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One of the tenets of inbound marketing is to not annoy people. So why is it that many websites are still chock full of the elements that so many visitors have bemoaned over and over?

Perhaps with the sheer excitement (or terror, depending on your personality) that comes with designing your own website, all of the user experience quirks that have driven you crazy over the years escape your mind.

But poor user experience can cause high page abandonment rates, low visitor-to-lead conversion rates, poor organic search listing positions, and a plain ol’ bad reputation.

So we compiled a list of the 17 most annoying things we’ve seen on websites to act as a sort of guide for what not to do when designing your website. Let’s take a look at the worst offenders!

17 Reasons Visitors Hate Your Website

 1) It takes forever to load.

Our shortening attention spans are not just making us check our phones several hundred times per day; they’re also making us really impatient when it comes to waiting for websites to load. According to a KISSmetrics report, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Even a one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%.

Slow loading time frustrates your site visitors and affects conversion rate and brand perception — especially for mobile users, who are sometimes relying on slower cellular internet connections when browsing the web. How does slow load time impact brand perception, you might be wondering? According to an Ericsson study, the longer it takes a website to load, the more website visitors blame the content provider instead of their mobile service providers.

But if you want people to stick around your website, you’re going to have to put optimizing your site’s load performance at the top of your to-do list. Page load time can be impacted by image size, code, videos, and other factors. Learn how to monitor and improve page load time in general here, and learn more about improving the page load time of your mobile website here.

2) It isn’t optimized for mobile.

When browsing the internet on a mobile phone, have you ever been forced to scroll from side-to-side to read copy on a website? Or have you had to pinch-to-zoom because the words or buttons on a page were way too small? These are all examples of the painful UX people can have on websites that aren’t optimized for mobile. 

Google announced a major mobile algorithm update in summer 2015 that penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-friendly, and it announced it would strengthen the ranking signal from mobile-friendly websites starting on May 1, 2016.

A big part of why Google continues to make these changes is to improve the web browsing experience for mobile users. So if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you’ll likely lose out significantly in the organic search rankings. Can you really afford to miss out on all that traffic and all those sales? It’s unlikely. Learn more about choosing a mobile optimization approach here.

(HubSpot customers: The HubSpot Website Platform uses responsive design, has automatic image compression, and is backed by our CDN for loading your website really quickly — so you don’t need to worry about these things.)

3) It offers poor navigation.

When someone lands on your site, do they know what to do? Where to go? What their next steps should be?

While this might seem like a no-brainer, research by Small Business Trends suggests that 80% of small B2B business websites lacked a call-to-action — as recently as 2013. They weren’t missing out on leads and sales because their CTAs were poorly written; they were missing out because they simply didn’t provide any direction on their website or ask people to click around.

Include clear headline copy, jargonless page copy that explains the value of what you do, and a clear primary call-to-action that shows visitors how to take the next steps — whether that’s subscribing to your blog, getting a free trial, watching a video, or any other action you hope visitors will perform on your site.

As for your actual navigation bar, read this blog post to learn how to nail down the perfect website navigation, including how to phrase your navigation copy, how to analyze visitor flow, and more.

4) It uses excessive pop-ups.

Excessive pop-ups that disrupt the reading experience can be seriously annoying — especially when the CTA copy is made to guilt-trip you. You know, the ones that include a button that says something like, “No thanks, I don’t want to improve my website.” Can’t they just let you live your life?

If you’re going to use pop-ups there is a right way:

• Use them in moderation. That way, you aren’t constantly bombarding your visitors with content they may not be interested in.
• Make them “smart.” Smart CTAs let you display a different pop-up (or no pop-up at all) to different types of visitors based on whether they’ve visited your site before, or whether they’re at a certain stage in the buying cycle. (HubSpot customers: Learn how to create a smart CTA here.)
• Track them for effectiveness. Assess the number of views and clicks on each pop-up CTA, along with how many submissions the pop-up actually leads to. If you find it isn’t performing very well, consider editing or removing it to create a better user experience for your visitors. You can also run A/B variation tests to test out various copy and offers. (HubSpot customers: Learn how to run an A/B test on a pop-up CTA here.)
• Use delightful copy. Far too many sites use language meant to guilt-trip visitors into taking the desired action. Don’t follow their lead. Check out the example below in the exit intent CTA Make My Persona, which uses polite language in the “no” option. 

