It’s this, and any marketing firm worth its salt should know it and tell you, although many don’t.

Today, the best marketing is all about building relationships by communicating value – and this means that communications are not linear but genuinely (not just nominally) a circle of talking, listening and responding. This simple tip can expand to include a whole range of marketing efforts. To start, marketing is not just about delivering messages, although that’s still a major part of it.

Marketing is a bigger deal than ever… but it has changed its stripes. It now includes outreach, support, conversation, customer service, technical support, training, and interaction. It encompasses accepting and integrating feedback from customers and influentials and then letting them know you did. It means providing information, resources and forums prospects and customers want. At its best, marketing now means – dare we say it – building a modicum of brand loyalty in an environment in which loyalty is nigh unto impossible to earn and equally hard to keep.

If your marketing is still all about telling, try completing a circle of communication in which  your company not only accepts but elicits feedback and ideas, provides support, hears and responds to needs, and in many ways talks with – not to – the people you need the most.

Easier said than done? Or course. But building relationships by providing and communicating value via a genuine circle of communication is one of the best ways your company can build a sphere of influence (no pun intended) and enhance its positioning in its industry.

We’re hiring. Just one position at present. The process has been interesting.

First off, we haven’t had as many applicants as usual, or as expected. We’re theorizing that people who have jobs are grateful to have them, and are avoiding the risks of moving on.

Among the applicants we’ve had, we’ve had several good ones, some okay and some… perhaps these few stand-out candidates were sent to us from “Hire the Unemployable.” We actually received a letter and resume from an applicant who mentioned, right up front, that he figured we were a#@h$les because we are located “in a good zip code” and that he wanted us to know (right up front!) that he would “speak his mind and not put up with any b#$llsh#t.” Hey! When can you start??

Others have made it to the interview, only to let us know one or more of the following:

1) they are trying to get an advanced degree in another specialty, to get out of this field because they’re tired of it

2) they have a strong interest in moving out of the area soon

3) their previous employers were fools (“The last guy always wanted me to look busy! Are you going to do that?”)

A tip for these job hunters: The interviewer is not your pal! Why are you telling her these things?

My sister Jen, who works in the education and job training field, says that, in addition to the many people laid off for purely economic reasons, employers may have used this recession as a way to clean house, thus releasing some loose cannon types into the environment.

Hiring is not for the timid. It never is. But weeding out some of the people you don’t want to face every morning is getting easier all the time. I guess it’s my turn to be grateful… for that at least.