Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

The 4 A's of Blogging

In a recent interview at the Buzz Bin, Geoff Livingston and I talked about success, business, networking and blogs. As I shared with Geoff, I believe that -- Relationships make the world go around and my posts are all about people grappling with them. Whether the relationship is to a new idea, implementation, pattern I observed, or with each other. Sales and profit are outcomes of all those activities, just like you network is the outcome of reaching out to others. I post both about small changes in thinking that can shift the way you do things for the better,... Read more →

Do You Know What You're Missing?

Companies have been saying they make strides to join the new conversation. Some even designate someone to monitoring the blogosphere for mentions of their name. As we continue to talk about the impact of social media, citizen marketers, customer engagement, and employee empowerment we almost believe our own words. All of these initiatives are just buzz words. I'm saying this for good reason; I've seen it on the inside and the outside of organizations. It's Your Ship, but you Choose to Miss the Boat A few years ago, our business group, Fast Company readers' network, had the opportunity to host... Read more →

Being a 10

In this case it's about the Broad Street Run, a 10-miler that takes you the whole length of Broad Street in Philadelphia, wraps around City Hall, and ends at the Navy Yard. This was my third year participating, and I noticed that every year the crowd grows -- both those who run and those who cheer. It's a good distance, and a good run for groups of friends. We had a perfect day and a slow subway ride; both contributed to my awesome performance of less than 10 minutes per mile. Weather-wise, it was windy and cool enough. Because a... Read more →

Of Brands, Blogs and Awards I Sing

Actually I write, but given that it is Friday and we've had such a delightful week, there is a skip in my step -- and I hope yours. You've read it often here I have a split personality. It showed up again at the Blogger's Choice Awards, two different people nominated me in two different categories: marketing and business. I'm really, really grateful and flattered that you are finding our conversations useful and look forward to serving this readership more in the future. If you wish to vote for ConversationAgent.com, my marketing and preferred category, you may do so by... Read more →

Customer Service is the New Marketing

Every time a brand suffers it's because of a bad experience. That can happen on many fronts: when you call a company; when you apply for a job at a company; when you talk to someone working at company "x" and they have less than stellar things to say. I spend a lot of time talking with people everywhere and the stories are so consistent that I started considering an innovative idea. What if customer service were the new marketing? We hear about word of mouth and viral marketing, we know that interruption marketing is broken and we are still... Read more →

No Advertising... and Thriving, Retail Style

Most department stores use a matrix of good, better, and best for merchandising. For example in dinnerware they will have a low, middle, and high price point in several styles to choose from. In the 80's specialty stores came along like the Gap, Staples, etc. trying to dominate in one category. The core of Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie stores is the idea of cutting across demographics. To do that successfully, they create an environment based on how their customers want to live. The difference between Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie is who the core customers are. Urban Outfitters is targeted to... Read more →

The Key to Risk Taking is How You Handle Failure

First you have to find the problem. If there is no problem then it doesn't matter what solution you have. Tom Mendoza is President of NetApp (Network Appliance), a technology company that specializes in advanced network storage and disk recovery. This is the story he shared with us last evening. Let's take a look at the impressive numbers NetApp posted before the tech stock market crash. The company went from zero to 1 billion in 6 years, and has grown to 3 billion in revenues. From 1998 to 2000, it grew an astounding 22,500%. Then 9/11 happened. In 2001, nobody... Read more →