Here’s what Kent asked to help prepare for an upcoming presentation to major corporate ‘C’ level folks:

…what would you say (or do) to this audience that would hasten the future of small media? What big idea would you posit to get these very high level people to open up their checkbooks and start spending more in this space? How do you convince them it窶冱 not a fad?…

I think it’s awesome that Kent opened up the conversation: and the responses are all worth reading and thinking about.

Here’s my response:

that the rules of communication have changed: there are so many messages that even the most wired people have to walk away - when people walk away, don’t you want them to be carrying ‘you’ in their minds? don’t you want them to feel related? don’t you want them to sense that your product/service/message is a missing part of their life? don’t you want them to trust you?

thanks for the post and the comments - all great food for thought.

How would you answer the question? Please do head on over to Kent’s post and let him know.

and actually, the existence of this whole exchange is a symbol of the way things have changed. What I think remains the same is that it all starts with a story…

This notion has been percolating and is based on a feeling, not rigorous research - I’d love to hear what you think…

I read this comment by Scot Duke | January 7, 2008 1:40 PM, on a post by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb, one of my favorite blogs, entitled “Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond” :

…I still would find it hard to believe that any business would totally ignore any opportunity to market to a new audience. It comes down to offering a safe quality environment for social media…

I started thinking: what does a safe, quality environment for companies look like, when it comes to social/new media? Is it easier for companies to feel that they control the message that’s going out in a video, or videocast, or podcast, so that there’s at least the ‘gloss’ of a guideline for what’s coming back in?

Perhaps these tools can help individuals and companies to reach out to an audience as a kind of bridge between:
pure social media(e.g., social media sites like Mixi and Facebook).
and
traditional media (newspapers, TV, magazines, radio) the comfortable and expensive outreach to a mass audience that may or may not care about the message…

In other, still musing, words: control of the quality of the message (because a blog, video, or podcast is being offered to the audience) feels more possible than in a social media channel, where it feels a bit less possible to control at least the offering, if not the response.

This is clearly not a clearly formed thought

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oh, I’m posting this Technorati Profile for a bit of tinkering under the hood.