“What’s blogtipping? It’s where you forget yourself for a few minutes and think about another blogger. It’s a win-win. All you do is this: Say three nice things and offer one simple tip.”

I was the recipient of a blogtip yesterday, compliments of Tom Bailey over at Business Blog Hive. Here’s just a slice, but check out the full post for yourself, and jump on the blogtipping train next month.

“Michael D. Pollock’s blog is one of those solid pieces of work that every business blogger should add to their feed reader.”

Thanks Tom. And thanks Easton for starting the meme. This is a great way to expose new bloggers and generate some link love. And that’s good for your karma.

Be passionate about your chosen topic. If you are bored, your readers will be too. Same goes for blogging about a topic that you think will bring in the traffic and the money – but in the end, isn’t really what you are passionate about … Everyone wants to feel good and be happy – the more enthusiasm that comes through in your blog, the more your readers will catch it and come back for more.

Disclaimer: I will not be held responsible for any legal action taken against you as a result of using these tactics.

1. Write almost anything that has to do with David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and send it to any Technorati Top 100 blogger who is a GTD fanatic.

2. Take a photo of yourself wearing a rubber nose and send it to any Technorati Top 100 blogger who likes that kind of thing.

3. Write a post suggesting that reading the blog of a particular Technorati Top 100 blogger may cure erectile dysfunction. Be sure to create a cool, funny graphic to go with it.

4. Create some cool, ingenius gadget hack, and send it to any Technorati Top 100 blogger who loves to write about cool, ingenius gadget hacks.

5. Launch a cool, new Web 2.0 company or application and have it reviewed by any Technorati Top 100 blogger who reviews cool, new Web 2.0 companies and applications.

6. Pick your favorite Technorati Top 100 blogger, and start stalking him (or her). Just make sure you get that all-important link before they lock you up and throw away the key.

7. Write anything that makes life easier for iPod users, and send it to any Technorati Top 100 blogger who likes to publish stuff that makes life easier for iPod users.

8. If you happen to get your hands on any embarrassing photos of A-list celebs, publish them on your blog, then send the link to your favorite Technorati Top 100 blogger who thrives on publishing such photos.

9. Pick your favorite Technorati Top 100 blogger, and name him or her your “Wanker of the Day.”

10. Write a blog post in the form of a list, and submit it to any Technorati Top 100 blogger who happens to be running a group writing project about blog posts in the form of a list.

But it’s time that we - as small business people, web publishers and developers - take our thinking to the next level. It’s time to start thinking in terms of an integrated “web publishing platform” instead of merely a blog, a website, a podcast or a video blog.

The Problem With Small Business Web Publishing Today

I was cruising around iTunes earlier this evening and discovered a new podcast that sounded interesting. So, I clicked on the link to take me to the publisher’s website, Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative. When I got there, as any blogger might do, the first thing I looked for was a blog. What I found instead was a static website with some blog posts imported into the homepage. So I clicked on one of the links and it took me to a new site over on Typepad.

Then I looked for an archive of Todd’s past podcast episodes. I wanted to listen to some of his other stuff. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any on his site. I couldn’t find any on his blog either. The only way I could listen to past episodes is through iTunes or download them into my podcatcher (which I will probably end up doing). But I wanted them NOW, and I’m not a big fan of iTunes.

Before you think I’m picking on Todd, please understand I’m just using him as an example (as I said in the beginning, I really enjoy his stuff). And the reality is this is how many, if not most, small business people have their online presence set up today. They have a website. They have a blog; oftentimes on a completely different site/platform. Some may have a podcast or video blog on another site. A smaller percentage might have a forum and/or a shopping cart; again on a different platform/website.

There’s still too much piecemeal web publishing in small business today. That’s bad for your audience; with all the bouncing around between different sites, different platforms, and in some cases, completely different applications. It’s also time-consuming, stressful and can be unecessarily costly for people like Todd to learn and maintain multiple sites, platforms and applications.

