social media explorer

There exists a bit of a strange symbiosis between bloggers and blogging networks in social media these days. Many bloggers are moving toward the economy of free, leaving advertisements off their blogs, positioning themselves as thought leaders and funneling resulting inquiries to their main line of business. Several bloggers are vehemently anti-advertising. Yet many of those very same would love to be associated with a blog network. For those authors not only have the advantage of built-in networks of affiliate site traffic, but those bloggers are normally getting paid.

We caught up with Neil Chase from Federated Media at South by Southwest (SXSW) last week and asked some of the basic questions to discover what FM is and what they provide. There are advertising opportunities available there to reach targeted, niche audiences, as well as broad ones, depending upon your target audience. Neil also tells us what he, as VP of Author Services, looks for in a blogger to bring into the fold. Hopefully, this will give some of you younger bloggers an idea of where you need to be before the big boys come a callin’.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J1lPtTEgX8[/youtube]

And for disclosure sake, I am not with Federated Media nor any other advertising network and no, Neil didn’t make any offers while we talked off-line. I’m at the 1,000 page views a quarter pace right now.

[tags]Neil Chase, Federated Media, blogging networks, advertising networks, blog advertising, paid blogging, blogs, bloggers[/tags]