If you have ever seen Guy interview someone, or read an online interview conducted by him, you know his questions are generally straight to the point, a little dangerous, and usually a little over the top – which of course is why I like Guy Kawasaki’s interviews.

Darren gets to answer some great questions about blogging, but his response to Guy’s question about the lack of comments on marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog was very insightful.

However another stroke of genius (I’m not sure if it’s intended) with this approach is that Seth has made his blog a little more viral by not having comments. What happens when he writes something that people want to respond to? In many cases they blog about it – ’sneezing’ his post further than his current readership.

Check out the number of blogs that link to his posts in Technorati. Most of them are just writing things that you’d normally expect to see being left as comments on a blog. It’s no wonder that he’s currently the 13th most linked to blog in the blogosphere (according to the Top 100 list)!

Sure, it seems really obvious now, doesn’t it?  Of course not everyone can pull that off, can they?

What about you?  Think turning off comments on your blog can help make it a bit more viral by forcing readers to comment outside of your blog?

(via Chris Brogan)

There’s a sweet spot for getting on Oprah and for being on NPR as well. You rarely hear about romance novels on All Things Considered.

My point isn’t that you shouldn’t try to get these middlemen to broaden their horizons or to give up on something you’re passionate about. It’s just that it might be easier to build a new sweet spot than it is to persuade an established middleman to change his rules for you.

You’d be surprised how many authors suggest that Oprah, billboards, and an ad in the New York Times would be good marketing platforms for their books. Of course they would – just not for tech books.

I will disagree a little with Seth and say that I believe there are plenty of “established middlemen” that are appropriate and willing to be a part of a buzz machine for your book. The key is not over-stretching, and ultimately I think that is Seth’s point.

Photo Credit: Maddie Digital