Later this week I’m leading a session for a client that’s being called “How to Write a Blog.” Actually I believe they’re calling it “Blog Training Writing” but “How to Write a Blog” sounds a little better. As I’ve been preparing for this session over the last two weeks I’ve been struck by the fact that the title is all wrong.

Initially I was all for leading a session called “How to Write a Blog” but now I don’t think it’s sufficient. A more appropriate title is “How to Be a Great Blogger” because the actual writing aspect of a blog is just part of the mechanics but being a great blogger is another thing entirely. Learning how to write a blog means you discover some tips, strategies, and thoughts on what to do…but you can know all of that and still be a really bad blogger with a really bad blog.

If your focus is on what to do, you’ll never learn how to be. If you want to “do” blogging you can start today. Go to Wordpress.com and get yourself a free blog and start blogging. But, if you want to “be” a blogger there are many other things you need to think about… things like tone, voice, attitude, style, and personality. Those aren’t things you really do. They’re things you are. They develop as you “do” blogging.

Sure, there are some things every good blogger should do…but in the end it’s not enough if you never cross the line to be a blogger. If you’ve been blogging for a while (or maybe you’re just getting started) ask yourself if you’re more interested in what to do or how to be. I recommend you keep your eye on how to be. The “doing” will come along the way.

Some interesting stats were released last month by ThirdAge and JWT Boom about Baby Boomers and social media. According to the study, Americans over 40 years old haven’t jumped headlong into social media and social networking. Only 22% access social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn and 67% said they have “little or no interest” writing blogs.

I don’t know if anyone is surprised by these stats. The original report took a really negative spin on this study but I think it bears some perspective. The Boomer generation is so large (78 million) that 22% represents over 17 million people. That’s 17 million pretty hip folks who remember where they were when JFK was assassinated (or…for the youngest Boomers, saw Star Wars when it was a new release in the theaters.) Another thing to think about is that it’s not as big a deal that only 33% are interested in writing blogs. There are still almost 26 million Boomers who have some interest in writing blogs and we know from Forrester Research that about half of Boomers read blogs.

Perhaps the most interesting thing from the study was the concern over privacy on social networking sites. About half of the study’s respondents “cited concerns over privacy and having personal information on the web.” The current generation of youth and young adults don’t think much about privacy so that may have as much to do as anything with their rapid adoption of social networking…and the subsequent limitations to its adoption among Boomers.

The bottom line is Boomers represent a massive portion of the population and control 83% of consumer spending in our country so I wouldn’t go writing them off in social media and social networking circles just yet. Sure, they may get on board a little later, but give them a break…if sixty really is the new forty, they still have time.

All bloggers want more traffic to their site. It doesn’t matter if it’s a professional blog or some random musings from your life, you want more traffic if you publish a public blog. Sure, you know about blogrolls and link exchanges, but do you ever link specifically to posts to bring some traffic to you blog? You can. Here’s how.

Linking to posts (called trackbacks or pingbacks depending on what your blog tool calls them) is a way to show that you wrote a blog post specifically talking about a post on another blog. That referring link then shows up on the original blog either under the trackback area or in the comments. That referring link can then send people to your blog to see what you had to say on the topic.

For instance, if I wrote a post about how Seth Godin gives a good explanation on the types of people who use Firefox rather than Explorer, I would link to it as I’ve done here and grab the trackback link at the end of his post. That trackback link can then be inserted into a special trackback field within Wordpress (some blog tools can do this automatically…just check how your blog platform deals with these or try this). Then my post referring to Seth’s post would show up on his blog.

Wordpress is especially generous to pingbacks. If you were to link to this post for instance (the permanent link) it would show up in the comments. Wordpress works like this for all users unless the blog’s author has specifically turned the feature off.

The strategy here is that you add value to the conversation and get to bring people over to your blog to see what you’ve said. It’s better than a comment because it shows you took some time to really respond to the blog post. People who read the comments will be more likely to click over to see what you said because they also recognize that you took the time to write it.

One final thought here…don’t be a jerk. Don’t trackback unless you have something valuable to add. There is such a thing as spam trackbacks and spam pingbacks and you don’t want to be one of those. Just add something to the conversation and you’ll be fine.

I think the business of website development is going through a major shift. With the power of current blog platforms and the ease with which they can be used as a valid alternative to traditional websites, I believe small web shops are going to have to adapt and/or specialize in something else or their business is dead meat.

