Seth Godin once again demonstrates the power of the personal brand. I subscribe to his blog, which is usually pretty interesting, and he’s just invited his readers to join a new “tribe.” At first glance it seems relatively standard issue — a new online community for marketers with blogs, forums, photos, etc. (yawn). But, as usual, he adds a few interesting twists.

For one thing, it’s invitation only, at least until October, for readers of his blog. Now I know Godin’s blog is one of the most popular around, so this is not exactly a highly exclusive invitation, but, as he notes in the invite, “powerful tribes aren’t open to everyone. The exclusivity makes it work.”

For another, accepting the invitation is based on pre-ordering his next book, which is all about (drum roll please), tribes. It’s not about selling more books (hmm), according to Godin, but rather “it about creating a small hurdle to get the right people in the door.” The book won’t come out until October 21, and a visit to Amazon provides only the title and a short paragraph about the power of tribes.

Well, he got me. I dutifully bought the book for $14, forwarded him my receipt before 11 am this morning to make sure I beat the deadline, and will now wait and see what happens with the new community. And I know I’m in good company. As I write this, the book is 7th on the Amazon best seller list (at least for this hour) and 1st in several business sub-categories. Not bad for a book we won’t even see for three months.

Will the book be worth it? Probably yes; most of his books contain at least a few good nuggets. Will the “tribe” be worth joining. Who knows, but it’s worth the price of admission just to see how Godin will try to carve out a unique position in a crowded field.

And it’s another great lesson in creative marketing and the power of a great reputation.

According to today’s New York Times, Comcast is putting serious people power into listening to the online gripes of its customers. The cable TV giant has a team of seven, soon to be ten, actively following public comments on blogs, online message boards, and social networks to find complaints and then jump into conversations with the complainers to see if they can help.

It’s a bit unnerving for people used to sounding off to their friends about the evil cable company to all of a sudden have a “digital care manager” pipe up with a cheery offer to look into the problem. But such is life in the social media fast lane. If you’re posting in a public forum, you shouldn’t be surprised at who might be listening.

Comcast’s objective is a good one: tapping new tools to provide better customer service. And the company certainly needs to try new approaches. It lost ground in the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index, and has reached an all-time low in customer satisfaction (Full disclosure: I’ve been a long-time unhappy customer myself, and recently switched TV and Internet service to Verizon FiOS, which I”m hoping against hope might be at least a little better). The company has also been stung by the wildly successful Comcast Must Die site launched last fall by media commentator Bob Garfield  (who also wrote the important  Listenomics piece on rising consumer power back in 2005).

The real question, of course, is what Comcast is doing to actually turn around customer service at the larger level than simply emailing disgruntled customers in the middle of the night. The new online initiative has reached out to more than 1,000 gripesters in the last five months, according to the Times, and is actually helping some of them to resolve their problems. But that’s just a tiny fraction of its customer base, and even Frank Eliason, who heads the new Comcast initiative, admits his team would be overwhelmed quickly if the masses of customers who complain mostly by phone were suddenly to start blogging and Twittering their problems instead.

So two cheers to Comcast for listening more to its angry customers — it can seem a bit creepy, as one surprised blogger told the Times, but overall I take it as a positive step. But I’m still waiting to see about the larger commitment to change, and if they can actually move the needle on the satisfaction index. If not, this will simply join the ranks of bad shows that already pervade the Comcast network.