Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

New Media Matchmaker Tool: Help a Reporter

Peter Shankman believes in helping reporters. Help a Reporter is a site that connects journalists with the sources they require. The site has already 12,000 members and is growing. [hat tip Karen Swim] To see how it works I signed up for Conversation Agent and for my day work - there is opportunity for journalists to tap me as a resource on marketing communications (including social media tools), customer dialogue and brand management as well as technology infrastructure and services (my current industry). Reporters can use a different form to submit their inquiries. When you sign up, you receive a... Read more →

My Birthday Wish

"If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?" [Søren Aaby Kierkegaard] [image courtesy of victor nuno.] [Technically, my birthday is tomorrow.] Read more →

Connecting the Dots on Social Media and the Future

Today I thought of sharing a few reflections in loose form, stream of consciousness. I will attempt to connect a few dots about the future of marketing with you. What's next? The future is not more of the past, of what worked. Even if it is still working a little bit today, it will soon be quite obsolete in every regard. You know that as a consumer, yet the leap has not quite been made by marketers. Why? First off, a few questions: When was the last time you felt engaged with a product or service as a direct and... Read more →

We Talk and Learn by Story

Is your marketing reflecting that? Is it, in the words of my friend Peter, authentically human? Today I wanted to take you down memory lane and think with you about brand stories that work. It has been now over a year since I published a two-part interview with Stories that Work founder and principal Gerry Lantz. Gerry just wrapped up a very large project with me. During our collaboration, I had the opportunity to think more about story and its connective properties. In part one we discuss how an amazing thing happens with brands over time, the product values transform... Read more →

How to Give a Presentation and Change the World

| View | Upload your own We give presentations throughout our lives - at anniversaries, birthdays, awards, dedications, commencements, eulogies, farewells, fund raising events, meetings, retirement parties, questions and answers sessions, toasts, trade shows booths, conferences, as part of panels, as impromptu speeches, even introducing speakers. One could consider the famous elevator pitch a presentation. There are many ways to present and many styles - as many as there are individuals. From the title on, you can be irreverent, if you want. Be funny. Be daring. Just, please, don't be boring. To be or not to be Is not the... Read more →

Three Reads on Change

"Change is the only constant." [Heraclitus] In a ChangeThis manifesto, Michael Kanazawa puts forth that people do not hate change, they hate how you're trying to change them. Employment surveys reveal that the top reason good employees leave companies is over a lack of new opportunities and boredom with stagnant, never-changing, dead-end jobs. What people hate are corporate change programs. Big ideas: Do more on less - that means more resources, more people, more management attention, on just the few most critical initiatives that will have the greatest impact on results. It’s about focus and prioritization. Is your goal to... Read more →

Inside Economist.com with Andreas Kluth and Daniel Franklin

I reached out to Andreas Kluth, Bay Area Technology Correspondent of Economist.com, after listening to one of his podcasts. Later, I learned that it was the first one he did. It did not surprise me that I had not noticed the podcast had been recorded a while back - digital records have a long memory, and the content was still very new and applicable. Andreas introduced me to Daniel Franklin, Executive Editor of The Economist and Editor-in-Chief of Economist.com. They both speak many languages - an already impressive skill - and have been very responsive and most kind with their... Read more →

Personal Brand Equity for Rent

Chris Brogan, one of my favorite conversationalists in social media, and a genuine, tech-savvy professional, recently talked about a topic that has been on my mind - personal brand equity. It was a conversation with Kat French that made me think of this concept of personal brand equity for rent. Why for rent? Because it's not for sale. Sorry, it used to be that way, not anymore. New generation, new habits All the articles and posts you read about talent being in demand are quite true. Many got the numbers wrong. I was reading a paper on Millennials by Porter... Read more →

The Usual Suspects

Inspired by the pages of Herd, a book about the hidden truth of who we are as penned by Mark Earls, I have been thinking about the usual suspects in a new light. You know, those elements of marketing, those untouchables in every circle, who are taken for granted as they are. That includes the celebrities and myths inside and outside organizations - the materials, which are often so immaterial to the end result. Stop talking, start doing You think you need something material to support making sense of what you're selling to the person who you think is doing... Read more →

Here is What is

This is the title of the latest album (and film) by Daniel Lanois. Its theme is about believing in yourself. Marketers and communicators can use some of that. Read these words with care - "if you do passionate work, it keeps chasing your around," is something he said at an interview at South by South West this year. It has been true for me. The more interesting the work, the more energy and passion I feel for joining projects that will give me greater opportunities to stretch. Lanois is the magic behind some of the greatest successes achieved by the... Read more →