A cou­ple of new things to tell you about today.

First off, I’m try­ing a new exper­i­ment. I’ve decided to close and remove com­ments on this blog. Just to see what hap­pens. Why? Here’s the thing…

When I post a new blog post, it will be cross­posted to a few social net­works. Some, by design with the help of a few tools and plu­g­ins. Oth­ers, by sub­scribers and read­ers who retweet, reblog, or track­back to my posts.

What I’ve noticed is, on these social net­works — Twit­ter, Face­book, Friend­Feed, Digg, and now with the new Google Buzz — my posts seem to incite dis­cus­sions on these loca­tions. Dis­cus­sions I love to par­tic­i­pate in, too, when I have a chance.

I want to har­ness that social media power and divest myself of the con­stant mod­er­a­tion of this blog. I feel that, since there are so many dis­cus­sions tak­ing place else­where, why not take advan­tage of social media and bring the dis­cus­sions to the pub­lic instead?

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I love social media. And I love try­ing and test­ing new stuff. If there’s some new social media tool, web­site, or com­mu­nity, I’ll be one of the first ones to try it out.

But there is a limit. And I think we need to be care­ful. Because social media is like a drug. It can become dan­ger­ously addic­tive. It can even kill your business.

Social media seems to be the cur­rent fad. Everybody’s in on it like it’s one big cock­tail party you just don’t want to leave.

But the way social media is cur­rently being touted, hyped up, and used (or should I say, abused), is rem­i­nis­cent of some­thing that hap­pened way back in the 90s.

(I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

Yes­ter­day, I watched a bril­liant video by Loren Feld­man. Feld­man has a tell-​​it-​​like-​​it-​​is style. While he may be blunt and use strong lan­guage to voice his opin­ion, he is never afraid to voice it. Regard­less of what I think of his style, his video res­onated with me.

In it, he drove home an impor­tant point. I believe what he talked about is not only right, but also some­thing we need to real­ize and become wise about before we need­lessly kill our busi­nesses. And that’s ignor­ing the most impor­tant place on the web…

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As expected, my last blog post gen­er­ated quite a num­ber of com­ments. Some were insight­ful, even a few of the neg­a­tive ones, and I appre­ci­ate them all. Thank you.

How­ever, from most of the com­ments I’ve read, includ­ing some of the pos­i­tive ones, it seems a lot of peo­ple missed the point I was try­ing to con­vey. They thought it was about Face­book user­names and there­fore no big deal.

Well, it wasn’t about Face­book specif­i­cally. It was about hav­ing integrity and respect, and doing what’s right.

They missed it, and that was prob­a­bly my fault. My pas­sion for the topic and oppo­si­tion to the con­cept of “friendly extor­tion,” which I blogged about in the past, caused me to write more force­fully than the norm, and I was less than clear than I should have been.

Face­book wasn’t the prob­lem. It just so hap­pened to be the tool used in this case. It was more about the scarcity mind­set and the sense of enti­tle­ment peo­ple have in think­ing this was accept­able behav­ior and that we should tol­er­ate it.

So I wanted to clear the air. I recorded this quick lit­tle video after I woke up this morn­ing — oh, and please ignore the fash­ion­able bed-​​head hairdo.

Please let me know what you think…

If you have been liv­ing under a rock in the past few weeks, then you might have missed one of the biggest ker­fuf­fles in Inter­net his­tory. Or so it seems.

No, I’m not talk­ing about the con­tested elec­tions in Iran.

I’m talk­ing about the recent Face­book user­name frenzy, when Face­book allowed its users to reg­is­ter user­names, mak­ing pro­file addresses shorter and more memorable.

Lead­ing up to it, they used a count­down timer. Brilliant.

Last week, I was watch­ing a movie with my wife Sylvie Fortin. At 12:01 AM, I decided to log onto Face­book using my iPhone, just to see. And wouldn’t you know it? I man­aged to secure Face​book​.com/​m​i​c​h​e​l​f​o​r​tin for me, and Face​book​.com/​l​i​c​o​r​ice for our fan page.

(Sylvie also cap­tured “sylviefortin” for herself.)

The Licorice Group, LLC is the name of our pub­lish­ing com­pany, located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Obvi­ously, “miche­landsylviefortin” was way too long and would defeat the pur­pose of get­ting a shorter mnemonic. So I decided on “licorice.”

Any­way, you might be won­der­ing why I said this was a ker­fuf­fle. Well, hold on tight, because this one is a doozie (and there’s a mar­ket­ing les­son in here, too)…

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Just a quick note to let you know this blog is under­go­ing some ren­o­va­tions. I’ve just installed Dis­qus (pro­nounced “dis­cuss”) com­ment sys­tem, which will replace the native Word­Press com­ment­ing system.

It takes a while for the sys­tem to import all the com­ments from Word­Press — it’s about 70% done, now — and it should be all back to nor­mal soon. Fin­gers crossed.

Why am I doing this?

I’ve been inves­ti­gat­ing sev­eral com­ment­ing sys­tems, includ­ing Word­Press’ own, Intense Debate. And Dis­qus appears to be the win­ner in many of the reviews I’ve read. I’ve tested it on some of my non-​​public blogs and it works quite well.

This sys­tem allows you to track com­ments, con­verse using threaded replies, rate com­ments, add links to com­men­ta­tor pro­files, and com­ment by log­ging into Twit­ter, Face­book, or Dis­qus Con­nect, or sim­ply as a guest.

Com­ments are still mod­er­ated as before, so your com­ment won’t show up auto­mat­i­cally. If you notice any­thing “wiggy,” please com­ment here. The com­plete tran­si­tion, Dis­qus advises me, should be com­pleted by day’s end. Thanks for bear­ing with me.

As with sta­tic web­sites, the suc­cess of a blog depends on attract­ing a steady stream of new and return traf­fic. The dif­fer­ence is, blog pro­mo­tion tools are slightly dif­fer­ent, a bit more diverse, and largely much more effective.

Why? Because blogs are designed with inter­ac­tiv­ity and social net­work­ing abil­ity built in. They are ideal both for devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships and for mar­ket­ing your brand.

How­ever, don’t neglect stan­dard pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties in favor of blog-​​only traf­fic gen­er­a­tion meth­ods. You can and should use both.

In fact, tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing can become even more potent with a blog due to its nature.

For exam­ple, and most impor­tant, you will still want to uti­lize your email list, and use your blog to grow it, too. Ask read­ers to sub­scribe, and let them know when you post a new arti­cle just as you would with a new fea­ture or prod­uct on a sta­tic website.

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Short post. In fact, it’s a short post about short posts. Looks like I’ve been hit by the Twit­ter bug. Fol­low me on twit­ter: twit​ter​.com/​d​r​s​u​c​c​ess.

It’s also added to my Face­book pro­file. So as I “twit­ter,” it updates my Face­book sta­tus. If you’re a Face­book mem­ber, add me as a friend and fol­low me there: face​book​.com/​m​i​c​h​e​l​f​o​r​tin. Finally, Sylvie and I have a “Face­book Fan Page.” Won’t you become a fan? Go here: face​book​.com/​l​i​c​o​r​ice.