Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Twitter is the Modern TV

You read that right -- it's the place where you watch what other people say they do. Some of them are paid and are keen on paying to to do it, namely brands. Sometimes you're inclined to talk back -- and now you can. Good news for businesses, people who use Twitter frequently are receptive to information about products and services. Even more good news for B2B marketers as broadcasting is still alive and kicking on Twitter -- and now finally there is a medium that is within their marketing budgets. However, there's a catch -- while awareness of the... Read more →

Integrating a Blog in your Content Strategy

Physically setting up a blog is not that difficult. A little while back, I wrote a post for small business owners on why start a blog and 25 tips to make it work. It was so popular -- got more than 350 bookmarks on Delicious at the time -- that I also packaged it as a free eBook for portability. What's often difficult is integrating the blog in your existing content and marketing strategy. Where do you start? There are so many things already going on. If you're a marketing or communications professional you probably have a few ideas. When... Read more →

How I use Google Reader

This post has been on my mind ever since Danny Brown expressed an interest in finding out how I use Google Reader during an exchange on Twitter. I just added a blog to my reader account. I was reading a post by my friend and uber eCommerce headhunter Harry Joiner and he recommended a blog that hits the spot on retail eCommerce so I clicked on the link, read a couple of posts (not that I had to, Harry is top shelf) and added the RSS in the pool. The pool is the unstructured series of posts I keep at... Read more →

Switch

It was a pretty funny movie, if you're looking for something different to watch. And change can be illuminating, like literally walking in someone else's shoes. Change is your friend. It's inevitable, for one. It's also what happens when you start getting more involved in communications with customers and employees through two-way tools that allow them to talk back. Whatever your role in the organization, you have the ability to make something happen. It could be something amazing. You'll need to think strategy first, without complicating things. And it can potentially be a life changing thing -- for yourself and... Read more →

Understanding and Activating your True Fans

Understanding and activating your true fans is the value you can extract from many listening, researching, and conversational activities. Last week, we talked about how some brands like Ducati have created the context for tribes. During our #kaizenblog chat Friday, we looked to also identify fans of products and brands. While tribes are connected by a vision, mission and values, fans share a common interest and may not be connected with each other. Vandana Purak said something very interesting during our Twitter chat. She said -- I almost think of tribe as the corporation; fans as the consumers, but the... Read more →

4 Reasons PR Agencies Are Failing in Social Media

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Keath wrote a post that got many thoughtful comments and reactions. I agree that good communication professionals understand the power of storytelling and know that relationship building is a worthy activity and work on action steps to develop good relationships. Indeed, a retainer arrangement is a good way to go in social media. Especially if you need to ramp up your own people over time, and have constant needs and request, it will cost you less to go that way. Plus, it will help you maintain consistency. And if you're worried your people will... Read more →

Five Reactions Around the Web on Facebook Announcements

First Facebook decided to downgrade everyone's idea of being a fan overnight to the non committal -- and extremely self serving -- "like" button, then it decided to let people hunt for the ways in which to preserve scraps of their own privacy. See a step by step guide on how to opt out and you'll know what I mean about good will hunting. My own take is: never trust Facebook. Period. After all, it is all about managing expectations, even your own. It was only one year ago that we were wondering how we felt now that the network... Read more →

Want to Build Influence? Be a Meaningful Specific

It's not enough to be specific. Especially if you're being specifically rigid about the way to look at things. Did you think your way or ideas was the only way? If you want people to care, you need to be the first one to do so - and meaningfully. What about respect? Something else you give to get. Attractiveness is about pull, not push. Influence -- building and leveraging it -- is a topic that has held much discussion in marketing communications and now social media. Instead of learning to employ change to re-energize, a topic we'll tackle next week,... Read more →

Learn to Build a Referral Engine

By far the scariest and most unpredictable part of being on your own is to have enough leads in the pipeline to sustain your business. Preferably not all at the same time so you have to say no to some and send them elsewhere. It was a more difficult undertaking before digital media. As human beings, we don't scale so well. And many go out on their own to do more of the kind of work they love doing: design, communications, etc. -- sales being a necessary aspect. Yes, we're all selling all the time. However, we generally suck at... Read more →

Top Company Blogs Require Content Strategy, Expertise, Good Writing

Fast, good, cheap is the classic triangle of constraints in project management. Say that you're expected to deliver on all three and you've got a problem. You'll surely fail unless you find a way to negotiate scope of work, or reframe expectations. Maybe that triangle is not a really good premise for this post on creating content that is strategic, written well, and from expertise/experience, or is it? For your business blog to raise about the noise and become a go-to customer destination, you need to have all three components working well -- a solid content strategy, expertise, and good... Read more →