In the good old days (about four years ago) you could build a website from the bottom up if you were talented enough or you had to pay someone to build a website for you. Fact is, many of those sites amount to little more than what we see on blogs today, but it was the only way to really get a decent, well branded web presence. There were some do it yourself type of website tools with templates you could choose from, but by and large if you were serious about being online you didn’t go that route.

That’s not the case anymore. Blog platforms can be customized beautifully these days with a fraction of the development time and cost because the entire backend of the site is already done. That’s a huge shift for the web design business because traditional shops (and I’ve worked for and with some) would have their own code set for building sites or they would start from scratch. Customers got charged like crazy for sites that would really be no big deal in this day and age. The worst part is not everyone knows this and some web shops are still selling their services like always.

All I’m saying here is that it’s no longer necessary to look only to a web design firm to build your web presence. My friend Cory Miller began a venture a while back to start building on Wordpress and selling the designs so he can deliver an entire web presence on a platform he didn’t have to build. You can check it out at iThemes.com and you’ll see the designs are really sharp. Nathan Moore and the Anthology Creative crew did my blog on Wordpress and I love it. It’s clean, simple, gives me everything I could want, and it’s a full website that covers everything I need.

This web development shift is great for customers. They are generally better looking sites that are easy to manage and much cheaper than what some companies charge.

If this feels a little too doom and gloom for the web designers then you’re not seeing the opportunities. I actually think the future is bright in the web design/development world if they adapt to the changes or become specialized. Here are three areas that seem wide open for growth:

• Blog Design Specialists: Blogs have emerged as a great platform for a web presence that meets the needs of what many people want when they think about getting a website. The web designers who are focused on providing a great web presence with a focus on ease of use, function, and beauty will do well. Their counterparts building sites the old way, however, will still be charging clients to use some bulky, proprietary stuff their company is married to.
• The Flash/Controlled Media Specialists: Some people want to control the entire online experience for users and Flash or some other controlled online media like that is always going to be a preference for those people. Blogs won’t cut it in that regard and the specialists who can do this well will likely be in demand for a long time.
• The Big, Bad, Complex Website Specialist: There are some websites that are just too big and bad to warrant being built on a blog platform. You’re not going to see Amazon.com or anything like that switching over to a blog so there will always be a need for the large and highly complex site specialists.

I should note if anyone is wondering…I don’t build websites. I know enough HTML to get into trouble and  my design skills are mediocre at best. This entire perspective is based on the opportunities for consumers and my observations about how the market is changing. It’s as simple as this: the days of paying more than five or ten thousand dollars for a website are gone except in some select scenarios. In many cases you can get more than enough for what you need for under $1000. Just be aware of that next you want a website.

There’s lots of news today about a possible recession. The Federal Reserve made the biggest rate cut in 24 years today to head a recession off at the pass but the stock market isn’t really responding well so far. While a recession (or even the hint of one) will increase fears in many traditional sectors of media and marketing, I think new media marketers will benefit from this and here’s why….

• Blogs don’t cost anything to start.
• Online video is free. So is creating your own video channel on YouTube.
• Creating a Facebook group doesn’t cost anything.
• Recording a podcast costs next to nothing.
• A basic Flickr account to engage your customers is free.
• Twitter doesn’t charge to message the people most interested in what you are doing.
• AdWords only cost you something when someone clicks your ad (and you determine the cost per click.)

There will still be marketing in a recessed economy. There will still be marketers spending money in a recessed economy, even if there’s not as much of it. What marketers will be paying for, however, is not the use of the technology, the air time to broadcast it’s message, or the placement for ads. What they’ll pay for is help to use the new media well. When in the face of decreased marketing budgets new media will emerge as the cheaper option because companies will pay consultants (i.e. digital coaches) a few thousand dollars to teach them how to fish the new way. This may be the tipping point for new media marketing as marketers and advertisers give it a shot out of financial necessity rather than being convinced that it’s the right thing to do. Whatever the case, a recession is going to be good news for new media marketing. It’s bad news for traditional advertising and marketing, but Google was already telling us that.

I spent some time on Google Trends today as I was thinking about web 2.0 tools for marketing compared to traditional marketing methods. You may recall I consider traditional promotion strategies the big fish of marketing (and I advocate going after the far more numerous small and medium size fish.) In my first test I compared direct mail, tv ads, billboards, and radio advertising.

One note about Google Trends before we proceed…this is just showing the relative quantity of Google searches on the given search terms. It may be easy to dismiss this but as Steve Rubel said in this post, “search engines show us what’s on everyone’s mind,” and it’s therefore interesting to note the trends of the collective thinking.

