A freind of mine named Kameran Ahari wrote a great piece the other day on the power of Word of Mouth marketing.  His focus was Obama's "1984 Attack Advert" targeting Hilary.

Check it out here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo

A few things that are quite interesting:

A.  Hilary (like a successful small business owner) is taking a very conversational approach to her campaign.

B.  Both political and business conversations are driven by motives to sell (which is OK).

C.  The web is increasingly the platform of choice (among politicians and small business owners) for engaging in conversations to sell things.

D.  It's easier for a politician (with professional IT resources) to engage conversations on the web than it is for a small business owner (with no IT resources).

F.  Tools like www.bttradespace.com will shift this balance over time by providing small business owners a truly simple mechanism to leverage the web to facilitate conversations.

I am not prepared to cast any judgement on Hilary or Oama.  But what i can say for sure is that the power of conversational marketing is real -- and that small businesses will increasingly use it to their advantage.