Seth Godin’s Rules For A Great Website

Everything has a website nowadays – it’s almost impossible to start a company or do a project without some kind of web presence.  Obviously, an impressive, interesting, and compelling site is a virtual must for success.  For those of you planning to enter the Knight News Challenge (or have already entered and want to make your project even better), check out marketing guru Seth Godin’s rules for an amazing site.

#2 is particularly important (difficult to accomplish, but nothing worthwhile comes easy):

“Change the interaction. What makes great websites great is that they are simultaneously effortless and new at the same time. That means that the site teaches you a new thing or new interaction or new connection, but you know how to use it right away. (Hey, if doing this were easy, everyone would do it.)”

Small and Agile Win the Race: The Risks are Worth the Reward

There is a lot to be said for entrepreneurship, and keeping a company small, lean, and hungry.  After all, it’s tough to innovate within a big business, where simply maintaining the status quo can eat up the bulk of the company’s time and resources.  Why do you think that so many significant techonological innovations come out of start up companies?  Because they are simply more willing to take the risk. 

Today, Seth Godin wrote about how new companies, the ones who assume more risks, can beat out older organizations that may have grown bloated with success or become set in their ways.  He says:

“They don’t have it (meaning the assets that the older, financially better off companies have), though, so they improvise. They lean into the market. They give customers what they want, and embrace technology and new ideas because they have no other choice. The green curve (the larger older companies), on the other hand, is filled with people who feel helpless. They feel like the organization is aligned against them, aligned to fail, all because the status quo is so powerful.”

Do you have a startup or even a basic business plan that could use some of the funding and resources that more established companies have, but you still want to maintain that healthy entrepreneurial drive?  Enter the Knight News Challenge and you could win funding and support for your fledgling business.  Hey, it’s pretty low risk (all you have to invest is the time it takes you to develop a proposal), and the rewards could be immense (up to $500,000 worth of funds).

Seth doesn’t quite hang folks who work for a big company out to dry though – there is hope for them yet.  He claims that sometimes, “just often enough to give the dinosaurs a shred of hope, someone (not often the CEO) stands up and says, “follow me!” And the organization does.”  The moral of the story?  Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.