Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

5 Areas of Integration to go from Customer Conversation to Conversion

I've been thinking about the integration challenge with social media. Advertising, marketing, and public relations need to work together - and in this environment, they need to put the customer is the driver's seat. I'm sure you'll find reason to build on the analogy or help me rebuild it. With social media, new marketing means taking a look at how you design and build your whole business. We said before that execution is key to results. How do you get all your marketing communications working together to deliver performance? For starters you design a product or service the market wants... Read more →

Citizen Journalism

The following discussion was offered to me for posting by my friend Mario Vellandi. Rather than trying to editorialize the discussion itself, I'd like to offer a couple of thoughts before you read it and provide a wrap up - just like I used to do with the many events I hosted. We talked about citizen journalism and responsibility more than a year ago. The responsibility has not gone away and we have many more citizens who have been acting journalists - in Iran, in China, in many parts of the world. Some of us learned about Michael Jackson's death... Read more →

More Agent, a Little Less Conversation

I have a bias for action, always have. This need to do is becoming particularly obvious at this time, especially with all the talk that goes on. We think together a lot, more ideas bubble to the surface, more desire to see something good done. We live in an age where there should be no excuses, no reasons why we cannot act - on our dreams, on our work, on making something amazing happen. That is why it's all the more disappointing when companies do not embrace the tools to lean forward into the issues, communicate better, more effectively, with... Read more →

The Answer to How is Yes

Because she used to work in advertising sales, my mother often asked for directions when going to see a new customer in a less known town. One time she approached a traffic cop with the question. He patiently explained were she was to turn and go. When he was done, he asked her if she understood and remembered the directions and she said she did. His next question was - tell me how I get there, then. She stumbled through several corrections and had to redo a couple of times, but eventually she was able to repeat it. That was... Read more →

The Agency Side of Business: Shiv Singh, Razorfish

The first time I had a chance to meet a Razorfish team in late 2000 and was impressed by their ideas. Shiv Singh and I crossed paths early on in my blogging and I've been reading his work since. He just announced the launch of Fluent, the Social Influence Marketing report. There are some interesting observations in the report, some of which I will need to think about. I would be really interested in David Alston's and Olivier Blanchard's take on SIM as related to measurement and engagement. Maybe we can start a conversation with Shiv here in the comments.... Read more →

What's Holding Organizations Back?

In the comments of last week's post titled 100 thoughts on marketing, Tom Asacker asked me: since just about everyone who reads this list agrees with it, in principle, what's holding organizations back? This is a pretty difficult question because I'm looking at it from the inside out. While I was mulling over how to respond, I came across this interesting exchange by Best Buy CMO Barry Judge and Gizmodo Adam Frucci. For those not familiar with Gizmodo, this is a blog about gadgets and technology started by Gawker Media in 2002. The blog's traffic is now upwards of 100... Read more →

Social Media as Modern Telephone, Frank Eliason, Comcast

[0:45 on investment in social media during hard-times, courtesy of Radian6] He struck me as the real deal from the first time I contacted him via Twitter. In the last year plus, Frank Eliason has become the face and experience of Comcast for many of us. Rather than me talking about him I thought it a good idea to let him talk directly with you here. Our conversation: Can you talk a little bit about your background? How you got to Comcast. Frank: I have always been a simple Customer Service guy. My background prior to Comcast was Vanguard Investments,... Read more →

Will Google Wave Eliminate the Need for PR as Media Relations?

New media has already reminded up that PR stands for public relations and not just media relations. This is still something that many organizations are navigating at the moment. Now Google is giving us yet another Wave of innovation and showing us what is possible in the browser. It was developed by the team that gave us Google Maps. From the site: A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content... Read more →

Who cares about your news?

I mean who wants to hear from you? How is the information going to help them be smarter, do their job better, sell more? One of the most frequent pitches I get says something like "we thought your readers would enjoy to hear about 'x'". Would they? How do you know? We had an interesting conversation in the comments at John Cass blog a couple of weeks ago when he posted about a pitch he received from Gary Vaynerchuk's publicist. In the comments to that post, I wrote: Neville and John, you now make me feel special as I received... Read more →

How I do the Connecting Thing

Jay Baer let the cat out of the bag, so I might as well confess - I am a connector, and a life time one, too. Someone said on Twitter today that she wished people understood that the loudest ones are not necessarily those who are making stuff happen (I'm paraphrasing here). Many collect people, I learn about them - what they're looking for, what they're passionate about. From strangers to friends on trains (part of being Italian and trains never arriving on time), to discovering amazing talent among people in a room crowded with voices intent on networking. I... Read more →