Nanette Marcus: Would you recommend conversational marketing to your clients? Why or why not?

John Battelle: Absolutely. While traditional awareness and branding campaigns do well in blog- and community- driven environments, we've found that conversational creative -- campaigns that understand where they are, who they are talking to, and invite dialog -- do very well on Federated Media (FM) properties. Plus, audiences and authors alike respect the fact that the marketer is making the effort to understand the environment they are supporting.

Jackie Huba: For most companies, we would recommend it. Social media tools allow for employees to get more feedback from more customers more often than traditional feedback mechanisms, like yearly satisfaction surveys. This type of marketing also helps to create strong bonds of customer loyalty because customers have more opportunity to connect with employees one-to-one.

The only scenarios where I would not recommend this is if:
1) The company is very control-oriented and won't let critical content on exist on blogs, et cetera,

Or,

2) The company does not have the resources to actively write the blog or moderate the message boards, et cetera.

Tom Hespos: We would and we often do. The most compelling reason to recommend conversational marketing is that the broadcast model of communication is beginning to break down. Most people immediately recognize broadcast advertisements as such and most will immediately tune them out.

Yet, companies continue to spend money talking at people rather than conversing with them. What these companies need to realize is that there is an immense opportunity in adding a new conversational marketing strategy to their marketing plans.

If they take the time to listen and converse with people, the market will respond.

Mark Naples: I recommend conversational marketing, but only as an adjunct to well-executed stakeholder marketing. As a new segment of our industry, I regard what people now call conversational marketing from a somewhat jaundiced viewpoint.

Stakeholder marketing is how Washington-style public affairs campaigns have been managed for decades, with the idiom being that there are three dozen to 50 or so stakeholders in any vertical industry or influencer cohort that need to be inculcated toward your objectives.

Some practitioners call this idiom "No Surprise 35." If my client is willing to spend the time and effort needed to secure a critical mass from among these stakeholders, then conversational marketing makes sense. But, only then will I recommend it because only then can I assure them of some semblance of control. If you design and execute your stakeholder plan effectively, and you still don't feel as though you have the right kind of control, you'll never get it through conversational efforts, no matter how well-executed they are.

Anyone who has read Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" can probably recognize this. Malcolm cut his teeth in D.C., writing for The Washington Post. So, I should think he'd see this perhaps somewhat similarly.