“An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public.” – Maurice Chevalier, Born Sep. 12, 1888.

A business has a conversation with the market, and with its prospects, and with its customers. That's what marketing and advertising and selling IS: a conversation.

Social media and Internet-based marketing in general has only just now made it fast enough for regular people to realize it for what it always was.

An ad floats an idea. Customers and prospects respond. The conversation continues.

They buy, the product arrives, they use it. The conversation continues.

They like the product and come back to buy more, responding to subsequent advertising. The conversation continues.

The moment you think of customers only as numbers, stats, dollars – anything but people – you're dropping the ball.

They are people. With needs and wants and dreams and feelings. With families and jobs and mortgages and bills.

And every little interaction with them is a continuous, uninterrupted conversation. About their problems, and your solutions, and whether or not you care and are capable of delivering what you promise as part of that conversation.

Lose the thread, and especially now with how the web works, and the conversation can get away from you. It can be taken by disgruntled clients and customers and used against you, even while shutting you out from participating any longer.

So keep this always in mind. Everything you post or publish or send or produce – it's a message that invites a response. It's part of the conversation. Sometimes what you DON'T communicate can even be part of the conversation.

Be aware of it, and you're most of the way to being in control of it. And control of the conversation is how we make money.