Why Chris Brogan vs Seth Godin?

Social Media Marketing is becoming more and more mainstream, as companies all jump into the bandwagon that promises to be the cheapest way to reach the most people fastest. Even though there are many people who question the ROI of Social Media, along with the many social media marketers who are virtually scams that don’t know how to do it correctly, there is definitely ROI in social media.

Social Media is like networking - time consuming, no IMMEDIATE ROI, but indispensable for business.

Since social media marketing is becoming more and more relevant to everyone, it is important to pay attention to and learn from the top minds in this field. And Seth Godin and Chris Brogan definitely qualify for being the top minds in this field.

Chris Brogan vs Seth Godin - Backgrounds

Seth Godin has been the long respected guru in marketing for two decades. After getting his MBA from Stanford, he started a book packaging business, along with one of the first online marketing companies: Yoyodyne in 1986. He then sold his book packaging business to focus on Yoyodyne, which eventually got sold to Yahoo! for $30 million. He is also the author of eleven books, and coined the term “permission marketing.”

Seth Godin remains on the forefront of marketing, and has been utilizing social media marketing to build tribes online for his latest startup Squidoo.

Chris Brogan is the Rockstar that has been specializing in social media marketing for over ten years. After 16 years of being in the telecommunications and enterprise software space, Chris became a cofounder of Podcamp. He started a blog in 1998 that became one of the top 10 of the Advertising Age Power150, and top 100 of Technorati (also Top 10 in Viralogy under Marketing).

Chris is now the President of New Marketing Labs and is the co-author of the book Trust Agents. Most importantly, he has his own shoutout page on Squidoo. Definitely a rock star to learn from.

In that sense, Seth Godin has been the long standing marketing guru, while Chris Brogan is the rising star that is completely specialized in helping companies utilize social media for business.

Chris Brogan vs Seth Godin - Differences in focus

Before we look into what they have to say about social media marketing, it is important to recognize the differences in focus Chris Brogan and Seth Godin have.

Seth Godin provides a lot more high-level strategy insights to marketing, while Chris Brogan covers a lot more of the tactics and how to actual utilize the tools online to execute the campaigns. Also note that Seth Godin covers a variety of topics that are generically under the “marketing” umbrella, while Chris Brogan devotes most of his energy to utilizing the platforms in social media to engage the audience.

With that in mind, the best strategy as a marketer might be: do what Seth Godin says, but follow what Chris Brogan does.

Chris Brogan vs Seth Godin - Views on Social Media

Even though Seth Godin covers a much wider field in marketing, he believes that social media marketing is the best way to act small and treat customers as if they had a choice, which is “really the only way to succeed now.”

Seth Godin believes that at this time of age, treating people with respect, being willing to change a policy, having no advertisement budget is the way to go. Just like Viralogy’s good friend Loic Le Meur, Seth believes that having small marketing efforts forces the team to focus on making a great product that people will talk about. He dislikes the idea of having average products that have to be advertised and hyped to work.

Seth Godin believes that most marketers go into marketing because they like “being-in-charge” and being listened to. He believes that the social media frustrates most marketers because there is no way they can buy attention anymore. They have to earn it.

Seth Godin points out that the brands that are growing, getting the most traffic and clout, and bought, are not those that are using tactics from 15 years ago, but fundamentally new sets of rules. And the new rule now is on social media.

Chris Brogan, on the other hand, emphasizes that social media is not scary, just messy and requires a lot of hand-holding. He believes that there is “SO MUCH” to gain from figuring out these tools, and being a human first on these platforms before being a company.

Chris Brogan believes that getting numbers is not the most essential part, but getting your customers’ attention and keeping it will be the toughest challenge that everyone needs to overcome. He claims that no matter how big and popular you are in social media, it is all about the fans. “It is always awesome when the would-be famous person celebrates the audience, rather than the other way around. That never goes out of style.”

Both Seth Godin and Chris Brogan see Social Media as an essential process that requires a lot of attention and true engagement. Jim Connolly points out that what makes Seth Godin, Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan so popular, is that all of them give and help without expecting anything in return.

Social Media is no longer about the budget or the creative ideas. It’s about actually being in the field, engaging the audience, and giving them a reason to care.

Seth Godin uses Squidoo but does not engage very much

The essence of social media is that everyone can become a publisher. And it’s the tools on the internet that enables this phenomenon to happen. Seth Godin focuses on the idea that nowadays the most effective form of marketing is leading a small group of people (a tribe) that matters, take them to the promise land, and they will carry your product very far.

Seth Godin doesn’t talk too much about what specific platforms people should use in social media, but it is understandable that he always brings up Squidoo.

Since Seth Godin doesn’t comment much on which platforms to use, we can only learn more about this topic by seeing what platforms he uses himself. The first base is definitely his blog. However, Seth Godin does not allow comments on his blog, which is very unique to the social media model, particularly because it is not very social (I will go into more details later). I know that he occasionally comments on other blogs though, so that’s definitely a good thing.

It would be natural for Seth Godin to put a lot of focus on his Squidoo Lens. However, his Squidoo Lens doesn’t seem to update or engage very often. Most of it seems like a promotional page combined with Wikipedia without the constant updates.

There has only been 271 people who have rated his lens, and besides a comment that was made yesterday, the one before that was on June 4th, more than a month ago. I might be overseeing important information, but from the outset, Seth doesn’t seem to be actively leading in this platform.

Interestingly enough, Seth Godin does not use Twitter. We will also get more into this a bit later.

Besides a blog and Squidoo, the only other social media platform that Seth recommended for promotional purposes is Kevin Rose’s Digg, as he explains in an interview, “If I ran a travel site, I’d engage my best customers to build blogs and Squidoo lenses and to use Digg to point to reviews and insights and things that would make people WANT to seek me out.”

