Why Marketers need People Media

Had to miss the Dan Rather interview Keynote to catch a conference call, but I’m back for this social media panel. This is a perfect intersection with my day job.

>Panel Link<

John Battelle Chairman & Founder, Federated Media Publishing
Toni Schneider Automattic Inc

More Stream of consciousness notes after the jump

Dictation vs. Conversation. The architecture of participation has changed.
The role of ads in blogging is amorphous. Toni says there has to be something better than just ads on a blog.

If it’s commercially driven, you need an author, and audience, and an advertizer. A three-way victory must happen.

Fed Media will not allow an ad to run without the approval of the author of the site.

Marketers want safety and scale. Googe became a big brand because it was conversational. It’s also not a :30 spot with a big media buy (write once, read many), it’s doing the same process on a small scale over and over.

Symantec has a content-driven ad, available through Federated Media, that creates a little wrapper for a blogger’s content via RSS… within the ad itself. The example

When the public sees you respond to them, positively, they respond positively.

Battelle notes that companies/marketers don’t need a blog, they need a voice.

Pay-per-post (blogger-written posts that are paid content for a product) and Blogvertorials (marketer-written osts that are put online by the blogger within the blog) are a hot topic.