Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Are You Just Checking the Box on Conversation?

Back in March I wrote about the second project by Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan - The Age of Conversation 2. At the time, we discussed the very premise of the book, which is why don't they get it? It remains to be defined who "they" is. The new effort, which saw the collaboration of 237 professionals, is available for purchase now at Lulu. Pricing for The Age of Conversation 2 is: e-book: $12.50 ($10.00 going to charity) paperback book: $19.95 ($8.02 to charity) hardback book: $29.95 ($6.04 to charity) I have written out the price breakdown for a reason... Read more →

ROI Requires Focus

The point of all the activities that surround marketing is to win customers over, to have them choose you over the other company/product/service. Stephen Denny writes that you could be doubling your ROI by winning in the last three feet. I'll give you the punch line: it's all about focus on execution. This is particularly important when resources are scarce and times get tough. For your budget to be working - in funds and efforts - focus needs to come in at the moment of customer engagement, the point of influence. ROI was the topic of yesterday's Blog Council meeting... Read more →

Your Logo is a Symbol, Your Product Can Be a Social Object

On Monday I received an interesting package at work. It was actually three packages that seemed to be orchestrated to be delivered at different times - they all came together. Steve Rubel had reached out to me to ask permission to have the package delivered on behalf of Edelman's client, PepsiCo. By then, I had already read Seth's post, which has my full agreement. Yes, your brand is not your logo - the logo is a symbol... ... which can be a sign to indicate a story. Now, that is much more interesting to think about. When I saw the... Read more →

Social Capital and Trust

This week I wrote a post for Marketing Profs Daily Fix where I talk about Free 2.0, Sponsored by. I've been thinking about the current economic predicament, the all too familiar chain reactions in market slide, corporate downsizing, and SPA trips for the top echelons. Accountability doesn't go away when unrecognized, it just becomes more obvious and painful to the people it affects. Many of the current political discussions are also reaching a tipping point. More than conversations, they seem to have degenerated from statements, to sound bytes, to snarls - some of which will indeed bite back eventually. It... Read more →

We're All in Customer Service

If it's true that we're all marketers - as consultants, business owners, employees - it's also true that we're all in customer service. Except some of us have not realized that yet. The people who consume, use, mash up, build on our content, the human beings on the other side of a Twitter chat or a FriendFeed discussion are customers. Today someone can make a video explaining an idea, upload it to YouTube (4:32), and in less than two years have almost 7 million views and 7,371 comments. Michael Wesch, PhD is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State... Read more →

Media Models and the End of Broadcast Spend

In a comment to my last post, Barry Martin of communications design company Hypenotic, outlined a couple of issues that publications like AdAge are facing as members of the advertising establishment. In Barry's words: 1. You just gave strategic advice away for free. 2. You're basically suggesting they join the conversation, and thereby become part of what's going on. That's not their model, and the establishment doesn't want to admit the old model is crumbling until they have a clear strategy to monetize the next one. 3. One also gets the sense from your comprehensive post that anyone and everyone... Read more →

Dear AdAge, Here's How you Do Social Media

You took on the Power150 from ToddAnd, great. Now you've made it a list subject largely to the whims of Technorati and other tools that have no accountability to the community they purport to serve. You have an awesome group of professionals lined up in pecking order, which is really not a reflection of their skill or specialty. You are content to have the link back to the list and your site at their blogs, when present, and occasionally blast offers and pitches to them. In my experience, you don't answer emails, either. Isn't this sort of 1.0-ish? I'm not... Read more →

Analyze This

We've talked about measurement often. One aspect of measurement is the analytics component. I'd like to introduce you to Bryan Eisenberg, who provides the most useful advice on Google Analytics I have seen. Analysis is a process of breaking up a complex topic into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. It is one way of making sense of information and extrapolating observations we can utilize to take next steps. Many companies are still wrestling with making a business case for blogging and/or social media. When we're done talking about scenarios and what could go wrong, and why... Read more →

Organic Marketing

You are probably familiar with the terms search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) as they are defined for the interactive medium. In conversations at Marketing 2.0, I started to document a series of projects built on a new generation of online platforms. These kinds of Web properties are hybrid versions of portals, forum discussions, community destinations that are also part social networks. The reason why I define them as part of organic marketing is that their sustainability and value propositions are directly tied to participation. They are the new kind of interactive marketing, made interactive by both... Read more →

Connecting the Dots and a Heartfelt Thank you

Back in September, I asked several professionals I respect and read regularly if they'd be willing to write guest posts at Conversation Agent. What resulted was the most amazing collections of ideas and voices I could have dreamed of. In presenting the guest post series, I promised I would show you how those ideas and people were connected with me and with each other. When Things go Wrong by Geoff Livingston opened the series with an important statement - Crisis demands superior, thoughtful communications. Though we love to talk social media, in a crisis these principles hold true regardless of... Read more →