Yesterday I spent the day at a small conference here in Columbus put on by Ohio Web Leaders. They'd asked me to come and speak about blogging for business and blog marketing to a mix of small business, PR types and in-house marketers. Now I always try to break things down into every day life examples, but thanks to an off handed comment about Nutella, I had a chance for a great object lesson.

During a morning session on social media and social networks, Bill Balderaz of The Buzz Saw shared some information about different companies that had collected followers on Facebook. One of the companies he mentioned was Nutella, which currently has just under 140,000 fans on Facebook. What's interesting is that Bill made an offhanded comment about not even knowing what Nutella was, which sparked a conversation among the attendees. We explained that it was a dreamy chocolate-hazelnut spread. Then he asked what you did with it, and I told him I eat it with animal crackers, but in Europe, they melt it and put it on crepes and ice cream. The conversation lasted about three minutes, and made for an interesting little aside.

As he continued in his talk, I had an idea of how to introduce an "object lesson" to my talk. So I snuck out the back door and drove down the street to a grocery store. Once I got there, I picked out two boxes of animal crackers and three jars of Nutella. (I couldn't buy two for the talk and not buy one for myself!)

We went to lunch and sat through a panel discussion on how companies are handling online marketing in-house. By the time I got up to give my talk on blogging, nearly everyone in the room had forgotten about our little Nutella conversation.

During the course of my talk, I shared some insight into pitching bloggers. I talked about the need to research the blogger, to read their blog, to follow them on social networks and to get a feel for who they are. I talked about how to put pitches together and the differences in pitching men and women. I explained the concept of women as "gatekeepers" of their relationship and the need to equip them to spread the word instead of asking them to share their contacts with you.

Then I moved on to tracking the conversation about your company online. I shared a little bit of insight into free tools like Technorati and Google Alerts and how you can set them up to trigger emails to you whenever someone mentions your company or your product. Then the object lesson began.

Here's a recap of what I shared...

If I'd had time to take the example further, I might have brought out a case of Nutella and a family size bag of animal crackers and explained that if I wanted to reach Twitter users or "geeks" I'd suggest they throw a party and let me provide the Nutella and cookies.

The example made for some laughs (and gave me an excuse to buy some Nutella) but it also drives home a solid point. Most of the people in the room listened to Bill's little aside about Nutella that morning and thought nothing more of it. As a marketer, my brain immediately said "well geeze, Nutella needs to get in touch with Bill and have him try the product."

Of course it's important to note that this type of marketing isn't just about scoring blog mentions these days. Twitter has created a conversational environment free of the "I need a topic" constraints of blogging. That means even if Bill didn't blog about how much he loved the Nutella, there was as chance he might Twitter about it.

Considering I've already headed off to Etsy this morning to purchase some "Fat Daddy" Cupcakes simply because I saw someone Twitter about how fantastic they are, I can see the power of the potential cross-over conversation. In fact, if you go and look on Tweetscan to see who has mentioned Nutella in twitter posts in the last few days, you'll see a wide range of conversation. You'll also see how the conversation spreads among users.

It's easy enough to write off those passing conversations as something that doesn't matter. It's easy enough to focus only on the negative or positive comments and to try and follow-up with them. In reality, each and every mention of your company online is a chance to make an impact. Taking a few minutes to find out the context of the conversation and the reach of the writer can go a long way toward helping you find an opportunity to gently plug your product online.