While attending Blogworld Expo 2010, I took part in a panel discussion titled “The Blogger Killed the Author & The Publisher Hid The Body.”

The session description reads:

In a world of 140s, shrinking screens, and ‘after-the-jump’ readers, how do we make books people want? Are books just ‘content’ in a dead format? Does tweeting, posting, and IM’ing make for better or worse writers? What 5 things should every author being doing to get published? This session is for publishers, and authors who still want to make money on books. It can be done. Come learn how.

In addition to myself, the panel also included other great speakers from both sides of the author and publisher equation including Hadji Williams, Ellen Gerstein, Justin Branch and Susan T Spencer.

The team from Wiley (our publisher) filmed and assembled this highlight reel of what I had to share with the audience and now we can share it with you.

I’m really hoping someone captured the whole panel to share because I think a lot of great resources and information for aspiring authors was shared by all.

We are both big fans of Grammar Girl and the empire she has built around herself. Truth be told, Ann is a bit of a fan girl, so when she found out that C.C. actually knew Mignon and would be getting on camera with her, you should have seen the flurry of text messages. *grin*

But, we were excited to be part of her Behind the Grammar podcast and to talk a bit our decision to not give away lots of free copies of the book while marketing and what we decided to do instead.

Did we make the right decision? What do you think? We’d love to hear your opinion.

I have a pretty clear definition of what content is in my head. But, I also know that it is something that is hard to put into words when you need to so I was curious how others might describe it.

While attending Blogworld Expo last week I carried around my video camera asking friends and strangers to complete the sentence “Content is ____”. I had a blast sitting down this morning and pulling out some of the nuggets to share with everyone. It was fascinating how many different directions people went with their answers.

You might see some familiar faces in the video like Scott Monty, Todd Defren, Maggie Fox, Steve Hall, Jenny Cisney, Ewan Spence and Steve Garfield. Thanks to everyone who allowed me to film them. I ended up with so many great answers I couldn’t fit them all into the video.

Now, if I asked YOU the question how would you answer? What is content to you and how do you describe it? In the comments answer the question: Content Is _____

Update 11/19 – Adding links to content that people in the video are creating. If I forget someone, please let me know and I’ll add them.

• http://www.averagebetty.com
• http://foodieslive.com
• http://www.adrants.com
• http://tpnrock.com
• http://jennifercisney.1000words.kodak.com
• http://thecampdirector.com
• http://jeremyvaught.com
• http://jessicarmurray.com
• http://socialmediagroup.com/category/blog/
• http://www.scottmonty.com
• http://www.stevegarfield.com
• http://www.pr-squared.com
• http://fororchestra.com

Everyone out there has heard the Zappos story by now and it is one that we have always loved since they practice what we preach.

Last week, I was in Las Vegas to speak at Blogworld Expo and several of us took a side trip over to Zappos for one of their famous tours. The long and short of it is that it lives up to the hype and I’m so glad that I got to experience it first hand to see that everything you’ve read is 100% true.

I wanted to share some of the simple things related to content that caught my eye while on the tour.

This is the Zappos Blog Bus and the team that manage the Zappos family of blogs sit here. Just like every other employee we encountered, they were overly friendly and having a great time doing what they do. How can you not have fun when your cubicles have been transformed into a VW Bus?

I wish I had a picture of my face as we turned a corner and our guide said “and this is where our Content Team sits.” As you can see they break them out into Coordinators and Detailers and even have a digital picture frame that showcases all kinds of content that they make. Again, it isn’t about having the slickest and prettiest content. It is about having content that matters to you and the company!

Finally, with every single person that goes through the tour they make sure that you leave feeling like royalty. For the price of a simple point and shoot camera and some props they take a photo of you and post it to the web for everyone to see. This is not only fun, but it is smart because of course everyone is going to go back out and look for their photo and share it with the world just like I’m doing here.

Content is one of those things that must become an integrated part of your company philosophy. It isn’t a short term play. It isn’t a long term project. Rather, it is something that you need to make part of day-to-day business activities because the more you make it part of who you are like Zappos has done, the more successful it will be for you.

Thank you Zappos for being such a great host!