Our media strategies editor follows up last week's column with a review of possible methods for integrating the three truths of advertising.

In my column last week, I laid out what I see as the three primary truths of modern advertising. Each of these truths is articulated in three different books I regularly recommend. 

Last week's column focused on some thoughts about how to keep the truth of selling a primary point of consideration when putting together an advertising plan.

This week, I want to suggest some methods for addressing -- and challenges facing -- the most elusive and most recently arrived truth of advertising; that is, the truth of "marketplace as conversation."

Advertising has always been about persuasion, yet it is frequently delivered to us as a command or as a surreptitious play on our subconscious that looks more like mind control than rhetorical discourse.

Those of us in online media have been so used to the two-way, lean-forward nature of advertising conducted in the space that we almost take it for granted. Starting with audiences exposed to an advertising message being able to respond to that message via clickable text links, marketers -- unwittingly or not -- were inviting consumers to speak to them and, for good or ill, tell them what they think.

There are savvy marketers who have long been using online media and getting it to yield the best it has to offer. They've taken advantage of the two-way nature of the medium and have engaged their audiences in conversation. 

But much of marketing continues to be one-way. And even in online, our taking the conversational aspect of advertising there for granted has led to losing sight of just what is possible when the people marketers want to talk to are allowed to talk back.

Make it easy
Clickthrough URLs are an easy-to-find form through which one can submit his or her email address and visitors can contact you about your product or service, even if the response is delayed.

These are all bare essentials. And yet there are plenty of companies (online publishers included) that leave visitors with no clear means of making contact. Having to dig through the posted 10K filling, if it is posted, to find an address does not leave one with a good feeling. Don't be afraid of simplicity in direction and identification.

Many of us expect people to be available via Blackberry, cell phone, home phone and email. The companies that expect to have relationships with us should be, too.

Letting go... but not entirely!
The biggest challenge facing marketers in this era of the marketplace is that conversation actually lets the other person say what they want. How do we get companies comfortable with letting go control of the conversation? Should they? How does an advertiser protect itself from unreasonable assault without killing the potential for its own buzz, and without extracting the authenticity of the conversational engagement?

Treat it like you would a business conversation. There are plenty of people in sales who, while trying to converse with someone about their product, have had the experience of being told their product (and/or they themselves) suck. People are rude. Should that rudeness be tolerated? No. Authentic conversation maintains respect, and enforcing it in your marketplace is reasonable. If you give your message over to your audience, be prepared to monitor it. DO NOT CENSOR! But also, DO NOT SURRENDER CONTROL!

If you are going to converse with your market, you have to be prepared to remain engaged. If they get bored, find what entices them, or let them go. But if they get nasty, remind them of their manners.

I predict this is going to be a business opportunity (and already is for a select few). Companies can either staff someone whose responsibility it is to monitor and converse with their audience, or they can get specialists to do it for them; to manage the processes and institute controls and enforce the rules of engagement. Agencies can develop this as a service offering. 

Letting people talk back, take your message and make it their own, and create their own content, is fine. But a greater degree of consumer control does not mean that we have to tolerate anarchy. XLNTads is an example of a company that will do this for marketers in the UCG video space.  

Keep it up
You have to remain engaged. A conversation is something that is alive, in motion and keeps going until it is over. You need to decide how long you want the conversation to be. Depending on the nature of the relationship your product or service requires to be meaningful to someone, the conversation may never end. Be prepared for that.

There isn't always something to say
Some products and services simply don't lend themselves to conversation, though every one of them should give it a go. But sometimes there isn't anything to say. While there could be a great deal to say about Staples as a resource, there probably isn't a lot to say about binder clips. 

And sometimes a comment doesn't always need a response. If you've ever stood in the quad in college amidst a collective of idealists, all of varying stripes, you've come across the person who says something to bait the debating opponent, to fluster them and throw them off and get them to say something they might not mean, will regret later, or both. This will happen with a marketplace conversation, too. 

Or maybe someone just wants to be heard while not wanting to engage in discourse. This means they don't want you to bombard them with messages after they've reached out to you. A modest acknowledgement of their outreach is all that is necessary.

Like any conversation, knowing when to keep quiet is just as important as knowing what to say.

Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas is vice president and director of online media for ICON International Inc., an Omnicom company. Read full bio.