The unprecedented situation that we have found ourselves in, due to the COVID-19 pandemic have made us do typical things.
We humans would never have thought that staying at home could be so difficult. Some of us wouldn’t even have thought that doing household chores would have been so boring. Isn’t it?
The other day I was speaking to one of my friends. He said to me, “Do you know who is the most important person in our lives? It’s our maid. I never thought that living without her would be so difficult.”
That sounds funny. But it is true with a lot of people who had never had to do their household chores until the day, a virus got us all locked down in our homes without any support staff to bear our tantrums.
Anyhow.
One of the things that I have used this lockdown for is to read those books that I had always wanted to read.
I would always carry at least 5 of my books when I am traveling. This time too, I brought 5 books and I am thanking myself for that.
Not that I haven’t read some of them. I did. But I would normally read a book at least 3 times. This is a habit I developed long back.
Every time you read the book, you would learn (I should rather say, find) something new that you had probably missed the first time you read it.
Here are the books I am carrying right now –
- This is Marketing – By Seth Godin
- Start with Why – By Simon Sinek
- Think and Grow Rich – By Napolean Hill
- The 4-hour work week – By Tim Ferris
- The 7 habits of highly effective People – Stephen Covey
Thankfully Amazon is still delivering their Kindle ebooks. So I ordered a couple of books on Kindle as well so that I can read them on my tablet.
If you haven’t been able to figure out what to do with the time you have, then my best recommendation is to pick a few books and read.
And that is why I thought of doing a book recommendation for the next couple of weeks, at least till the time we get over this Corona Virus thing.
My book recommendation for this week is “This is Marketing” by Seth Godin.
This is Marketing – By Seth Godin
Seth needs no introduction.
He is an excellent marketer. While the world needs thousands of words to market to somebody, Seth does it in a few words.
You can experience this from his blog.
And if you haven’t read it, then you have missed some very important lessons in marketing.
Seth can write a little as 4-5 lines and still convey the message, though people like me struggle to do that even by writing a post of about a 1000 words.
That’s Seth.
Now, for anyone who is wondering as to what happens to the minimum requirement of 300-500 words that is needed for ranking in search engines, do you really think Seth would be bothered about search engine rankings?
Not really!
He has built a brand for himself and hence doesn’t need to be bothered really about search engine rankings.
He can generate traffic and do all the marketing without really being bothered about where his content is on the SERPs.
But a word of caution for anyone wanting to follow him.
Unless you plan on spending a lot of money on advertising and building a brand for you, following Seth’s content generation methodology without really understanding his techniques and concepts behind that specific methodology wouldn’t be a wise thing to do.
And this concept of marketing is what he covers in “This is Marketing”.
Unlike the crowd who is busy pushing their products and services (content, in our case) as the next best thing in the market, Seth does it through “positioning it the right way and to the right people”.
To quote him,
Marketers can choose to stand for something. Instead of saying “you can choose anyone and we’re anyone” the marketer can begin with an audience worth serving, begin with their needs and wants and dreams, and then build something for that audience.”
Seth Godin – “This is Marketing”
Now, that explains why his content is about 4-5 lines long and why he is still able to connect with his audience.
In a world of irrelevance where everybody is fighting to prove their relevance, it is important to understand that section of the society that you are planning to serve and then position your solutions to them.
And this is exactly what Seth helps you do, right from the first question that he asks in Chapter 4 of the book, “The Smallest Viable Market”,
What change are you trying to make?
Seth Godin – “This is Marketing”
That is a very powerful question.
Finding an answer to that question early on, is the key to finding success in what you are doing.
And I can say it with confidence because I have gone through that phase of marketing irrelevance for a few years before I could really understand that I was doing it wrong.
A Productive Lockdown with “This is Marketing”
“This is marketing” is a lot more than this. While I would have loved to write everything that I learnt from the book, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.
In fact it wouldn’t make sense. Because some things are best explained by Seth.
And most importantly, I don’t want to be called out for “Plagiarism”.
Now that we are locked down in our homes and are trying to make the most of the time we have on our hand, why not do it by reading.
If you can buy a hardcopy of the book, I would recommend it. But if you prefer to buy a kindle version, you can do that as well.
Here are the links to buy the book (Affiliate Disclaimer – these are affiliate links and I might earn a commission from your purchase without any extra cost to you).
For India Customers – Buy here
For US Customer – Buy here