Here’s what the trends show over the last four years in these traditional marketing areas:

What you see here is that all but billboards are down from four years ago. Direct mail seemed to fall slowly and then hold fairly even in 2007. TV ads appear to have the most dramatic swings. Incidentally, notice the spike in TV ads early each year. Those are Super Bowl commercial searches for sure. Radio was down a little but steady for the last four years, though clearly below the other three areas.

After I looked at these four areas I included the term “web 2.0″ to see if that mere term competed with these traditional mediums. Here’s what I found:

Web 2.0 really didn’t take off until late 2005. By early 2006 you see that it eclipses the four traditional terms and then clears them significantly through 2006 and 2007.

Just for fun I tried one more trend comparison by throwing “blogs” into the mix. I dropped radio ads from the comparison since it was at the bottom of the pile and here’s what I found:

With “blogs” included it makes everything else just look silly. I was actually surprised it was such a huge difference. More surprising to me was that it was higher even back in 2004. We know that there were less than six million blogs at most in 2004 so it’s a bit curious to me, but quite interesting.

So what can we derive from all of this? At the very least we know there are far more searches for “web 2.0″ and “blogs” than than any of the traditional marketing methods. Even if all those searches weren’t marketing related (and we know that’s the case), the phrase web 2.0 is a business, marketing, and technology term. We can discern that the collective marketing and business interests are greatly interested in web 2.0 from these trends and if that’s where they are, it’s reasonable to look more seriously at them if you still have doubts.

One final one for kicks if you’re interested. Who do you think wins in a match up of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Google, and blogs? See it here.

I hadn’t been blogging for too many months when I realized most websites weren’t built with the notion that there may be a way to help a blogger out. That realization birthed the “three ways to get bloggers to hate your website” post. Ever since then I have sought to make sure websites I am a part of are blog friendly. Early last year I co-created MySliceofPi.com and we dedicated an entire resource page to bloggers (and any other media who might be interested.) The intention of the page was to cater to the image needs bloggers might have if they chose to write a post about the site. Since then, I have recommended similar pages to clients and over the summer one client, Modern Parables, took me up on it. They created a blogger/media page with multiple options for their logo, images from the product, images from their original films, embeddable video links, and movie stills.

They went all out and it’s been helpful to the numerous bloggers who have written about their resource. In fact, today they received a note specifically about the blogger/media page:

“I am SO impressed. I just went to your web site and downloaded and saved the images in less than a minute. That has to be the easiest time I’ve ever had finding and saving images. Woo hoo!!!!!”

Getting a page like this up on your organization’s site isn’t difficult. You just have to take a little time to do it. Bloggers (and other media) will love you for it. When’s the last time your site got a woo hoo?

I find myself recommending blogs on a regular basis. I think it’s a great idea for almost every organization but I have also realized there are organizational characteristics that would lead me to say they shouldn’t blog. Here’s my list of those who should not blog (or use other social media for that matter):

Organizations that don’t trust their employees. If your organization doesn’t trust employees then a blog strategy will constantly be plagued by the legal department’s involvement or management trying to control the message. If the organization doesn’t trust the employees to represent them well without micromanagement, don’t start blogging.

Organizations that don’t want to hear bad news. Blogging and other forms of social media are inherently interactive and conversational. Once you decide to jump in you should prepare to respond as needed. If a corporate blogger gets negative feedback or criticism on a service, product, strategy, etc. the right thing to do is respond truthfully and candidly. That doesn’t necessarily mean a concession either. The organization’s blogger can totally disagree with the the feedback without being disagreeable. What this interaction shows is that the organization isn’t afraid to hear and engage people even when it can be negative. If you’re not ready for this, don’t start blogging.

Organizations that want absolute control over their message and reputation. Organizations can’t, and never have, been able to control what people say about them. To think otherwise is foolish. New media tools allow those conversations that may have previously been private to be more widespread and more easily discovered. If your organization is determined to control every message about it and is under the delusion that it can also control what other people say about it, don’t start blogging, it will only create frustration when the facade of control begins to crumble.

Organizations that create by committee. I have been a part of numerous “writing by committee” situations and almost every single time the final message is so diluted from the original intent it becomes a shell of what it could have been. Blogging by committee is not good for at least two reasons. First, it will take forever to get a post done by the time you get everyone involved and consider their revisions and debate what should stay and what should go. Second, it will very likely not be a candid, fully engaging post, but rather something diluted. Contributors to a blog are good, committees are not. It’s not a bad thing to have multiple bloggers for a single blog as long as it’s clear to all that the blog was set up that way. If your organizations writes by committee, however, don’t start blogging.

