With Borders bookstores closing, everything that’s left is being liquidated for 70 to 90 percent off. It’s a great deal if you’re looking for Twilight books or anything by or about Sarah Palin, but with the stores pretty well picked over you’ll have to sift through the rubble with a fine-toothed comb to find anything worthwhile.

One of my finds this past weekend was James P. Othmer’s Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet. Othmer writes about his big-agency experiences with honesty and humor.

I’m only about halfway through the book as I write this, but this bit is well worth sharing. It stems from a conversation Othmer has with Rick Webb and Benjamin Palmer, founders of The Barbarian Group, creators of the legendary subservient chicken. Webb is talking about branding and online gaming and Zipcar and such, and Othmer reports Webb saying this:

“When I think of ‘engagement’ and when I hear a CMO use it, I generally hear it in terms of time someone is thinking about my brand. I don’t hear it in the context of dialogue. We’re going to have to accept that this dialogue is more important than anything else. The dialogue is, in fact, the new brand. The way you converse and communicate with your consumers is your brand positioning.”

That last sentence may go a bit too far (there’s still a place for the product or service itself), but it’s also a fundamental truth about business today that speaks precisely to the pithy core of The Cluetrain Manifesto: markets are conversations.

How many companies pay close attention to every tiny aspect of their advertising … then virtually ignore the content of the email responses that customer service (or autoresponders) is sending out?

Companies are getting smarter about social media, but is that intelligence about using social media platforms as a broadcast channel or as a way to facilitate conversation?

Takeaway for marketers: We can never remind ourselves often enough that we’re not living in a broadcast economy anymore, we’re living in a conversation economy. Don’t stop listening.

If you’re in charge of managing a company’s Facebook presence, you’re probably struggling with the notion of what sort of content you should be posting. If you’re looking for some general direction, you could do a lot worse than to follow the advice that Kevin Otsuka gives to David Sedaris in the screen shot from Sedaris’ Facebook page, above.

Takeaway for marketers: It’s not about what you want, it’s about what your audience wants.

Mark the dates: October 1 and 2 at Temple University. Complete information is posted over here.

This will be the fifth Podcamp Philly. I attended the third in 2009, which at the time I called “easily one of the best professional events I’ve ever been to.” I went last year, too, and it was again an excellent event.

Takeaway for marketers: Go spend $1,495 to attend ad:tech and be annoyed by crowds and generic PowerPoint slides, or drop $20 to attend Podcamp and walk away with some valuable and actionable insights and information. Your choice.

Today, Social Media Examiner (a terrific site, by the way) posts a list of 13 Facebook marketing tips. They’re all good, and you should read the article and take all 13 to heart. But I’m adding one more:

#14 With Facebook, you’re one of a bazillion pages, so remember that you’re amplifying your message to your current audience and implementing a slow-growth strategy for expanding that audience.

Too many people are approaching Facebook marketing by thinking, “Oh, great, everyone in the world is on Facebook, so if I create my awesome branded page, everyone will check it out and I’ll increase my audience by a factor of a ton!”

No, not so much. The realistic way to approach Facebook marketing is to look at it as a way of amplifying your messaging to your current audience, and giving that current audience the tools to carry your message to their networks … which is something that happens slowly over time, not immediately over a day or two.

Remember, too, that your Facebook presence needs to be integrated with all your other marketing messaging. Just because you build it does not mean they will come; you have to guide them there.

Takeaway for marketers: Facebook is not a magic marketing bullet, and you shouldn’t look at it as such. It’s one more tool in your overall communications strategy.

The John Carter movie may be seven months away, but Disney is doing some really smart things to build awareness now.

Over on Huffington Post, this piece of “sponsor generated content” looks at “14 Incredible Fictional Worlds You’d Most Want to Visit.” It’s smart for two main reasons: (1) The content is structured exactly like so many other similar chunks of content on HuffPo, and (2) The content isn’t a screaming-loud irritation like they’ve done so often in the recent past. Indeed, Barsoom is just one of the 14 fictional worlds noted, so we’re looking at more of a soft-sell approach here.

Of course, the page has a coupla ads for the movie — which link to the John Carter Facebook page, which includes a countdown to opening weekend and a trailer. But again, the ads are nestled in the page content, not screaming at the page viewer. The overall effect is one of integration, not interruption. Beneath that trailer, by the way: Links to content that may not be directly relevant to selling a ticket to the John Carter movie, but that would possibly be of interest to someone who is also interested in John Carter. More smart soft sell.

I also love the fact that they lead with one of Frank Frazetta’s legendary paintings, though here’s a memo to either Disney or the HuffPo editor that posted this: It’s Edgar Rice Burroughs, not Edgar Riche Burroughs. You wanna fix that, please? Sheesh.

Takeaway for marketers: Take a look at the HuffPo link. It’s a great example of online advertorial content.