An alternative to pop-ups altogether? Slide-in CTAs, which are small banners that slide in from the side or bottom of the page with a call-to-action. They tend to be less obtrusive, providing users with more information while still allowing them to continue reading the piece of content. This one from Wait But Why says it all:

5) It contains multimedia content that autoplays.

Shhhh … I wasn’t supposed to be on this site at work!

If someone’s enjoying what they thought was a silent browsing session and they’re bombarded with your theme song or a talking head on a video for which they didn’t press “play” — especially if they can’t find the button for “stop” — what do you think they’re going to do?

Some might fumble for their mute button … but I can more easily locate the back button in my browser than my computer’s volume controls. Although Facebook and Twitter now autoplay videos in our feeds, note that they’re always on mute unless users choose to unmute them.

Extend the same courtesy to your visitors by not forcing your multimedia content on them. Either let them choose when to play it, or at the very least have it start with the sound off.

6) It boasts disorienting animations.

You’re probably familiar with the blink test by now. You know, the three seconds users have to orient themselves on any given web page before they click “back” in their browser.

Animations, autoplay videos, blinking and flashing paid advertisements, and other interactive entertainment may seem really cool, but if they’re too obtrusive or disorienting, they can detract from a visitor’s focus during those critical three seconds.

Keep any animations on your website simple, like the one below from this blog post. 

This is a simple animated GIF that catches the reader’s eye without being too distracting. (If you want to learn how to make animated GIFs like this one using Photoshop, here’s a simple tutorial.)

7) It’s littered with generic or cheesy stock photography.

You may already know that using images is great for your inbound marketing. So when it comes to adding images to your website, you go browsing and … find this gem:

Hmm. Are we supposed to believe these people work at your company? And are they always that happy about work?

This is an example of a bad stock photo. Bad stock photos are generic at best, and ridiculous at worst. Images are helpful if they clarify something for a visitor, and generic stock photography doesn’t help visitors or your business. 

It’s much better to show real pictures of customers, employees, your company, your product, and your location. If you don’t have any of those, browse this list of the best free, non-cheesy stock photo websites. If you’re particularly design savvy, you can create visuals yourself that directly relate to what you do. (Download this beginner’s guide to visual content creation if you need some extra guidance.)

8) It contains a contact form, but no additional contact information.

A ‘Contact Us’ form may seem like an easy way to generate an opt-in email list, but it’s really the least valuable form of lead generation for you and your site visitors. Not only is it terribly generic, but it also doesn’t indicate whether or not the contact actually wants to receive ongoing communications from you. It’s more likely that they have a one-time problem or request that needs to be addressed.

So, let’s say they do in fact have a one-time request. There’s nothing wrong with having a “Contact Us” module on your site, but it should never be the only means of communication between you and your customers. If your visitor or customer needs help, they want it now. They don’t want to fill out a form and wait to see when, if ever, they get a response.

Let people get in touch with you via email, the phone, and social media, and make that information available on your website. (Read this blog post to learn more about how to create a great ‘Contact Us’ page.)

9) It has an unintelligible ‘About Us’ page.

Does your ‘About Us’ page explain what you do in business babble, or using the words and phrases common to the general population?

Let’s play a translation game using HubSpot’s ‘About Us’ page copy. Our ‘About Us’ page doesn’t say this, but read the copy below and think to yourself: Would you know what HubSpot did if it this was what it said?