Chris Brogan engages his audience through various platforms more than he does other work

Chris Brogan, on the other hand, declares the useful platforms in a very clear manner with his popular post, if i started today. Chris Brogan says that the first platform should be a blog. There is no question about it. The blog is definitely people’s main property on the internet. Facebook profiles are more like rented Condos, and Twitter is more like the local bar.

Chris then talks about how there needs to be Outposts to drive traffic to that blog. He claims that the three main outposts are Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (I believe that the order has meaning to it).

Chris Brogan is actually hyperly active on these various social media platforms, as you can tell from his system of running his daily life. 60% of his day is consumed by correspondence like monitoring SMS and Twitter Streams, checking emails, and swinging by Friendfeed, LinkedIn and Facebook. Only 20% of his day is spent on Discovering new things and ideas and 20% on Execution (although engaging the community is pretty much execution for a person like him).

Even though Seth Godin talks about engagement, in this case it is Chris Brogan that walks the talk and spends the necessary time to make sure he building real mutual relationships with his audience. Seth Godin is most likely keeping his tribe small and exclusive, and I’ll most likely discover what that is after this post is published.

Seth Godin’s Blogging Advice

Since both Chris Brogan and Seth Godin have insanely popular blogs, and since most of the Viralogy audience are bloggers (become one now if you aren’t!), it would be productive to learn how to create a successful blog from these gurus.

Seth Godin offers very practical and straightforward advice and says that a blogger should use puzzling and engaging headlines, release a small piece of the content and build up everyday, include links in the posts, and create lists.

To get traffic, Seth Godin gives a list of 56 tips that mostly contradict each other, showing that really there are no rules and you want to be controversial whenever possible. Some advices include break news but also be timeless, “include comments so your blog becomes a water cooler,” but “don’t include comments, people will cross post their responses,” “have relevant ads that are even better than your content” but “run no ads,” and write in English, except write in Chinese.

One advice that I think any blogger and entrepreneur should always have in mind, is to be patient. There is a Chinese saying that reads, “One minute of performance on stage is the result of ten years of practice off stage.” The media is always looking for overnight successes. Seth Godin says you should ignore them.

Chris Brogan’s Blogging Advice

Chris Brogan’s also gives a list of 40 ways to delivery killer blog content. He has a big emphasis on brevity, using simple and straightforward words, telling stories, leaving ideas unfinished and engaging commenters.

In fact, Chris Brogan has so many lists of advice on becoming a better blogger, such as 50 ways to take your blog to the next level, 10 Secrets to Better Blogging, and 10 Blogging Tips, it would just be better that you check them out yourselves.

Most of Chris Brogan and Seth Godin’s blogging advices paint the same picture. And apparently they both recycle their ideas for new posts. However, the biggest difference that has caused a lot of controversy is that Seth Godin does not allow comments on his blog.

Most people have a huge problem in that. It’s almost like reverting back to Web 1.0.

Seth Godin explains why he does not allow commenting on his blog here, pretty much saying that he cannot stop himself from arguing with unsound logic and anticipating comments affects too much of how he writes his posts. He rather silence everyone than spend his time thinking about how to respond to people. The good thing is, people who cannot comment on his blog write post responses on their own blogs, helping his blog reach a larger audience and building some linkbacks.

For some, the added benefits of that would obviously outweigh the cost, but Chris Brogan says that a quality blog is always trying to interact, rather than just delivering or pushing content, and one must inspire some level of two-way to be successful.

If neither Seth Godin’s readers nor his Squidoo readers are his tribe, I am curious about his actual tribe and how he determines who becomes part of it.

Seth Godin does not use Twitter

Twitter right now is one of the main characters in most social media campaign. Chris Brogan talks about how Twitter is a better marketing tool than Myspace or Facebook and is THE social media tool publishers should learn how to use. In fact Chris Brogan says that 40-60% of his opportunities come from Twitter. Here’s an amazing list of how to use Twitter for business from Chris.

The interesting thing here, is that Seth Godin does not use Twitter. I was greatly surprised when I saw Seth Godin’s Twitter Account. It seemed to violate all the rules in the book, including not listening to anyone, not following anyone, and simply using it with Twitterfeed. I then found another Twitter account that says Seth Godin but is locked and I believe controlled by someone else.

Problogger also points out that Seth Godin does not interact on Twitter with a posted titled When Seth Godin isn’t Seth Godin. It was just odd that the guru of digital marketing just simply does not want to engage on one of the biggest social media marketing platforms.

Seth Godin does comment on why Twitter is successful and that it has all the pillars of social media success. He then explains in his blog the reason why he doesn’t use Twitter, saying that he only wants to engage in a platform that he has time to fully focus and do well in.

That makes perfect sense, as both Chris Brogan and Seth Godin have been saying that it is better to just find one platform and go deep rather than doing a little on ten social networks.

Another possibility though is that he doesn’t want this to be another albatross. Michael Arrington pointed this out a few years ago that since Seth Godin has such high status of being a marketing guru, his reputation would be greatly damaged if Squidoo did not turn out to be successful. Not surprisingly, Squidoo is going strong today. However, perhaps Seth Godin feels like engaging with a Twitter account will cause people to evaluate him base on a number, and with his high status, he cannot afford to try very hard on Twitter and only appear to have half the followers of someone with a lesser reputation.

That’s just my own speculation, and no one knows the answer for sure, but as students of marketing and lovers of social media, we would all love to see what sort of marketing execution Seth Godin is actually doing so we can not just learn from insights but follow his example. So far Chris Brogan provides a better path for that.

Who are you a bigger fan of?

Seth Godin or Chris Brogan. Who has helped you more in your social media life? I look forward to be edified in the comments.