The Solution to Piecemeal Web Publishing

As I said at the beginnging of this article, I believe it’s time we evolve our thinking and start thinking in terms of an integrated web publishing platform. This is a platform that would integrate your website, blog, podcast, link blog, video blog, forum, shopping cart and any other publishing tools you may use. All of them in one place, integrated within one application.

So for you, the small business web publisher, there’d be no more bouncing around between FrontPage, Typepad, Libsyn and whatever else you may currently use to maintian your web presence. Likewise for your audience; they’d be able to find all your content, products and/or services in one place.

True, not everyone will want to use all the components I mentioned above, but they’ll certainly want at least some of them. And if the rest of them were also available and user-friendly within the same application, I imagine more people would use them.

Although I’m presenting this idea as something new, it’s really not. There are plenty of sites out there - large and small - that are already set up this way. Yaro Starak’s site, Entrepreneur’s Journey is one example of a small site that’s very nicely integrated on the front end, although I’m not sure about the back-end. I know he uses WordPress, so my guess is things are pretty well integrated from his perspective. On a larger scale, the tech news site, ZDNet seemlessly integrates news stories, blogs, audio and video in one nice, neatly packaged site.

There’s more to say on this idea, and I plan on fleshing it out further over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I’d appreciate your thoughts on the idea. Would you agree it’s time to evolve our thinking about small business web publishing? Or is it me who’s catching up with something that’s already happened? Is it all merely semantics?

1. Make your off-site links open in a new window.
At one time, this was “convetional wisdom” for websites. The idea is you want people to remain on your site as long as possible, so if you link to an outside site, open that link in a new window, and thereby leave your website alive in the previous window.

That line of thinking is so Web 1.0. The reality is people will leave your site whether you want them to or not. Methods to trap them or keep them there just irritate them. Let them have the option to open links in a new window (or new tab for us Firefox users) if they choose.

As for blogs, some people go so far as to say the best blogs send their visitors away. Kevin O’Keefe, for instance, writes this:

“Some of the best blogs are what Buzz Bruggeman describes as intelligence agents. They post what they believe would be of interest to their target audience. Look at Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion or Dave Winer’s Scripting News. Read their blogs. They cover the globe for their readers by sharing via links what they read and hear. Mixed in you’ll get their strong commentary.”

2. Throw a pop-up box in front of me within 5 seconds of landing on your site.
Have you heard the term “pop-up blocker” before? There’s a reason people want to BLOCK pop-up boxes. They’re irritating. It’s like walking into a grocery store, and as soon as you do, an obnoxious clerk jumps in your face trying to sell you their latest brand of toilet bowl cleaner. He gets your attention, sure, but you’d rather punch him in the head than buy something from him. Websites are the same way. It doesn’t matter if you’re popping up ads, a newsletter sign-up box, photos of your kids or whatever. Pop-ups are irritating. Just don’t do it.

3. Create a cool, trendy Flash-driven site that takes more than 5 seconds to load and/or opens in a new window.
No offense to Flash developers, but most Flash-based sites are the ultimate in pretentiousness. They’re like buying the fancy sports car just to buff up your image. Flash sites are typically more about the site and/or company than they are about me the user. They usually take an inordinate amount if time to load, and if they have to open in a new window … well refer to number 1 above.

4. Make me try to figure out who you are and/or what your site is about. Bloggers are especially notorious for this. When I arrive on a site for the first time, I want to know one thing. What’s here that can improve my life? Unless I can figure that out within 5-10 seconds, I get irritated, and I leave. If it’s a blog, I want to know who the writer is. A picture would be nice, although a simple “about me” page will suffice.

5. Use an opening headline laced with hyperbole and ridiculous promises. Like this one:

“Discover the Amazing Scientific Breakthrough that Leads to Overnight Riches.”