HubSpot assists organizations across multiple countries reduce churn by backfilling the sales pipeline with highly qualified traffic that generates leads that convert into customers with high lifetime value. We achieve this through leading-edge software that integrates all marketing channels for a synergistic view of the data that determines and prioritizes the high-value marketing activities.”

Uh, what?

Instead, we chose to tell a story on our ‘About Us’ page. Here’s an excerpt from our company story:

People have transformed how they consume information, research products and services, make purchasing decisions and share their views and experiences. The customer is more in control than ever — and tunes out traditional sales and marketing messages more than ever. Yet businesses still rely on the same sales and marketing playbook they have used for more than a decade. This mismatch in buyer behavior and company tactics is what led Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah to start HubSpot in 2006 and create the vision for the inbound experience.”

Ahh, that’s better. Why? Because it’s written in a way that people actually speak. It doesn’t make your brain hurt like the first iteration did. 

Check out this post for 12 great examples of ‘About Us’ pages.

10) It doesn’t clearly explain what your company does. 

In the same vein as a bad ‘About Us’ page, it’s really frustrating to click around a company’s website and not get a clear sense of what the company actually offers.

The best webpages clearly explain who they are, what they do, and/or what you (the visitor) can do there. If you’re a well-known brand or company (i.e., Coca-Cola) you may be able to get away with not having to describe who you are and what you do. However, most businesses still need to answer these questions so that each visitor knows they are in the “right place.”

Steven Krugg sums it up best in his best-selling book, Don’t Make Me Think: If visitors can’t identify what it is you do within seconds, they won’t stick around long. Here are 15 examples of great homepage design from companies who did this particularly well.

11) It contains keyword-stuffed copy.

Remember back in the early 2000s when you went to a website and saw paragraphs and paragraphs of copy? Aside from being visually overwhelming, if you read that copy you’d find nothing more than a bunch of keywords meant for crawlers, not humans.

Unfortunately, some websites are still writing for bots, even though Google’s algorithm is far more sophisticated at determining a page’s relevancy than it was 10 years ago. Stuffing your content with keywords is one of the most common search engine optimization (SEO) mistakes marketers make. While keywords are crucial to driving SEO success, Google will penalize your website in search for keyword-stuffing.

Even more importantly, keyword-stuffed copy makes for a bad reader experience. So instead or cramming a keyword in every chance you get, read this blog post to learn the five parts of your website where you should optimize for keywords.

12) It’s missing social sharing buttons on content.

If you’re writing for humans, you probably have some really interesting content on your site — content that people want to share on social media, perhaps. That’s why it’s a huge disappointment to scroll up and down looking for a “Tweet This!” button, only to realize there aren’t any social sharing buttons on your website.

Social sharing buttons make it easy for your readers to share your content on social networks because they don’t have to manually copy and paste your URL and compose a tweet. And easy social sharing options means your content gets more visibility, which means more site traffic, better search engine rankings, and more lead generation opportunities. 

Read this blog post to learn how to create social sharing and follow buttons for the major social networks. 

13) It doesn’t have a blog.

If you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on an opportunity to provide your visitors with a ton of valuable information. (And you’re missing out on ranking opportunities, too.)

These days, consumers are empowered to perform in-depth company research on their own before ever contacting a salesperson. If they find answers to their common questions in articles on your company’s blog, they’re much more likely to come into the sales process trusting what you have to say because you’ve helped them in the past. (This is one of the many benefits of business blogging.)

14) It employs titles and headlines that are incongruous with your content.

If you’re an avid content creator, you know how important a well-crafted title is. Great titles are what cause people to click through to read what you have written. But if they’re met with content that’s unrelated to the title you provided, you’ll disappoint visitors — and they’ll often abandon your site.

This is why click-baity headlines aren’t a very fair way to get people to your site. They take advantage of our natural curiosity. If you’re going to use that tactic, you’d better deliver content that excites as much as the title. If not, you’ll just annoy people. 

