Seth Godin is a genius. I know I”m not alone in thinking that, but nearly everything the guy writes seems to have a revolutionary tone to it, as if to say, “this is the way things are, but why aren”t we thinking about them in this way instead?”

On his blog, Seth announced a while back that he was looking for interns to work for him this summer (if you”re in college and interested in anything related to marketing or media, you”d be nuts not to look into it). His post two days ago leads me to believe hes getting a lot of run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter resumes with nothing really tangible to them. No meat and potatoes.

He basically states that we live in an world where the people reading your resumes are so saturated by uniformity that to get noticed you have to break the mold. You have to hook them before you can show them what you can do and unless you can do that, you”re dead in the water.

In his post, Seth asks if you don”t have something special to show why you”re different from the competition, why should anyone else think you”re remarkable? A great question that seems to get down to the core of what we do in every facet of our work for a client. You have to set yourself apart from all others to get ahead. This includes everything you do for marketing, including your organization’s blog.

I see blog after blog from organizations around the world attempting to market themselves by talking about their new product and how they “get it” over the next guy who is trying to sell you the same thing. What I continually find is that they really don”t “get it” at all. What they get is that “blogging is ”in” right now.” They don”t seem to comprehend that blogging for the sake of blogging could actually hurt the way people feel about the authenticity of your organization.

To me, its a distress signal when I see an organization blogging about something that isn”t compelling. It shows me they need help. If you”re blogging and its not of any importance to anyone outside your organization (and maybe not even people within your organization) it is time to put the keyboard down.

We live in a world where people are so web-savvy and media-saturated that they can spot a fake without taking much more than a glance. Never forget how much competition there is out there. You may only have one chance to make an impression. Keep this in mind before you hop on the bandwagon of “the next big thing” that comes along.

Don”t put up videos on youtube just because your competitor did; don”t launch a facebook page just because you know your core audience spends most of their day friending and poking people; and most importantly, don”t blog unless you have something worth saying. Its a waste of your customers time, it makes you look careless, and like a standard resume on a heavy stock paper, it tells people you”re just like everyone else: easily forgettable.

Be different. Be compelling. Know you’re who you”re trying to sell to and make them want to know you in return.

posted by D. Mason 3-19-08