I respect good copywriters for their ability to clearly and quickly communicate the value of a product or service without hype and/or BS. To this day, one of the best headlines I’ve seen on a website is for a product called Blinksale.

“The easiest way to send invoices online.”

Some may argue the word “easiest” is hype, yet for some reason, it’s believable to me as it’s used here.

I have to confess, in fairness, these are the things that irritate me about blogs and websites. Perhaps the best thing to do is ask your visitors what irritates them about blogs or websites. With any luck, you’re not doing any of them.

By the way, what irritates you about blogs and websites?

“This handsome, hardcover book captures your online wit and wisdom for posterity – not to mention friends and family with painfully slow dial-up connections. BookSmart’s Automagical archive feature flows your blog directly into elegant, pre-formatted pages, and you can pick and choose your words from there.”

Unfortunately, it’s currently available by invitation only. Anybody tried it yet?

According to the Tribune article titled Blogging Bloggy, we hardly knew ye:

You’re forgiven if you cling to the conventional wisdom that blogging, like half-pipe snowboarding, enjoys an unrelievedly rich future. Forgiven, but maybe behind the curve. A new report from Gallup pollsters, ‘Blog Readership Bogged Down,’ cautions that ‘the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year.’”

First of all, when has anyone in the mainstream media establishment ever equated “conventional wisdom” with “an unrelievedly rich future” for blogging? That statement practically contradicts the entire premise of the article. Conventional wisdom, if I’m not mistaken, still holds that blogging is merely a fad; a fad - like bell-bottom jeans, furbees and chia-pets - that soon will be relegated to a mere footnote in the Silicon Valley history books. Just as soon as the blog bubble inevitably bursts (please excuse the mixed metaphor), that is.

The second bone that needs picking is the poll itself. Here’s the crux of it from the Gallup site (registration required):

“Gallup’s annual Lifestyle survey, conducted Dec. 5-8, 2005, finds only 9% of Internet users saying they frequently read blogs, another 11% read them occasionally, 13% say they rarely read them, while 66% never read them.

“These findings conform almost perfectly with a special Gallup study of blog use conducted in February 2005. At that time, 9% of Web users said they read blogs daily or a few times a week (”frequently”), 10% read them a few times a month (”occasionally”), 13% read them less often than monthly (”rarely”), and 63% never read them.”

The poll neglects to mention, however, there are more “Internet users” today than there were a year ago (according to a Pew Reseach survey). So it’s a tad misleading to say blog readership “was somewhere between nil to negative.” Actually, it’s up. But you don’t need any fancy surveys to tell you that. Just look at some of the more popular and well-managed blogs out there. Here are some of my faves with last year’s traffic stats vs this year:

• Lifehacker: 400,000 visitors in Feb 2005 vs nearly 2 million visitors Feb 2006.
• Gizmodo: 4.5 million visitors Feb 2005 vs nearly 8 million Feb 2006.
• Problogger: 10k visitors Feb 2005 vs 110k visits Jan 2006.

And not only that. Why do you suppose mainstream media companies, at least the smart ones, are moving more of their stuff online? Because blogs, and the blogging/online media establishment is kicking their asses, and stealing their readers. That’s why.

“IN YET ANOTHER CLEAR EXAMPLE of the inroads online publishing is making against its traditional print counterpart, Dow Jones announced a reorganization that includes a combined print and online Wall Street Journal news operation.

“Dow Jones also signaled its belief in the power of online communications by naming the executive who had been in charge of the company’s electronic publishing operation to head the largest and most influential unit of the newly restructured company.” (Media Daily News. Emphasis theirs.)

But that’s all just my logic. Some of my other favorite bloggers took a slightly different approach in response to the Tribune’s ridiculous quip. Scott Karp, for example, writes:

“Here’s what’s wrong with all the discussion about the future of blogging as a business — blogging is not a business! …

“So what is a blog? It’s a content management and publishing platform. All online publishers use a content management and publishing platform. The difference with blogging software is that it doesn’t come with the huge price tag.

