For 5 years, WebProNews has partnered with BlogWorld and New Media Expo, the world’s first and largest new media conference, in an effort to broadcast how new media can grow your business, brand, and audience. Stay tuned to WebProNews for much more exclusive coverage.

It’s not that he disagrees with the saying, but he thinks that the meaning should go deeper. He describes content as “anything you create and share to tell your story.”

Chapman went on to say that content isn’t just an article or video but that it’s every single thing that users create including Twitter posts, Facebook posts, Foursquare check-ins, and more.

In his book, Content Rules – How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, and Webinars That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business, which he co-wrote with Ann Handley, the two offer guidelines that people and businesses can apply to their content strategy. A couple of the tips that they recommend are that people speak humanly and that they reimagine content instead of recycling it.

WebProNews is partnering with BlogWorld and New Media Expo, the world’s first and largest new media conference, in an effort to broadcast how new media can grow your business, brand, and audience. BlogWorld takes place November 3-5 in Los Angeles and includes speakers such as C.C. Chapman. Stay tuned to WebProNews for much more exclusive coverage.

Jaquet tells WebProNews that Roku was the first device to stream Netflix to the television when it first came out. Since that time, Roku has become an open platform. “We’re really a platform for the delivery of content to the TV,” Jaquet says.

Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and sports leagues like MLB, NBA and NHL can all be accessed via the Roku device. This includes live and on demand games. That’s not to say that these outlets are the only sources for content. There’s TWiT.tv, Revision3, Blip.tv and many other content providers.

Providing a range of content isn’t the only thing that Roku is doing to differentiate itself in the web TV arena.  Jaquet tells WebProNews that price and value are very important factors as well. “We are really well priced and positioned in that regard,” Jaquet says. There are three different Roku models ranging in price (and features) from $59.99, $79.99 and $99.99.

In addition to price, Jaquet tells WebProNews that simplicity is very key to adoption. “We’re trending towards a much older demographic,” Jaquet says. “So it needs to just work out of the box. You know, five minutes and you need to be set up.”

Because web TV is such a hot space right now, there’s also a lot of competition. One obvious competitor to Roku is AppleTV. Jaquet tells WebProNews that the proliferation of competition can actually be a good thing. “When Apple released their new product last year, it immediately sold very well,” Jaquet says, “but our sales doubled as well.”  The benefit here is that Apple–a recognized brand–was able to bring visibility and credibility to a new and growing space.

As far as the future of Roku and web TV, Jaquet tells WebProNews that more content is forthcoming. The more content available to web TV users, the less reliant they become on traditional cable. As a matter of fact, Jaquet says that about 12% of customers buy Roku to cut the cable cord. Of course, people still want their local sports and news as well as live in-market sports. “Twenty-five percent of our customers either cut the cord or severely diminish the number of premium services they have with their cable provider,” Jaquet says. This “cord shaving” approach, Jaquet says, is then complimented by the Roku solution.

Blekko and DuckDuckGo have actually banned Demand Media‘s network of sites, including eHow and Answerbag, from their search results. Google has also taken action and released a Chrome extension that blocks content farms from its search results.

DuckDuckGo also recently promoted wikiHow‘s content to its Zero-Click Info box, which is displayed above the first search result. While this move from DuckDuckGo may seem like a step backward to some, Jack Herrick, the founder of wikiHow, explained to WebProNews why it is not. According to him, wikiHow and eHow are two very different services.

He tells WPN that wikiHow’s content is user-generated and is very much like Wikipedia‘s content model. eHow, on the other hand, is based on a paid model in which freelance writers are paid to write articles.

“When you get… maybe a dozen or two dozen people who have edited an article, each person passionate about the topic [and] contributing their knowledge, you end up with a very, very different product than if you pay a freelancer a few dollars to write an article,” he said.

Interestingly enough, Herrick actually ran eHow before it sold to Demand Media in 2006. Although the model is slightly different now, he said that eHow still has the paid model that it had while he was there. He also pointed out that he was faced with the situation of either producing a lot of very low quality articles or producing very few high quality articles. Because he wasn’t pleased with either of those options, he based wikiHow on an entirely different model.

“My goal for wikiHow, and what I’ve been trying to do for several years now, is build a how-to manual with every single topic and have every topic be the best possible page it can be – the single highest quality resource on the Internet for that how-to topic,” he added.

Herrick also spoke about the AOL/Huffington Post deal and the hype that it has been receiving in regards to paid content vs. free content. Although he doesn’t believe that one is necessarily better than the other, he does say that free content is often of higher quality than paid content is.

“Sites like ours go the extra mile… you start with that $15 level and start adding volunteer contributions on top of it… adding a video, adding step-by-step images, adding tips that they’ve learned over years of doing this. It really can bring the quality level a notch higher, and I think that’s where wiki content can do something that other sites just can’t do,” he said.

Going forward, the mission for wikiHow is the same: to create the highest quality content for any topic on the Web in multiple languages. Currently, the site has just under 100,000 articles and has over 30 million unique visitors.

However, to pull off a show of this magnitude takes a lot of work. Rick Calvert, BlogWorld’s CEO and Co-founder talked to WebProNews about what actually goes into the show.