Organizations that are slow. One of the true benefits to blogging is that you can create a post in a matter of minutes so there is a wonderful opportunity to respond quickly to a situation in the event that it’s necessary. Depending on the industry, response time can make or break how a something is perceived. For instance, if an company had some negative press they could use the blog to respond quickly and provide their perspective. By doing so, the blog post will be part of the news and balance the original negative story. Without the blog the organization will issue a less timely press release if they respond at all and possibly miss a window of opportunity. If the organization isn’t prepared or comfortable with a quick response then they will not be fully utilizing the blog. If your organization is stuck on slow, don’t start blogging.

A few weeks ago I was speaking with a publisher about how they can work with bloggers to get more exposure for some upcoming books. The publisher quickly dismissed the idea of using bloggers because “they tried that once before and all our authors got was a lot of bad feedback from the bloggers because they were accused of being spammers.” When I inquired as to what they actually did I was told that the publisher hired a company which has a staff to post comments on blogs that may fit the book topics. Instead of the positive feedback and awareness, the authors were hammered with negative feedback that they were spamming these blogs. Those authors in turn hammered the publisher and the publisher has been wary of bloggers ever since.

What happened here is that the publisher had no idea what it was paying for. In essence they were duped into thinking that comments on blogs through any means necessary are a good thing. They had no idea how their vendor’s strategy fits (or actually doesn’t fit) into blog culture. The end result was a disaster where the authors got blamed and the publisher lost major credibility with some of their top authors.

I first realized that comment spam is an issue back in February but didn’t dream that it could go to the level of paying a company to post comments on blogs. That simply shows both a lack of awareness of blog culture and a pressure that companies now feel to be using new media in their marketing strategies without a proper understanding. This publisher’s vendor is preying on the sense of urgency companies have to “just be doing something” in new media. You must have a proper understanding of new media before you launch into a marketing strategy with new media elements. You cannot carry over the same old mindset, methodology, and cultural approach of traditional marketing. If your organization views bloggers like deer and you’re just going out to hunt for the biggest one, you’re missing a very crucial shift in the hunt: the deer now have guns too…

My friend Chris is one of the more creative people I know. Not in an artsy kind of way but in the kind of way where he has ideas that challenge conventional thinking and go against the flow enough to be different but still fit within mainstream interest. He recently began an endeavor to eat all 51 sandwich combinations at a local Which Wich? sandwich shop and blog about each sandwich. Chris also lets his readers vote on one of five sandwiches each day in the comments and the winning sandwich of the day is the one he eats at lunch.

At first he was doing the reviews and his friends and family were commenting on the sandwiches for the day. Then he started to get noticed by the folks at his local Which Wich as the guy who blogged about their sandwiches. The next thing he knows there’s a stamp on all the sandwich bags like the one seen here. Then a bunch of widely read blogs start talking about the story and days later he gets a call from the founder of Which Wich who wants to fly to Nashville to have lunch with him and today I learned that all Which Wich shops across the country will likely be stamping their bags with the “Will Chris Make All 51?” slogan in a week or so.

So what can you learn about your need for bloggers from all of this? Here are three things that come to mind immediately:

• Bloggers provide free publicity. Until Chris started the Which Wich challenge I’d never even heard of the place and I live in a metropolitan area with two locations. I even noticed the downtown Which Wich just yesterday for the first time and I’ve driven by it dozens of times. Blogs are the ultimate in word of mouth marketing and provide the holy grail of publicity at the most fundamental levels. They influence people either on the basis of an authentic and objective opinions or with a personal relationship you’ll never be able to match.

• Bloggers affect your Google results. As I write this, four out of the first ten items on a Google search for “which wich” are either from Chris’ blog or about what Chris is doing. In this case it turns out to be good PR for Which Wich but if Chris had a bone to pick with them and consistently talked about it that could be news for Which Wich as curious Internet searchers would find all kinds of negative commentary right off the bat. Have you Googled your organization recently? Have you checked both the Google image search and the Google blog search for your organization’s name? Got Google alerts set up for your organization and key leaders? If not, you might want to see if you’ve got a fan (or foe) blogger out there.

• Bloggers will keep you sharp. The most fundamental thing you can do to get bloggers to talk about you has nothing to do with bloggers at all. If you do what you do well, a blogger will find you and tell other people about it on his or her blog. If you do it well consistently you might even get a person like Chris to generate a lot of genuine interest your way. If that day comes, take a note from the Which Wich playbook and support that blogger all the way.