Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Ten Hacks to Make your Distractions Disappear and Help you Meet Your Goals

First off, you need to have goals you're prepared to work to achieve. Do you have a formal process to set goals? After goal setting, you need to pay attention to how – the process to get you there. Many think they need to have the whole plan mapped out to succeed, step by step. Go with direction instead, and make improvements as you gain intelligence, while doing. Adjust the course, get there early. In the tradition of lighter Friday posts, here are ten super useful ideas to keep you on course by embracing the obstacles: ____________________ (1.) You miss... Read more →

Are You Getting Typecast?

[click on image to enlarge] And is that good for your branding efforts? Getting typecast is an interesting problem in business, especially when you're looking to grow in new directions. In the beginning, you're thrilled to break through, and make an impression (hopefully, you measure beyond that). Alas, when you evolve, you'd like to take on new roles. If you're feeling a little like Ray Liotta's after he worked on Goodfellas, you may be the norm. Most brands have a hard time evolving, because they tend to do such a good job in one role that they become very successful... Read more →

SxSWi: How to Organize Context-Based Content

If you've ever been to SxSWi you know that by day one you get a sense that there's all this stuff coming at you and you won't be able to keep up with it all. The event is organized more similarly to the way the world wide web works than you probably realize – the information is there, you just need to find it. Except for linking is not as easy in person as it is online. People don't scale. Even with the help of location-based technology and apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. And when you're directly involved in something,... Read more →

SxSWi 2010 in Quotes

2010 SxSWi in Quotes View more presentations from Valeria Maltoni. I asked people what was their favorite part of SxSWi on Twitter and in the halls, and this is what they said: meeting people face-to-face - making new relationships & strengthening existing ones, swapping ideas -- @justinpremick meeting great people... in the halls and at small get togethers instead of big parties -- @beley @zefrank by a long shot -- @theblogstudio more than anything, I'm loving the opportunity to meet up with ppl -- @derrickkwa Meeting new people and old friends, and the core conversations + looking forward to the... Read more →

SxSWi: Got and App for Customer Service?

With mobile applications, brands have even more opportunities to provide utility to customers while being social. Yet many approach this interactive medium with a flat mindset. In a SxSWi session moderated by Brian Morrissey, both Shiv Singh and Adrian Ho had good insights on how to improve mobile apps. While the panel on extending your brand did not touch upon B2B uses for apps, these new platforms are a really good way for brands to interact with customers in contextual ways -- to be there at the moment of purchase. What would that mean for a financial services firm? Or... Read more →

How to do PR in New Media

Just a few short years ago, reaching out to the media to discuss a new product or service announcement used to be a fairly straight forward deal. Media people, journalists, trade reporters, and radio personalities used to stay put in one job, with one station or news organization and write a certain kind of story/subject matter. You would either research or look up media contacts in directories and lists. This alone has changed a great deal. As the profit deriving from subscription and advertising continues to erode, news organizations keep shaving staff, augmenting the need to fill so many paper... Read more →

The Alfred Hitchcock Guide to SxSW

I remember the still summer evenings at the open cinema theater watching Hitchcock movies. What a treat! It was intriguing to me that the off camera point of view, the observation through the lens, could be so powerful to drive the story. I love good stories, don't you? This weekend I'm immersing myself with the many others at SxSW to participate in stories. There are plenty of great survival tips cirulating -- complete social media and unofficial guides. To stay in character with the connective narrative and conversational nature of this blog, I present you with: The Alfred Hitchcock Guide... Read more →

How to Make your Content Sticky

Make it very useful, then make it portable and spreadable. Package it in as many ways as you can think of, build it out, extend it with participation, give it away for free, give it away for leads, give it away to sell it. These and many other ideas can help you raise your online profile and be tactical at the same time. A quick tactical list: Twitter Regardless of how much we'd like to think of this tool in the context of chats, it really isn't suited for that. However, chats are our way to establish a consistent, time-based... Read more →

Me.Anything

Instead of having anything.me. I like me.anything better. Although it might not be as SEO-friendly, it reflects more what happens when we focus on understanding and appreciating who we are. It's important because what we can do -- literally anything -- then follows. The Web doesn't love ambiguity, so doesn't business. Anything what, exactly? As a business owner, you need to decide what that anything means because it creates an expectation of what you deliver. And it works like a charm for that. Your customers come to you because you're the company or person who does xyz. In fact, you... Read more →

Executing a Content Strategy for Buyers Research/Evaluation Phase

With digital media and search, you need to think about a whole new set of considerations when you write content if you want to appeal to buyers who are researching and evaluating products or services. It's not just thinking about the top keywords and inserting them in your copy. As John Battelle writes in a post that revisits his own database of intentions, there are many more nuances to content and optimization today. Combining search with the social graph, status updates, and check-in or connection to real life is more complex and can be more rewarding. Tools This is another... Read more →