I don’t often stop to exclaim loudly how much I like something – but I need to stop and share how much I love a course that I’m currently taking.
I’m in the middle of taking a 100-day marketing seminar taught by Seth Godin, one of the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame inductees and one of the world’s greatest marketers.
His course is a collection of videos — 50 in all — that range from a few minutes to 15 minutes long. Every other day, I watch a video, sometimes two or three times, and I write out an essay in response to the assignment.
The latest video, on storytelling, shifted how I think about stories and how we tell stories.
What does it take to become a great marketer in today’s world?
That’s the subject of the seminar, and the videos take you through world views, understanding the psychographics of your audience, defining the change you want to make in your work and in your audience, how to create trust, how to get people talking about you and your work, what it takes to truly make a difference, how to tell great stories, and why this matters more than what tactics or specific strategy you focus on in the end.
Honestly, I could go through the entire series every day for 365 days and watch each video dozens of time and still get new ideas from it.
And they’ve done a tremendous job on the community forum in Discourse: students write thousands of posts and engage with each other in discussing each of the ideas, applying them to their businesses, and connecting over a deeper understanding of what it means to truly be an empathetic marketer.