The lesson: While it’s important to capture peoples’ attention in titles, make sure it isn’t misleading and your content can actually live up to what you promised you’d deliver.

15) It displays call-to-action copy that doesn’t align with the offer.

Along the same lines, your calls-to-action should align with what visitors receive when they redeem your offer. There’s nothing more frustrating than being promised a 50% off coupon in the call-to-action copy, only to redeem it and find there’s a caveat that says you must first spend $1,000. On select items. In-store purchases only.

This is not only insulting to your visitors, but it will also hurt your reputation — not to mention your conversion rates.

16) It contains internal linking that isn’t user-friendly.

When done correctly, internal links are helpful for readers and website alike. They point readers to other relevant information, and help you improve the organic ranking for important pages on your own website. But some websites seem to have trouble executing internal linking correctly, pointing users to irrelevant pages, linking strange phrases within the copy, and overdoing it to the point of making content unreadable.

Include internal links only to relevant pages on your website that will enhance a reader’s experience, and include that link on the anchor text that makes the most sense. 

(Pro Tip: Be sure to have all links open into a new tab in your browser, not the same window. Visitors may not be done reading the content on this page, and you don’t want to navigate them away while they’re still reading!)

17) It displays image sliders that take forever to load.

Image sliders, also known as image carousels, serve as a way to showcase multiple images in a space-efficient manner. But you have to be careful with these because there’s a right way and a wrong way to use them.

The right way: Your slider loads images quickly and doesn’t require a new page to load every time a user clicks.

The wrong way: Every time you click the arrow for the next image, your page loads an entirely new web page. This can increase page load time by several seconds as the entire webpage reloads.

Remember: The longer it takes a webpage to load, the more people will abandon it. So make sure yours loads quickly and doesn’t require a reload. You’ll also want to accompany the visual elements with written copy above or below the slider. Many readers are scanners and wont’ invest the time to click through every image in the slider.

(HubSpot customers: Read this post to learn how to include an image slider on a page using HubSpot.)

What website components drive you nuts? Share them in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Many traditional publishers have prematurely thrown in the towel on digital. “I have a website, but no one wants to advertise on it.” “I have an iPad version of my print magazine, but only a tiny fraction of my audience subscribes.” “I have made pdf’s of all my articles but no one is downloading them.”

The problem is not that content creators cannot make money in digital. The problem is digital facsimiles of print products are not what the customer wants. Data support this. For example, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, digital editions represent only 3.8 percent of total circulation (paid, verified and analyzed nonpaid). Even for the top 25 best selling digital editions, digital accounts for only 12 percent of total circulation. 

Digital Is Not a Technical Challenge; It Is a Psychographic Challenge

Many publishers view digital as a technical problem to solve. These companies follow the “if you build it, they will come” mentality. Because they have a digital edition, a website, and maybe even a mobile app, they think “mission accomplished. 

The mindset needs to shift. Consumers don’t want a digital edition for the sake of having a digital edition. Digital consumers have a new set of needs, which I bucket in three areas: context, curation, and customization. Content companies need to build products that address these three psychological needs to appeal to the digital consumer.

Customers Want to Consume Content in Any Context

As a digital society, we would definitely fail the infamous “marshmallow test” conducted by Stanford in the late 1960s. Are you familiar with this study? Psychologist Walter Mischel offered a child a choice between one small reward (e.g., a marshmallow) immediately or a larger reward if they waited for a short period. The researchers found that children who were able to wait longer went on to become more successful in life. 

The digital consumer wants whatever, whenever, wherever. We’re not willing to wait a month or two for the next issue to arrive in the mail. We’re not willing to wait until we get home to view an article on our desktop because it’s unreadable on our phone. We might get distracted or change our mind if the checkout process is too complex.

To evaluate if you are whatever, whenever, wherever for your audience, start with these three questions:

1) Do You Utilize Responsive Design?

