This post continues the practice of giving advice to those web services that aim to capitalize on the explosion in independent media publishing on the internet. These services are attempting to gain the favor of bloggers, podcasters, community builders and enterprise level producers who are looking to leverage Web 2.0 or social media technology.

Sadly, just about all the companies that are in the space fail to recognize what tools publishers really need. Or if they do recognize what publishers need they aren’t acting on it. Here are five tools that online media publishers need in order to create a more powerful and simplified publishing experience. All of these suggestions relate to tools you can build simply by accessing the publisher’s RSS feed.

• iPhone Compatible Views - The iPhone/iPod Touch is the hottest mobile device on the market today. And while the built in Safari browser is great at viewing web pages, that doesn’t mean that a publisher’s site will be able to provide a great experience for iPhone users. You’re in the money if you can take an RSS feed an then create an iPhone compatible view that also allows for properly linking to audio or video enclosures if they are present.Publishers need to have access to this growing mobile audience. Give the publisher a nice widget that they can drop on their web page to guide iPhone users to the correct view.
• Email Subscription With Statistics - The prospect of reaching the masses is really the promise of indie media publishing. And while RSS subscription is getting simpler there is still a strong majority of people who prefer email to get their updates. The very popular FeedBurner service offers this option but at the cost of changing a site’s feed address. Serious publishers want to maintain their brand and own their feeds. Provide an email subscription service along with statistics and a nice, clean widget and you will hit a home run with publishers.
• Cross-Platform Publishing - The list of networks where publishers want to broadcast to keeps increasing. First there was MySpace, now Facebook and Twitter are also hugely popular. It is a troublesome task to have to republish a single item multiple times just to reach all points of presence. Tools do exist for different publishing systems to integrate with these services. But there are still many publishers who don’t want to deal with plug-ins and work arounds that need to be updated every time a service updates their API. You can handle that for them. Provide a dashboard that allows publishers to set preferences to cross-post to the most popular social networks. By doing so you will save the publisher time and certainly gain their respect.

I know that the thought of being a utility for media publishers is not exciting for many entrepreneurs. If you want to make a business out of this thing you need to gain the respect of the enthusiasts. Face the fact that your site is not going to be come a mass destination like Facebook, YouTube or Digg. Take a cue from FeedBurner. Become a utility that publishers cannot live without and the value of your service will grow at a very rapid rate.