Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Media for Government conference in Ottawa. The event was put on by the Advanced Learning Institute out of Chicago (organized by master conference planner Kelly Flynn) and, as always, was a great success with an excellent line-up of speakers.

In my presentation, “The Moving Conversation”, I explained the Planting Seeds concept and used this high school analogy to get the message across.

Think of the web as two parts, the first being your website and the second being your web presence. While it’s no doubt important to have a proper home base, that being your website, it’s an unreasonable expectation to wait for people to show up there. With millions and millions of websites and networks having generated billions of pages of content (and counting), you have to move the conversation from beyond your four digital walls, get out there and network.

Same thing if you’re a teacher. Think of the classroom as the teacher’s website and the rest of the school as her extended presence. In the classroom - like you with your website or blog - the teacher is the expert and the lesson goes according to her plan. Students can add their two cents by raising their hand, just as visitors to your blog can by leaving a comment. But whether the students are engaged in the content is another story. Maybe some are, but others may not be.

To get her message across, sometimes the teacher has to get out of the classroom. She has to look for her students on their turf and speak to them on their terms. And, further, each student may have a different hang out. So, if the teacher wants to spend time with a jock, she’ll have to get the gym. With a geek, maybe she’ll want to get to the chess club. You get the idea.

Point being, if the teacher doesn’t leave her classroom, get involved with students in a different way and find different methods to engage them, she may never be able to get through to them.

And the same is true for you and your customers. It’s up to you to extend your online presence and find different ways to speak with your audience. In other words, get out there, plant seeds and wait for each one to grow.