Responsive design is the method of designing web pages that automatically appear in their optimized form on all devices (click here for a more detailed definition from HubSpot). In other words, be where the consumer wants you to be – desktop, mobile, tablet, and whatever comes next.

What does your content look across devices? Check out this website to see. Mobile has surpassed desktop and now represents 51% of traffic. If you are not designing responsively, you are leaving money on the table. Without responsive design, you’ll likely have a large difference in bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page) between your desktop and mobile products. You can use Google Analytics to measure bounce rate if you are not doing so already. No one wants to pinch and zoom pdf files to be able to read them on his or her phone. Invest in responsive design.

 2) How Fast are Your Page Load Times?

Research by Professor Ramesh Sitaraman found we are only willing to wait two seconds when it comes to video load times. After that, abandonment rates skyrocket. You’ll lose half your audience if load times get to ten seconds. On this theme, Amazon found increased revenue of 1% for every 100 milliseconds improvement to their site speed. Facebook and Google capitalize on user impatience with their Instant Articles and Accelerated Mobile Pages products. There is a lot of literature on improving performance, and I found this blog entry from The Daily Egg straightforward for those who want some practical tips.

3) How Much Friction is There in Your Email Capture or Checkout Process?

With Uber, you press a button to call a car; with Open Table, you press a button to make a restaurant reservation; with Amazon, you press a button, and more Tide gets shipped to your house. How can you make your user experience at the moment of truth as smooth as possible? Ask your payment processors about their ability to vault credit card numbers, so you don’t have to re-ask for this information (think about how many times you used Amazon one-click buying on an impulse). HubSpot recommends a process called “progressive profiling” in which you ask for as little information as possible upfront (for example, just an email address) and in future engagements, ask for additional details (e.g., mailing address, income level, preferences). Do you have a user experience designer on staff or a consultant helping you with removing roadblocks? I can assure you the ROI is there.

Use Curation to Cut Through the Clutter

Marketing expert Mark Schaeffer coined the phrase “content shock” which in essence means publishers are creating more content than audiences could possibly consume. According to Schaeffer, we already consume nearly 11 hours of content per day. Since there are only so many hours in a day (and we need to sleep, eat, work), there is a limit on how much more we can take in. Yet, the amount of information on the web is expected to increase by 500 percent in the next five years. Supply will outstrip demand.

On top of this, in The Paradox of Choice, author Barry Schwartz explains why too much choice has proven to be detrimental to our psychological well-being. He says eliminating choices can greatly reduce stress. Here is a summary of one experiment Schwartz described to illustrate his point:

“When researchers set up [in a gourmet food store] a display featuring a line of exotic, high-quality jams, customers who came by could taste samples, and they were given a coupon for a dollar off if they bought a jar. In one condition of the study, 6 varieties of the jam were available for tasting. In another, 24 varieties were available. In either case, the entire set of 24 varieties was available for purchase. The large array of jams attracted more people to the table than the small array, though in both cases people tasted about the same number of jams on average. When it came to buying, however, a huge difference became evident. Thirty percent of the people exposed to the small array of jams actually bought a jar; only 3 percent of those exposed to the large array of jams did so.”

As content creators, let’s help society cut through the surplus of information and reduce anxiety while we are at it. It is all about curation. 

Many media companies have had the idea to put all their content on their website, both in front of and behind a paywall. However, to maximize the benefit for the consumer, you need to provide some guidance. For example, while I was the COO of America’s Test Kitchen, we added a daily digest to the Cook’s Illustrated homepage, which inspired cooks with new ideas, and helped them navigate the database of tens of thousands of recipes. Many publications, like the Wall Street Journal, have daily emails that highlight the most relevant stories based on subscriber’s interest profile. 

Curation also applies to online learning products. Consumers can get lost in a sea of options if there is no tracking or curriculum. DataCamp provides a good example of curation done right. They have well-organized course modules, and it is clear which classes are prerequisites of others.