He said one of the most important aspects involved is the content. They really strive to incorporate content that people can take away and use. In addition, they learn from what attendees have told them that they want to learn.

For 2010, specifically, one of the themes of the show was the fact that anybody could be successful online, if they wanted to be. Calvert said this would work as long as the following key factors were included:

-    You have to be passionate about your efforts
-    You have to produce good content
-    You have to be willing to work hard

Find out more about how you can succeed in this industry by checking out what BlogWorld has coming in 2011.

Search engines make this determination through topic modeling. The search engines are even able to look at advanced queries and break them down to see which words are the most important out of a specific query.

Having this knowledge could be very important for SEOs, since it could let them know if they need to improve their content. For this reason, Rand Fishkin and the SEOmoz team developed a tool for doing just this called the LDA tool (Latent Dirichlet Allocation).

“Whenever we build, there’s no way it’s nearly as sophisticated as what Google’s using, but what we’re hoping is that maybe it can help people to analyze that and see if it’s a factor in their own rankings or on their pages,” Fishkin tells WebProNews.

The tool is free and is currently available in SEOmoz Labs. Fishkin says he does not know what the implications of the tool will be, but he believes the concept of it is, “a great thing for SEOs to be doing and thinking about more robustly…”

How would this information improve your SEO efforts?

If books continue to be relevant and are delivered on the right platform, she believes they will always have a place in society. While some people have criticized traditional books with the rise of the Kindle and the iPad, Gerstein says these new platforms have done wonders for the publishing industry.

“It’s given us a new medium to reach people,” she adds.

Social media has also impacted the publishing industry in a variety of ways. For starters, publishers have become more specific in regards to the content that is included in a book, since there are so many other outlets for it.

Also, the language that people use in social media and books is very different. Books are traditionally formal, whereas, social media is a more informal environment for conversation.

In terms of advice for bloggers hoping to land a book deal, Gerstein recommends concentrating on what your message is, what community you want to connect with, and what your platform is.

“It’s the people who have the platforms who are out there creating good content and bringing quality information to a community that we’re looking for,” she says.

This product is a B2B marketing solution primarily for senior level marketing executives. It helps them overcome 3 major problems. For starters, it helps them as they attempt to produce relevant content consistently.

Secondly, it helps marketers that are struggling to be truly relevant in their industry. The third way that Curata helps marketers is by helping brands be the first thing their customers think about in the morning.

As Major points out, creating content and curating it are two of the most important aspects of marketing. She says Curata allows marketers to do this and do it well.

Speaking on sitemaps specifically, Watlington tells WebProNews that people still do not understand how to use them, even though they have been around for 5 years. She has recently encountered multiple sites that have thousands of pages that are not getting picked up by the engines. The problem is that many of their pages have not even been visited.

To correct this, she suggests that site owners rethink their strategy for pushing content. In other words, it is better to have less content that is high quality and link-heavy, than to have lots of content that the spider cannot see.

Watlington goes on to offer advice for situations pertaining to when a company makes changes to its site. She says by pushing a sitemap with content that has new urls or urls that it wants to be found through 301 redirects, the company essentially makes the spider notice the changes faster. She compares this process to sending out change-of-adddress cards in bulk.

“One of the most important things is to use the sitemaps as a strategic tool, not as a blunt club,” says Watlington.

Sitemaps are very powerful and useful, if utilized correctly. Are you creatively using sitemaps to push your content?

On a side note, Watlington also advises marketers to make improvements to their site in order to take advantage of the “early bird” opportunities that will occur when the economy recovers completely.

Content is just one of the fundamental areas of SEO. Not only is the content itself important, but the structure of the content is also important. Bailey says content needs to be scalable, readable, and allow users to understand the content on the rest of the page by simply looking at the headline. This is significant because numerous studies show that the majority of people scan content instead of reading it.

There have been many recent debates pertaining to long content versus short content. People often say they tried blogging, Facebook, or Twitter and found that they didn’t work. However, Bailey believes users need to examine their efforts to see if they are utilizing them correctly.

“The what is going to change daily. The why will never change,” he says.

He goes on to say that if you have a purpose, the “what” doesn’t matter and can always be applied.

Marketers also struggle with the challenge of creating content for both users and search engines. Bailey says the key to this dilemma is in the analytics. For example, it is very possible to have the right ranking with the wrong page. As a result, marketers need to look at their analytics to see which metrics work. He tells WPN that marketers can celebrate when they determine what is profitable, not when they rank high.

Although there will be many more changes for SEO, the job of driving people to a destination will always be constant.

Are you focusing on getting the fundamentals right or are you distracted by the “shiny, new object syndrome”?

She goes on to say that writing content close to when it actually happens is fairly easy, thanks to Twitter and news feeds. In addition, there are numerous tools to distribute the content after it is created.

On a note of caution, Gannes points out that writers should not even bother with producing content if they cannot add any value. Since there is such an opportunity online to read content in aggregate, most writers aren’t able to draw individual readers unless they provide a very unique perspective.

Gannes also talks about the technical aspect of making content relevant. There are many sites popping up that take in multiple signals from users, such as their behavior and preferences, and use these signals to make recommendations for the users.

“Making content relevant is all about figuring out what signals matter and making use of them,” says Gannes.

Are you using signals to create relevant content?