketing guru, Seth Godin says,

“I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? …Your car isn’t unique, and your house might not be either”.

The founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweig once said to me ( I love that he actually, in person,  said this to me)

“I wonder why any developer would build a theme from scratch for a client when there are over 5000 themes to customize and save them time and money”

Great content is a most important activity on your website and adding the content on a regular basis drives people to your site. Which is most easily done with a Content Management Site such as WordPress and they should absolutely include a blog, RSS and landing pages.

Any website built today should include these basics.  They are not expensive, and they work.  A blog is a great way to create content on an ongoing basis, and to start to converse with your customers and prospects and RSS allows some content from your website to be automatically pushed out to other websites and people, increasing the reach of your content.

So take these words to heart and when you find yourself spending too much time with what the banner should look like. Yes, it should look sharp, but it really matters more that you get your content out there with the right technology, the right navigation, and a way to start and keep adding more content on a regular basis.

I am talking to a woman today who had her site redesigned over a year ago and it still has not gone live because she was paralyzed over the design the technology choices and her wording. I agree, for someone new to all of this it can be daunting. And there is a lot of competing information out there. There is a lot of OLD school information out there. Like selling people SEO services around key words and metatags, or people still building static, non-owner friendly sites that the site owner has to pay the developer every time they want it updated! At New Tricks, we really try and make it easy for you. Yes, of course we believe in good design, but it is important not to let your obsession on perfection stop you from doing it now.