Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire, has an interesting post about how the New York Times has missed the boat and is fighting the wrong war (to mix a couple of metaphors). In it, he puts his finger on one of the biggest factors that make it hard for newspapers in general — the one I work for included — to make the transition from paper to digital. It’s not a technical issue, or at least not solely a technical issue, but more of a conceptual shift. There are no limits any more, or at least not the usual ones that have worked for the past century or so, and that’s a difficult thing to grasp.

“All the News That’s Fit to Print” is the heart of the problem. It was never that, of course. It was “All the News That Fits.” The entire mindset of (every) newspaper has been driven by the cost of paper, the finite nature of paper, the cost of delivery and the cycle of a daily paper. You run enough articles to fit as many ads as you can sell.These are artifacts of a different age, one that today’s consumer doesn’t care a whit about.”

That’s a very different world than the one the New York Times grew up in and came to dominate. And Seth has some worthwhile thoughts about ways in which the Times — and, by extension, other newspapers — could be working to extend its brand and value online. Among other things, he suggests leveraging the opinion and editorial pages to help spread important ideas online, as well as making it easier for readers to take your content and share it with others, something I also believe in quite strongly (although the specifics of how to do that are still a work in progress).

I’m not sure buying Yelp or the Zagat guides is the way to go, but that’s the right idea, and so is finding high-quality voices on the Web and giving them a platform, something the Times has already started doing with BlogRunner and its syndication deals with GigaOm and others. My friend Mark Evans, a former newspaperman, thinks the Times should buy Twitter. I’m not convinced that actually owning platforms makes sense — or is even necessary — but I think the Times and other papers could make far more use of them, and smarter use, than they are now.

Would that help to stem the slide that the Times has seen, both in its advertising revenue and in its stock price? That’s impossible to say — but it certainly couldn’t hurt. And for all those who have failed, through no fault of their own, to make the transition, there’s always this.

As usual, I can’t remember where I came across this one (if it was in your feed, let me know and I will send a virtual shout-out), but it’s a great clip of legendary management theorist Tom Peters and marketing guru Seth Godin (who looks a lot like a “house elf” from the Harry Potter movies, but maybe that’s just me) talking about the usefulness of blogs as part of a panel discussion at the Inc 5000 conference. I would have embedded the clip but there was no embed option available. So I took a minute and transcribed what they had to say. First up was Seth, who said:

“Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the meta-cognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself, to your few employees, or to your cat, or to whoever’s going to look at it? How do you force yourself to describe, in three paragraphs, why you did something? How do you respond, out loud?

If you’re good at it, then people are going to read it. If you’re not good at it and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. This has become much bigger than “are you BoingBoing” or “are you the Huffington Post” — this has become such a micro-publishing platform that basically you’re doing it for yourself, to force yourself to become part of the conversation, even if it’s just that big (holds two fingers about an inch apart). And that changes an enormous amount.”

Followed by Peters, who said:

“My first post was in August of 2004. No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook, and it’s the best damn marketing tool by an order of magnitude I’ve ever had. And it’s free.”

The clip itself is here and there are more clips from their talk here.

Cartoonist and wine-marketing genius Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void asked marketing guru Seth Godin some questions recently, which he has posted on his blog. One of my favourites is when Hugh asks Seth what the hardest lessons are for a first-time author to learn:

“Books are souvenirs that hold ideas. Ideas are free. If no one knows about your idea, you fail. If your idea doesn’t spread, you fail. If your idea spreads but no one wants to own the souvenir edition, you fail.”

If I were a publisher, or an author’s agent, or teaching a class on writing, I would engrave that somewhere very prominent.

Although I’m pretty sure his post is intended as advice for marketing people and that sort, I think Seth Godin has some great advice in his post on how to “Write Like a Blogger.” In it he provides a short list of tips for writing effectively for an audience. To me, these suggestions make sense for anyone, but especially for journalists who are trying to wrap their heads around this whole social media thing. Among my favourites:

– Use headlines: Not just boring ones that announce your purpose, but interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect for engaging busy readers.

– It’s okay if you leave: Bloggers aren’t afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you’ll come back if what we had to say was interesting.

– Show up: Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.

Read the rest of the list here.