Steve the "conversation" as such is all and none of these conversations. It is kind of like the main feed of twitter, it is a conversation, but a conversation made up of many smaller conversations. Or in other words the conversation is as a whole what everyone is saying about your business.
As such only some of this conversation you are going to hear or read, and a smaller portion actually have any input in. This is also where i disagree with you Phanio, while i do agree that listening is a very important role for anyone in business to play, i do not think that you should let your customers redefine your identity. If i was to listen to my customers in this way, my business identity would be redefined from a provider of quality products and services, to Mr. Crazy Low price Computers. If i listened and acted on what i hear, i would be selling everything under cost, and providing services for nothing because i sold the product and should show them how to read the user manual. This may be an extreme, but it is essentially what i would be leaving open to happen. So as it happens to maintain a profitable business, you do have to ignore some of the conversation about your business, or the industry you are in, in general.
While it may be true to some extent that unless you give the customer what they want you wont have any customers. You cannot blindly walk into giving the customer what they want without considering the impact on your own business. So if you do listen and provide in explicitly, you may actually have no business to build an identity around because you have gone broke.
Where i am starting to see this is coming to its own is in the fact that you need to have a balance, between giving information to build the conversation, and then listening to the conversation and taking what you need from it.
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