Brand Destruction Report: Seth Godin

If you follow famous marketing bloggers like Seth Godin, you may know that he's opposed to comments for reasons that sound rather neurotic and control freakish.  More importantly, his reasons seem to conflict with the values he professes as a marketer.  A marketer whose own business acumen beyond marketing his books and services is increasingly being called into question.

I was going to use those points to start a discussion of the building brand disaster around this decision but The Viral Garden's already on the job.

I'm also particularly fond of Publishing 2.0's response:
Hey Seth, Comment THIS!

When push comes to shove, a lot of the people brewing new forms of Web & Marketing 2.0 koolaid don't seem to be drinking it themselves.  Maybe they're just too busy monetizing it?

Update: My Apologies to Seth Godin & Tim O'Reilly

Comments

[John]

I have always sensed a tinge of condescension in some of Seth Godin's posts. I chalked it up to his east coast attitude, and success. Both, in my opinion are good things. However, I really don't care about having the ability to post, or even trackback to his blog. I do however find it ironic that Seth's recent and rude post to his fans/consumers/clients is exactly the opposite of what he preaches. Is he just The Wizard of Blogs?

[Hashim]

Gawker's blogs didn't have comment sections for years and they seem to do well. Now they have a very rigid commenting system and no one doubts their marketing or bloggy brand

[Clyde Smith]

Gawker isn't promoting building community, yada yada to build your business. That's what Seth's pushing. Gawker has nothing to do with what we're discussing.

On the other hand, a lot of bloggers who dug Seth are pissed. That's what we're talking about.

He comes across as not doing what he says do and that's undermining his brand.

[rafi]

"Gawker isn't promoting building community, yada yada to build your business. That's what Seth's pushing."

How about a link or a quote to support your argument that he isn't practicing what he preaches?

The very post that spawned this debate illustrates a point he often makes that does support it. In his post on gaining traffic, where many of his points contradict each other, the message is there is more than one way to skin a cat. This is similar to what he writes about companies acheiving "being remarkable" through opposite approaches.

When you visit any very popular blog where there are 100+ comments on each post, it ends up creating a lot of noise. So there's another Godin principle supporting his no-comment policy. He's often written about the problems of knowing what to focus on when presented with a world of noise.

Ok so there are two times when his writing supports his choice not to use comments. Where are these specific instances that go against his choice?

[Clyde Smith]

Those are some good points Rafi. In fact, he suggests on the traffic building post not to use comments at all, which I'd read:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html

He's got all sorts of great wild statements on there.

To be honest, I wrote that last night as I was going to bed, forgetting that I now have one close text reader and should never make that mistake! (smile)

The thing is, he has built a following and sectors of that following are in an uproar because they thought they were part of a community (perhaps, it's an idea to pursue). They've interpreted the lack of comments for better or for worse as a rejection of the values Seth's pushing. Not necessarily the bulleted statements.

In this case it may be an example of crowd projection on Seth and maybe that's what's happening to O'Reilly. I don't know.

The real brand disaster is in having your fans turn against you. But, actually, that may not matter. Everybody visible has people turn against them, sometimes very well meaning, intelligent people. You can't be big without that happening.

Perhaps the whole comment issue is a mistake on the parts of those of us that feel it represents something deeper in this case.

I'm going to stop misrepresenting myself as I did in the top comment because I'm not interested in building a case based on reading very much more of his blog.

In fact, I'm going to stop writing about him altogether.

[Clyde Smith]

I continued thinking about Rafi's comments and wrote this:

My Apologies to Seth Godin & Tim O'Reilly
http://www.prohiphop.com/2006/06/my_apologies_to.html

Hashim, if you're partly trying to say that you can have a successful blog without comments, I agree completely. The bottom line is that you've got to put something out there that people want to check out and there are many ways to do that.

And perhaps that fits Seth's perspective as communicated by Rafi.