“Bloggers are publishers, like all other online publishers — and all publishers are struggling to figure out how to make money off of their content.

“So don’t meditate on the future of the blogging business. Meditate on the future of the publishing business — and the future of the entire media business.”

I find it hard to agree completely with Scott’s “blogging isn’t a business.” A blog, by itself, certainly isn’t a business. But blogging, well, it’s hard to make it that black and white. Just ask Darren Rowse or Jason Calacanis whether his business is blogging or publishing, and you may have a hard time getting an either/or response. I suspect it’s a bit like a Mac user who wouldn’t think of calling herself merely a “computer user.”

On the surface, it may look like mere semantics, but it’s not. There’s a very real and distinct culture involved with blogging; a culture with its own worldview, its own values, its own way of doing business and its own ways of communicating and connecting with the world. It’s Humanity 2.0. Actually, it’s more like Humanity 6.0, but that’s another article. The point is that unless the course of human evolution stops or reverses, the blogging culture will continue to get larger. In theory, at least.

In any event, when I meditate on the future of the publishing business, as Scott suggested, it appears the publishing business is trying to catch up with the blogging business/culture. And that, I guess, is what Scott means by Publishing 2.0, the title of his blog.

Scott’s not the only one hammering the Tribune, however. Rex Hammock had some very wise commentary as well.

“It is always difficult for me to follow the dot-connecting that must take place to compare the dotcom bust (a collapse of a financial market) with a Gallup poll showing what percentage of Internet users know they’re reading weblogs.

Unfortunately, like Scott, Rex very quickly took a sharp left turn and began pumping the “blogging isn’t a business” bubble (there’s that word again).

“Also, as I see having a weblog more akin to having a telephone or email than to launching a major media property, I think it’s a mistake when anyone attempts to place mass-media business metrics to defining success or failure of a weblog.”

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because Rex is a magazine publisher who, like many magazine publishers, is in denial about blogging’s threat to his business model. Or maybe his subscriber base isn’t part of the early adopter/tech savvy crowd, and hence, may never read a blog or any online media (although I did notice that at least one of his publications has a pretty extensive online archive). Whatever the reason, I just don’t grok the either/or thinking underlying the “blogging as a business” debate. Isn’t it clear that blogging can be a business; a business with it’s own business model(s) and its own niche(s) of customers? Yet, it can also be merely a medium of communcation.

In either case, there are about a billion Internet users out there today. One can logically assume, barring some global catastrophe, that number will continue to grow as access becomes available to more people. Further, one can also logically assume some of those new Internet users will find a blog or two they enjoy reading, whether they know it’s a blog or not. Still, others will launch blogs and/or blogging-based businesses. So, really, how could blogs possibly be dying?

“That gave me the idea, I don’t really need a blog, I just need an RSS feed. Del.icio.us does that. Which is even better, cause I don’t have to deal with the files. When I find an interesting video I can just tag the video url with del.icio.us and I’m done. Feedster looks at del.icio.us’ RSS feed, finds the video, puts it in the proper enclosure so it shows up in iTunes. No posting, no uploading, no cost.

To use your own video you just need to add a place to store the video file into that mix. Ourmedia.org is one of many sites that will host your content for free. Just upload your video then tag the file’s url with del.icio.us.”

I agree, and here’s a short screencast (15 minutes) to help folks better understand RSS and subscribe to blogs using My Yahoo or Bloglines. Hope it’s helpful.

Technorati Tags: blogs rss screencast

“My quick guide to the “what, why & how of business blogging” went live moments ago on Seth Godin’s ChangeThis site. Download my “Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging” as one of the new manifestos. It’s FREE… until Jan. 25, 2005 so don’t wait! Download the PDF here. Hope you find it useful. And a special thanks to Seth and Amit and the other clever folks at ChangeThis.”