So before you slap together a myriad of content on your site, think about how you can pave a path for your audience. Provide some structure to help the discover the full value of your content.

Customization Keeps Customers Consuming

This is where big data comes in. According to McKinsey, data-driven tailoring of digital experiences can drive an ROI of 15-20%. However, I have seen much larger increases (50%+) in my work with smaller companies. Consumers expect personalization. The days of “batch and blast” marketing campaigns are over (that is, sending the same promotion to all customers), and I expect “batch and blast” user experiences will soon follow in the footsteps of these untailored marketing campaigns.

The New York Times (NYT) publishes over 300 pieces of content every day and uses advanced analytical techniques to make personal recommendations. First, they use a model to classify every article as a mixture of various topics (e.g., politics, environment) based on the words in the text. For example, if the word “tree” appears a lot, it is likely an article about the environment. The NYT data scientists also model each reader’s theme preferences based on viewing history. They then adjust the article’s classification based on actual behavior, in case the vocabulary was ambiguous or allegorical (which would lead to errors in mechanical classification). So, if the model initially predicts an article is about art, but people who like politics are engaging with it, the model adjust the classification accordingly.

Can’t afford a data science team? There are other software platforms that can help you personalize user experiences. found their personalization features sparked a 42% increase in conversion for personalized vs. impersonal content. There are dozens of companies that provide this software, and the right one for you would depend on your size and technical sophistication.

Can’t afford personalization software? You can fake it ‘til you make it. Simply ask visitors to identify themselves on your homepage, e.g., “Is your skill level Novice, Intermediate, or Advanced?” and direct the experience accordingly. Alternatively, you can think about obvious segmentations based on data you already have. For example, you can regionalize your website based on IP address. You can have a different experience for logged in vs. not logged in viewers. Presumably, those who are not logged in are less familiar with your brand and seeking more introductory or background material. What about differences based on day of the week or time of day?

Time to Get Started

So, the next time you think about dismissing digital, take a deep breath. Think about what your company can do to drive conversion, retention, and lifetime value by giving digital customers what they are seeking. The digital consumer wants your content in any context, the need your help curating the information, and they will engage more if you personalize the experience for them. Just creating a pdf of your magazine or newspaper will not ultimately satisfy them.

Back in 1995, less than 1% of the world’s population used the internet. During that same year, Newsweek published a now-infamous article (originally titled, “The Internet? Bah!”), which surmised that the internet would amount to little more than a fad.

Flash forward to today. Around 40% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, representing over 3 billion people. (And yes, that number is continuing to grow as you read this.) Over the past few decades, the internet has evolved from an intriguing experiment to — as Bill Gates once put it — “the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”

To help highlight all of the developments that have shaped the internet over the years, the team at SSLs.com created the infographic below. From the first email, to the first tweet, you can learn about all of the internet’s many “firsts.”

Know of any other “internet firsts” that aren’t featured in the infographic? Share them in the comments section below.

Trying to nail down Seth Godin’s greatest strength is no easy task. He’s a brilliant author, marketer, speaker, and entrepreneur, but above all that, he’s truly mastered the art of getting straight to the point. 

Have you seenhis blog? He carefully boils each post down to a few hundred words. No fluff. No fancy sentences. Just perfectly distilled lessons. 

Whether he’s writing a blog post, delivering a speech, teaching a class, or giving an interview, he holds true to this way of doing things. And his recent interview with CreativeLive was certainly no exception. 

As part of the 30 Days of Genius series, CreativeLive sat down with Godin to discuss everything from failure to permission marketing to what it takes to be truly remarkable. Below you’ll find a peak into this discussion …

3 Valuable Lessons From Seth Godin

1) How to Deal With the Fear of Failure

As a marketer, it’s easy to identify with the fear of failure. When you’re stepping outside of your comfort zone — whether you’re trying a new tool or experimenting with a new medium — it’s hard not to worry about the “what ifs.”

