Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Producers, Meet Colleen Wainwright, the Communicatrix

In a recent post, she wrote about travel: "The destination may surprise you. It will probably surprise you. When you get to what it is you’ve been working toward—a primary relationship, a VP title, your own business, a gold statuette—it will not feel like or seem like or look like what you thought it might on the way there." And I guarantee that it will indeed do just that. Working towards something is a lot more fun and challenging - some days in good ways, others in not so good ways - than being there. The growth is in the... Read more →

100 Thoughts on Marketing

Leo Babauta has written the perfect post for some of the thoughts I've been having about marketing, social media and the age of the customer. In it, he encourages us to be lusting for life, not stuff. I couldn't agree more. I find that the more I know myself, the more refined and specific grows my taste on wines, food and yes, stuff - like jewelry, clothing, cars, even vacations. Plus, there's something else - I'm all bought out. In fact, it's been a couple of years that I started paring down what I own and being very deliberate about... Read more →

Own Your Story Again

Customer service is the new marketing because it is grounded in competency, people, and contact - all things that can help you with innovation and relationships and that cannot easily be outsourced. They in turn create the experience your customers have that contributes to your story - that of your company and your brand. I thought about how owning your story is the true business currency these days as I read the telling dialogue reported in Douglas Rushkoff's book Life, Inc. (you can find chapters at Boing Boing): I’m regularly called in by companies looking to improve what they call... Read more →

Is Your Company Thinking that Social Media is a Job?

I'm asking because technically, it really isn't. Let's take a step back and think about the strong word in the term social media. We've had all kind of media for ages - print, then the novelty of radio, then video that supposedly killed the radio stars (they also said that sound in movies would never take off, oh my), then the Web. Well, there have been many technologies in between and now plenty in continuous development (and fashion), I'm just skipping through this. The progression is easy to see even within each medium and format. I remember when television commercials... Read more →

My Twitter 20 Interview on Conversation and Community

In case you missed it, I was a guest on Jay Baer's Twitter 20 interview on Twitter this week. Thank you for that, Jay. It was fun, especially since I had no idea what questions you were going to ask. I met Jay at SxSWi when I had the opportunity to have face time with him and a group of smart professionals like Debbie Weil and John Havens of BlogTalk Radio. We had a reunion recently at Marketing Profs B2B Forum in Boston. The Twitter appointment with 20 questions was a natural progression - although some call the medium a... Read more →

Right Place, Right Time - Free

One of the things that you probably learned by hanging out with me here at Conversation Agent is that I tend to bring together a lot of ideas in a short space, show you how those ideas are connected, and why you need to care. But, here's the thing, you care only if I catch you in the right frame of mind, if when you're reading this post you wrestle with the very same thoughts. Attention and context In other words, I have your attention - and sometimes I'm even fortunate enough to have your take in the comments -... Read more →

Social Media Program Lifecycle

Or as Gianluca Arnesano calls it, the only slide you need to know. I translated the word campaign as program, because I do really believe that it's a cycle with a long tail that probably nearly doesn't wear off or go to zero. This is the work of Italian agency Frozen Frogs born out of the work the agency has been doing with consumer goods companies. It's a brilliant rendition of the dynamics of attention, something Gianluca has been working with for a number of years.In this graphic, which he explains in the PDF offered at the post, he distinguishes... Read more →