I’ve noticed at many of the conferences and events I’ve attended, the same question always comes up: how do you get people to contribute content to your platforms?

If you’re reading this, you’re already aware of the great content on our blog – but did you know that both our readers and contributors are global, we’re posting relevant and engaging content at least three times a week on average, and to top it off, we have about 8-10 new stories in the pipeline at all times? I like to think that’s pretty impressive, especially considering how busy our consultants are on a daily basis. (Unofficial Proof: did you see this fun study that said the marketing/public relations industry has the second-highest proportion of workers who say they need coffee to power through the workday?)

So what’s the secret? Make it as easy as possible for people to contribute to your blog.

While I can tell you that getting this level of engagement for Hypertext means that those of us on the editorial planning side have to do a bit more work (we initially had to create a strategy, draft submission guidelines, and share lots of knowledge about what makes a good blog post, on top of the outreach we do to get contributors), the enthusiasm we receive every time we reach out to someone to write is well worth it.

So, with your strategy and plan in place, here are my top ten tips for sourcing content ideas:

1. You probably are already reading the news every day – is there a recent story affecting your industry that you or one of your internal experts can share an opinion on?
2. Any time someone attends an industry event, ask him or her to share their takeaways in a post – or, sync up with them beforehand and see if they can draft a post about what they’re most looking forward to.
3. If your company publishes research, white papers, or any other sort of report, look for a way to take that content and turn it into a blog post or two – perhaps it’s a matter of shedding perspective on why you chose to tackle that research, or maybe you can break up the white paper into pieces that serve as little snippets of helpful content for your readers.
4. People love lists (just like this!). Can you create a list of benefits for doing something, a list of tips for people using your product, or even a list of recent industry links that you’re reading?
5. Conduct an interview with someone within your company. This is a great tactic for engaging someone with an interesting position who might not be comfortable drafting content themselves.
6. Tap in to the expertise of your company’s HR, marketing, finance or sales teams. Ask them to draft a post talking about how their work relates back to the company’s goals and objectives.
7. People love how-to posts (almost as much as they love lists!) – can you create a video or a step-by-step tutorial on how to use one of your products or services?
8. Take one of your company’s recent press releases and drill it down into two jargon-free paragraphs explaining its significance.
9. Has someone in your company done a presentation recently? Take their slides and share them on the blog, or ask them to draft a short post on what they presented on and why it’s important.
10. Pull questions and content from existing forums – look for questions on LinkedIn or Quora worth posing to your readers, or perhaps there is a customer service inquiry posted on your company forum that you can use as the basis of a post. And when in doubt, use your Facebook or Twitter following to your advantage – ask a question of your followers, and share their responses in a post.

Considered analysis and commentary is critical. 140 characters forces brevity and, frequently, superficiality.

Look at today’s tragic earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. I learned of the ‘quake through a post from my Uncle on Facebook. I went to twitter and saw a raft of RTs and links to mainly mainstream media channels. To find out what had happened I looked to blogs, mainstream media, radio and news sites in particular. I wanted to go beyond the headlines and sought out channels that were able to frame the story, provide context and give me a level of qualified detail that short form social networks couldn’t offer.

I think what the New York Times has identified is perhaps a decline in traditional personal blogging. But, in doing so, must make us question precisely what traditional blogging actually is. Is Hong Kong’s NeonPunch a blog? Or is it a news outlet? Is Tumblr a blog? A microblog? These channels have much in common with blogs as we knew them.

And what of the enterprise? I feel corporations, too, are undergoing a blog-inspired evolution. We’re gradually seeing companies such as Alibaba.com through its Alizila news site communicate in real language and offer objective commentary and news that can be commented upon and shared.

But more to the point, does it even matter? Blogging has given us a form of expression to which Facebook and twitter owe a great debt of gratitude. The consumers have spoken. They want personal opinions and they want to be able to share and comment. These attributes were at the heart of blogging long before before the first tweet was tweeted nor the first question posted on Quora.com.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the death of blogging have been greatly exaggerated. Blogs – and more critically the communications revolution they inspired – will be with us until people decide they no longer want long form articles to read, share or comment upon. And I for one hope that’s a day we’ll never see.

- Cross-posted from http://publicrelationships.blogspot.com

But don’t just take our word for it. Jeanette Gibson and John Earnhardt from Cisco’s PR team (disclosure: Cisco is a Text 100 client) recently caught up with JD Lasica of the SocialMedia.biz blog to talk about how Cisco uses video. Earnhardt says:

“The return on investment for using video is a no-brainer. If you factor in the cost of the camcorders and training time, the ROI is 4 cents per video view and dropping. The real hurdle is just starting [the process]: getting the camera, teaching people how to get the video up on the Web. The real message is just to go out there and do it.”

Watch Alyssa Weir, a Textie in Rochester, share her thoughts on why video is a great PR tool as well as some of her favorite video blog examples. Lastly, don’t get bogged down with developing an overly-polished video strategy or waiting on professional production. As Earnhardt suggests, just get out there and start experimenting!