Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

You Know You're Spending too Much Time on Twitter When...

You think @ChrisBrogan is a Mayor Your emails are 140 characters long You write @Mom You are actually paranoid about NOT being followed You look forward to summer so you can hang out on TweetDeck You don't understand why your company event is not being tweeted You find out you have been appointed to a vacant Senate seat before the Governor has called you You have a framed picture of your avatar on your desk instead of your kids You find out that "tweet" has nothing to do with ornithology Encountering the "fail whale" makes you want to join Greenpeace... Read more →

Top Ten Reasons Why You're not a Leading Brand

The difficult economic conditions and the world events we are experiencing can be both a burden and an opportunity. This is the time you have been waiting for to step forward and unleash your potential. As we continue to talk about social media and leading brands; we continue to see that marketers are enamored with shiny objects; free has become a vehicle to do more of the same; and we are fast approaching the end of the year, I wanted to share with you the top ten reason why you're not a leading brand: (1) you don't listen aggressively Some... Read more →

Social Media and Marketing: Alan Wolk

You are probably aware that recently the discussion on pay-per-post ignited again. There is a fascinating need to keep things separate - social media and earnings. Yet, there are many who are working with social media to make a living. For many years I curated the readers' network of Fast Company magazine. With help - at some point we even had a nice group of volunteers, then life separated us - I put together around 100 free events. It was a lot of work. If you have organized events you know it is. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get... Read more →

The Future of the Internet

Will it be more like reality TV? Or will it be like a patch? [deployed over several days by The Global Internet Engineering Security and Operations communities: Red are vulnerable domains, green are protected] Your ability to forecast is important for shaping the future. In fact, the ultimate criterion for a successful forecast is whether is helps people make better decisions. I used to forecast products we imported. Trust me, you learn to know your numbers - no product, no sales, no profit and no growth. Not good. When we think about the future, what we are doing to some... Read more →

Trust

According to the entry on wikipedia, trust is a relationship of reliance. It does not need to involve belief in the good character, vices, or morals of the other party. And it does not need to include an action that you and the other party are mutually engaged in. In fact, trust is a prediction of reliance on an action, based on what a party knows about the other party. In sociology (and psychology) the degree to which one party trusts another is a measure of belief in the honesty, benevolence and competence of the other party. Based on the... Read more →

Are You Preparing for the Future?

Steve Rubel points out an article by Mike Elgan on how media companies have only themselves to blame. I found this statement in Mike's article to be especially relevant to the current business discussion: Newspapers hawked their future in order to invest in the past. Those acquisitions were all about buying up antiquated companies who viewed their industry as a machine that converted trees into money, rather than as creator of content. Every company that has been in business for a while is being dragged kicking and screaming into this new digital age. Digital is a new way of thinking... Read more →

He Who Tells the Story Best Wins

There is truth to that. And maybe there are a thousand variations of telling the story best. With social media, you have the long tail effect. Applying the concept to your content or stories - given a large enough availability of choice - for example the content of a blog - a large population of customers - virtually everyone online who is conducting a search - and negligible stocking and distribution costs (online) - social network mechanisms engage to help spread your content. That is if the content appeals and is useful to someone. I searched for my blog's name... Read more →

FriendFeed: the Friends of Friends

One of the aspects I love most about being online is the spirit of community that comes across in conversations - even as we talk with perfect strangers. There are plenty of strangers in my FriendFeed - mostly friends of either Robert Scoble or Mariela de Marchi (on the other side of the pond). Both Scoble and de Marchi are curious and interested and so are their friends. And that is good for me. I am contradicting a point I listed a long time ago, one that got Stephen Baker's attention at Business Week. Sales as pull-only has its allure,... Read more →

Is There Life After Marketing?

It's that time of the year when companies are generally in one of two speeds: (1) use it or lose it, the budget; (2) slow down, the year is done. With the economy slowing everything down, in fact some things to almost a grinding halt, we are left with number 1. And if you are a marketing (or a communications) professional you know what or rather who is number 1 - it's not you. Social media and your networks can help This is an opportunity to regroup and take stock. I promise this one is a very good investment. The... Read more →

Change the Conversation, Change the Game

It doesn't matter where you see yourself fit in the hierarchy or, if you're lucky, the ecosystem. Public relations, marketing, social media communications - we're all in the business of understanding each other and what we want and need and by doing that transforming what is now into what is next. This is the time of the year when we begin to look back at the predictions for 2008 and put a stake in the ground for trends we see for 2009. Stakes are good, they allow us to focus on what we commit to. However, I would suggest that... Read more →