Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Do You Have a Conversation Strategy?

Perhaps one of the reasons why the news business is declining in Y/Y sales is that everyone followed industry accepted best practices. In other words, it did not innovate in step with understanding -- and moving ahead of -- the marketplace. It was a new kind of media company that launched the Kindle: Amazon. Why is Amazon so successful? Because it understands the digital medium and learns from customer behavior constantly. Go to the site after a book search and browse on related links on that page. What do you see up top in the URL? Exactly. Each unique URL... Read more →

Top 5 Rejected Names for the New Apple iPad

From the reports on Wikio trends, and Retrevo's Buzzmeter (Twitter), it looks like we had more conversations about Jobs than we did about Obama Wednesday night. Some of the new Apple tablet buzz quickly uncovered some controversy surrounding the name of the new iPad (which is abominable, of course). A source close to Apple has leaked a memo about the device's naming process exclusively to Conversation Agent. Is it genuine? You be the judge. Here's the leaked memo. Top 5 Rejected Names for the New Apple iPad iPwnd - Because, well, we're Apple. Pwning is what we do. iPaid -... Read more →

How Matters as Much as Why

Witness the allure of "how to" posts, books, videos, and so on. Right? You probably heard about the theory of the 1,000 true fans put forth by Kevin Kelly. In the post, Kelly writes: A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living. Today many more of you are free agents, consultants, small businesses than ever before. Realistically, unless you have the distribution power (read budget, marketing staff, and partnerships) of a large... Read more →

The Conversation in Your Head

[l'acqua a km zero, 2:07', you always wanted to learn how to read Italian, confess] There's nothing more powerful than the conversation in your head. That's the first thing you need to remember when you set out to build interactions with others. Great brand creative connects you with that story -- and now it does it through the understanding of our social behavior. It touches an emotional chord. People choose bottled water because they feel safer, says an industry spokesman in response to a campaign designed to move people to tap water now being embraced by many regions in Italy... Read more →

There's no Money in Content Creation

The money continues to be on the promotion and now engagement phases of customer acquisition. White papers are a dime a dozen, so are loads of articles and posts patiently written with the audience in mind. Tell me the truth, you've been guilty of wanting to hire someone who can write crisp copy that sells, which is not the same as just writing copy, without wanting to pay them a premium for doing so. You are not alone. Until you figure out that there is value in creating great content, you will have a hard time getting the results you... Read more →

Customer Experience More Important than Ever

"Eighty percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of their customers agree." [Bain & Company, Harvard Management Update] I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, of course. However, there might be a few areas of improvement that have not have crossed your mind yet. First off, let's define what we mean by "customer experience". From Wikipedia: Customer experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier. The sum of all experiences you have with... Read more →

Mobile News

Do you check your email and social networks in the morning? Well, it looks like many of us check to find out what happened while you were sleeping. Except for we're not tucking into a newspaper with our coffee, we're scrolling down a Twitter or a Facebook app. Could this be why news organizations have developed iPhone apps? I ran a search for news applications at the iTunes News Apps for iPhone and stopped counting at 3,240. Back in the day when I worked in the ag industry, I learned that farmers are now so sophisticated when it comes to... Read more →

High-octane Conan O'Brien Works

Take the lead from Conan O'Brien - don't let other people tone you down. High-octane Conan O'Brien works. Especially in hard times, you may be tempted to play it safe. You've invested emotional capital in a job through your hard work and duck for cover, unhappy. Your energy then gets sapped, and so does your confidence. Maybe you've been following recent events about NBC Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien. About ten days ago, O'Brien issued a statement to the effect that he would not host the Tonight Show after Jay Leno, if the show got pushed back to a new,... Read more →

Are Conversationalists Connectors?

We know that what Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff wrote in Groundswell a couple of years ago is true: people do use technology to tap into each other and get things done. The addition of this new overlapping group confirms something to me that I've suspected for a while - conversation is a technology, a framework to create the conditions for something to happen. More than any other grouping or label in Forrester Social Technographics Ladder, it signals availability and intention to connect. Are conversationalists connectors? Let's take a look. The prevailing demographic is female, at 56%, they're well off... Read more →

Worth Doing

[Randy Pausch: Really achieving your childhood dreams - 1:16:27] I was having a bit of an introspective moment the other night, thinking about how much of our goal setting is driven by external stories - and the need for affirmation that we have value. And how little space we give ourselves to think deeply and reach into our inner drive, and appreciate the value we already have. So here I was, immersed in these thoughts, wondering about contribution and thoughtfulness, and I happen upon a post by Michel Hogan on The Inspirational 10. And there I am, next to TED,... Read more →