Over the years, you learn how to live with that little fear in the back of your head. You need to. If you don’t, you’ll find it’s seemingly impossible to think outside of the box and take risks.

As Godin so clearly articulates it, “The challenge with letting your genius out, is that it might not work. And that expression, ‘it might not work,’ is super hard to say out loud.”

Godin goes on to explain the psychological power behind why he regularly tells himself that his next big creative risk, simply might not work.

Rather than trying to convince others that a new endeavor — like his radically different altMBA online workshop, for example — will be an immediate success, Godin makes it very clear there is always the possibility of painful failure. That’s just what happens when you take a business risk.

Instead of burying that fear of failure, he challenges himself to dance with his fears. He explains, “The fear is hardwired into us, for good reason. And the thing is, we’re just mistaken. You had a reason to be afraid during the Spanish Inquisition. You have a reason to be afraid if a baseball bat is flying into the stands.”

However, when it comes to taking creative risks and stepping outside of your comfort zone, we really don’t have that much to lose. It’s not a life­-or-­death type of decision.

All too often, we allow our primal fears to negatively impact our decision­ making process when it comes to things as simple as public speaking, publishing a blog post, or trusting your instinct on a critical business decision. When in fact, the act of reminding yourself that you simply do not have all the answers, and that failure is a very real possibility, is a vital personal development stage in progression towards becoming a better version of yourself.

2) How to Define Permission Marketing

Godin has an incredibly simple definition of what permission marketing really is: “Would they miss you, if you were gone?”

He continues, “those people­­ — the ones you’re seeking to have an impact on — would they miss you if you didn’t show up tomorrow? Would they miss you if this new product or new project didn’t come to the world?”

In a world where we tend to obsess over things like high open rates and strong clickthroughs, Godin challenges us to look a level deeper and decide whether or not we have genuine permission to interact with our customers, leads, and subscribers … or if we’re simply being tolerated by them.

If you’re struggling with defining a sound strategy, ask yourself the question: “Would my subscribers miss me? Would I receive one, ten, or one hundred emails from them if they didn’t receive my email this week?”

How you answer that question will tell you a lot about the depth of the relationship you have with your community.

3) What It Means to Be Truly Remarkable

Remarkable.

You’ve heard the word tossed around in meetings, snuck into blog titles, and worked into recommendation letters. You’ve probably used it a few times yourself. But what does it really mean? 

“It’s really easy to do that thing that people notice. That’s not remarkable, the way I use the phrase,” Godin begins.

The way he sees it, there’s a stark difference between doing something that simply gets noticed, and doing something that’s truly remarkable. When you do something remarkable, people begin telling others, and the word about what you’re doing spreads in a very genuine manner.

But getting people talking is only half the battle. Godin’s analogy is that it’s easy to get noticed by wearing plaid to a funeral. But is that remarkable? Absolutely not.

The real challenge is to get people to remark about what you’re doing, but to do so in exactly the way you want them to.

Now, it’s entirely different when it comes to strategically crafting what you want your audience to say, after they see or hear your message.

“If we want them to say, ‘you need to see this, it will transform you,’ or if we want them to say, ‘can you believe how generous that act was?’ if we want them to say, ‘this is the new fresh thing,’ then go build that,” Godin explains.

What’s more, you need to very thoughtful about the creation process. You need to create your work in a way that inspires others to share it — in a way that helps you grow.

To do that, Godin explains, “We have to be serious enough about the process [of creating great work], that we’re proud of what we made, and we did it in a way that the kind of person we care about, tells someone else.”

This is the true definition of creating impactful work. This type of work is different in that it’s inherently viral within the communities who deeply care about the subject matter.  And in Godin’s eyes, that’s the type of work you want to strive for. That’s the work that matters. 

Want more from Seth Godin? Check out the full ’30 Days of Genius’ interview from CreativeLive here.