Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Put it in Plain Words

I was watching this short video from TED and marveling at the achievement of branding expert Alan Siegel. We need to mean business when it comes to communications. I cannot recall the number of times I read an email intended for an HR or other scanning system, and not a person. It's disheartening, especially since English is such a flexible language -- let an Italian tell you. And it's offensive to be on the receiving end of such a snooty piece, as if organizing the words in a passive voice and ornate fashion could distance you from the responsibility you... Read more →

Should You Outsource Social Media?

Things have changed a great deal in the last 18 months. Companies are getting serious about social media. And we've seen enough cases recently about mishandled situations in social media to be thinking about what makes sense as a team mix. In a quick email exchange about his post good agencies don't hire social media strategists, Sean Howard and I were musing that outsourcing digital is as much a risk as is hoping that a social media expert will save the day. Is there a role for agencies in the digital space?Should companies outsource social media? It's no fun wrestling... Read more →

Flip the Funnel on Customer Acquisition

And save your business. Many organizations have become really good at streamlining customer support and service processes. Yet, as co-managing editor of Consumerist.com Ben Popken reminds us in the foreword to Flip the Funnel -- processing is not solving. Putting in place a good customer retention strategy is a good business move. It's also a smart branding move. You may be familiar with the new business acquisition sales funnel or AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. To address a company's ability to engage customers' social connections, Jaffe flips the acronym to ADIA: Acknowledgment, Dialogue, Incentivization, and Activation. Maintaining a continuous... Read more →

Public Relations in an Everyone is Media World

Confess it, you have thought about rewriting a news item in your own head. Especially when you've had an experience with a company's service or a product that didn't quite live up to the story you're now reading in the newspaper or trade magazine. Today, you don't even need to have a blog to be a publisher. With tools such as Posterous and Tumblr, or if you have a Facebook page, you can easily post content and socialize it, or take a series of small bites on Twitter. Good for you, good for everyone. How do you apply communication in... Read more →

What Can You do?

When you ask people what their favorite words in business are, they will tell you things like: great, thank you, please, be nice, dependable, apologetic, peaceful, care, honor, laugh, help, how, we, have fun, be friends, value, unbridled optimism, grateful, well done, how can I help? -- these are all awesome words. Empathy, passion, thoughtfulness come across. Then we go to work and we: use, leverage, push, message, they, ripping competitors' kidneys out, campaigns, gobbledygook made-up disembodied corporate lingo in the third person -- heavens forbid we use "I". Social, collaborative, positive, helpful lingo is replaced by war metaphors. Is... Read more →

5 Tips to Optimize Your Business Card

As I do during or after conferences, I'm organizing to follow up with people I reconnected with and new people I met at SxSWi and the social media panel I spoke at in Philadelphia on St. Patrick's Day. Over the years, I found some things to be more helpful than others when it comes to the information you put on your business card. However you handle the input of business card information into your database -- whether by iPhone bump, card scanning, or manual input -- the best way to be remembered is still to be memorable. Given that I... Read more →

Would you Rather Give up Your Car or Your Phone?

It was a question posed by Trendwatching six years ago [YouTube link. 1:24 minutes]. Would you rather give up your car or your phone? Are you working on your mobile strategy? Read more →

Content Strategy for the Post Purchase Phase

After people have bought your product or service, you're still on the hook to provide good content. In this phase of the buyer's decision journey, there are many more opportunities to build upon the purchase experience – and help your newly found customer spread the word about your product or service. I ran a very informal poll on Twitter about what product packaging and brochures/literature people keep, the other night. The answers sound like things I heard from acquaintances and friends before. What do people generally keep when the purchase is made? things they can reuse -- jars, boxes, glass... Read more →

How to Create Customer Intimacy with Content

[click on image to enlarge] I started thinking about the idea of creating customer intimacy after reading Kevin Roberts book, Lovemarks six years ago, when it was first published. Roberts described the characteristics of intimacy as commitment, empathy, and passion. Those are great to have when dealing with people. Companies can demonstrate those qualities by hiring and training people willing to go to the mat for customers, and able to communicate so in real time. Despite the widespread popularity of using social media for businesses to humanize the purchasing and service experience, Frank Eliason from Comcast continues to be the... Read more →

Why the Relations Part of PR Matters

High-Five SXSWi 2010 - High-Five Montage Tribute from Henry Balanon on Vimeo. Jason Falls already wrote about it, so I might as well confess, I participated to the Chevy Volt influencer outreach program at SxSWi. The best part was that I'm a vegetarian and I still decided to go to the Salt Lick to spend quality time with Chris Barger and the GM team. I even agreed to do a short video interview after dinner to talk about the conference and my take on the Chevy Volt, which I did not drive. The team helping GM gain visibility for the... Read more →