Agarwal told WebProNews that he recommends a hub-and-spokes model for publishers. For instance, he said that publishers should use their blog to create a hub for its audience to comment and engage on. Furthermore, he believes they should use social media platforms as the spokes to draw people back to the hub.

He did warn that bloggers should be careful about over-syndicating since it could result in the audience never going to the hub. To avoid this, Agarwal told us that publishers should not syndicate their full content everywhere, and instead, focus it on niche audiences.

On another note, he said that Posterous was putting a strong focus on mobile because they believe it is directly related to the future of publishing.

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.

He told us that InMotion Hosting tries to encourage the ecosystem to keep processes simple. In addition, the company makes it a point to talk to its customers and recommend the best tools for their specific needs. According to him, it’s important for them to invest in their customers because, if they succeed, so does InMotion Hosting.

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.

In a study that InboundWriter conducted over the summer, Jay Baer of Convince and Convert actually saw a 33 percent increase in traffic to blog posts that were written using the tool as opposed to the 30 days before the posts were rewritten.

The app is also available as a WordPress plugin.

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.

As Art Neill, the Executive Director of NMR explains to WebProNews, the organization offers free legal assistance to people who create and share content online. It provides information related to copyright laws, online publishing laws, and more.

People often ask why they offer this assistance pro bono since there aren’t many attorneys involved in the space. According to Neill, NMR believes it is important to help startups, nonprofits, bloggers, and filmmakers know what their rights are online.

“They deserve a resource just like anybody else, so that they can spend their time creating, so that they can spend their time doing what they love to do,” he said.

NMR has a valuable resource on their website that includes many legal and technical “how-to” articles. People can ask them questions, and if they don’t have the answer, they will find someone who does.

To find out more about this informative public interest organization, visit their website.

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.

As he explains to WebProNews, these ways were buying advertising, the media, which he calls begging, and a sales force. These tactics work well for generating attention offline, but online, it’s a different story. Generating attention online requires marketers to create content just like a publisher.

Scott says the old rules make it hard to generate attention. However, the new rules allow any organization to earn attention, if it creates valuable information. He points out that organizations need to stop thinking like marketers, advertisers, and public relations specialists, and instead, think like publishers.

Once businesses create content, what can they then do to get people to share it? According to Scott, most companies talk about their product, which is not what users want to hear. He advises businesses to create content for their target market, or as he likes to call it, their buyer personas.

“It gets an organization away from talking about themselves in an egotistical way,” says Scott.

In reality, consumers only care about themselves and solving their problems. As a result, Scott suggests that marketers create individualized content for each of their buyer personas.

Once this is done, he recommends creating trigger points to encourage users to share. These trigger points could involve contests, humor, blog posts, videos, and many other ideas. If the content is good, then users will naturally share.

Lastly, Scott says marketers need to point users back to a place where some type of action can take place. Once again, as long as the content is valuable, it will draw users back to make a purchase.

Are you creating valuable content for your buyer personas?

Gordon goes on to say that sites like Facebook and Twitter provide an Internet experience that bombards users with information and data. She says this experience is very similar to consumers watching TV. With the Internet however, users can watch and create their own content, which allows them to impact the medium.

Gordon believes blogging is really the only format for saving and storing this type of content. As she tells WebProNews, “[With blogs] you’re kind of keeping that snow on the ground… you’re keeping things visible, you’re keeping them findable, you’re keeping them searchable, and you’re keeping them archival.”

In regards to the future of blogs, Gordon believes it is bright. As Facebook and Twitter continue to get more public, she says blogs will be a place where people have smaller communities. Although Twitter fulfills many user needs since it allows users to publish quick thoughts and ideas, Gordon points out that blogs also fulfill the needs users have to catalog, collect, reflect, and critique.

What are your thoughts on this debate?

As an experiment, Creative Loafing redesigned its Tampa alt-weekly website and brought in a new contributor model with community journalists. They recruited people that didn’t have a lot of professional training but people that were passionate.

The recruits covered local events and news and would sent their content to the professional writers. These professionals would then edit the content and put it on the site. In the end, Creative Loafing’s new strategy worked.

In order to be successful, Creative Loafing had to evolve with the changing times. Hammill says that content producers have to realize that the economic model that formerly provided revenue to newspapers, magazines, and alt-weeklies is not coming back. As a result, he advises content producers to find new sources of revenue by utilizing partnerships, sponsorships, and social media.

Oppelt adds his advice for content producers saying, “You cannot withstand change – you have to change.” He also says that publishers should re-evaluate their business model and staff.

What are you doing to adapt to this new era of publishing?

Last year, the FTC told the industry that it need to self-regulate. The Commission also said that it would step in with regulation if the industry did not do it on its own.

Many bloggers and others in the industry expressed concern about the potential government intervention since they feared the enforcement of the regulation would be difficult and not done right. Because content has exploded online and has been largely supported by online advertising, Mitchell said many have raised alarm out of fear of innovation being halted.

At this point, the government has been conducting roundtable discussions with publishers and advertisers to try to reach a solution.  In addition, the industry is scrambling to speed up self-regulation.

As for the future implications on online advertising, Mitchell actually sees a positive effect. He believes there will be an increase in targeted ads and the right balance between user transparency and control.

For offline publishers, one of the biggest online problem areas is headlines. As Marshall Simmonds of The New York Times and Define Search Strategies points out, some journalists have been specifically educated to write captivating headlines. While those headlines appeal to audiences passing by newsstands and street corners, they do not achieve the same success on the Web.

The search engines are looking for titles that are very literal, brief, and specific. Simmonds said his consulting firm is trying to essentially “undo” an approximated 154-year-old system. To reverse that system, offline publishers must change the way they think about writing in order to reach their audience. In addition, traditional media must understand who their audience is and what they are looking for.

Although traditional media still has a lot of catching up to do, the aforementioned statistics do shed a ray of hope on the industry. Also, since offline publishers seem to be embracing social media rather quickly, maybe there is a future for traditional publishers online after all.

Unlike the traditional search engines, these real-time search engines return the most current information from the Web in the form of blog content and comments, Twitter messages, images and video, social services, news sources, and more.

Why does our society crave this continuous stream of information? Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell told WebProNews that this need to publish and consume information actually goes back to ancient times.

“If you go back all the way to the progression of cave paintings through monks copying Bibles to Gutenberg’s press, we’ve seen an acceleration in the ability to publish information. In addition to that, we’ve seen an acceleration and a growth in people’s ability to consume information… now, we’re bringing together the ability for anybody to publish and for anybody to consume information.”

Despite all the perks of real-time search, the real-time search engines have their share of challenges to overcome. There are complaints that the results are not relevant and that they are filled with spam, among other things. While challenges are present, real-time search is still in the early stages and Google, Facebook, and users still express strong interest in the area.

Where do you think real-time search will lead us going forward? How will it impact the search industry?

Chris says traditional media is failing because it is not reaching the same audience that it used to reach. Instead, social media is reaching that mass audience. So, what impact does this have on publishers?

According to Chris, content producers need to target their content. He suggests making the content addressable because people want to be able to interact on a personal level.

What advice do you have for publishers trying to reach mass audiences? How can publishers make their content more personal?