Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Investor Relations: NASDAQ Community

About nine months ago, I had the pleasure of connecting with John Jacobs, CMO, NASDAQ OMX, to talk about the launch of the NASDAQ Community. So I thought you'd enjoy learning how the initiative is going, what they have learned, and what the future holds. A nice piece of news in the story is also that they have implemented a single sign-on functionality to the site, which allows community members to register and log-in using their existing social network accounts like Facebook and Twitter. ____________ Q: You stated that you wanted to further establish NASDAQ.com, NASDAQ OMX the company as... Read more →

Time to Rework: Book Review

Organizations are in need of a reboot. Many of the old hierarchies and rules are holding them back -- way in the past -- when it comes to adapting to the new market realities. The disconnect between a stubbornly siloed internal culture clashes with the networked approach that the external conversation demands. Culture defines a lot of things in organizations. How problems are tackled, priorities, rewards, and thus behaviors. I don't agree with everything Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson put in Rework (Amazon affiliate link). For example, I think planning is important, especially if you're turning around an organization... Read more →

Looking at a Blog as the Center of the Universe Offends Mr. Copernicus

I'm a big believer in blogs. It's a great place to show-off your hub activity and express things in long form. It's a living room for your tribe, where they can talk, consume content, and interact (both with you and fellow tribe members). But looking at a blog as the center of the universe offends Mr. Copernicus. The customer is in the middle. Everything else, including the customer's outposts, revolves around the customer. Looking at our media outreach in another fashion is inherently unhealthy. Why? Context, for one. People want different things at different times and in different places. I... Read more →

Mass MoCA does Wilco: How a Band Curated a Museum Experience

Shifting to the customer point of view is more than writing content that is benefit-driven. Although that helps. This past weekend, NPR had a story that got my juices going. You'll see in a minute why it matters to the conversation on value and execution. North Adams is quiet town in the Berkshire Mountains in Western Massachusetts. Mass MoCA is 200,000-square-foot museum carved out of a 1999 restored electric factory, with a 14-acre campus. It is dedicated to new art. Wilco is a popular Chicago rock band and the curator of a special experience at Mass MoCA. Conversions from Conversation... Read more →

PR's Use of Digital Media

As I was researching PR and digital media, I came across a report that explores the top ten digital challenges facing communications practitioners, looks at the impact on each of the key communications disciplines, investigates the use and uptake of social media tools, and identifies the role and key responsibilities of heads of digital communications. It says that PR professionals are still having a hard time getting their arms around measurement. This is probably due to the fact that like their counterparts in media, they're by and large digital immigrants. Chief communicators and PR professionals on the corporate side also... Read more →

You Cannot Fake Connection

Connection happens at the individual level. You can ignore all the people in a crowd easily. And now, as a marketer, the crowd ignores you. So, the arrow is pointing in the direction of 1:1. Yet personal connection doesn't mean exactly personalization -- you know, that trick where the email or the letter has your name (spelled correctly, please) at the top of a mail merge job. I was impressed this year by the SxSW panel and solo submission process. Yes, it is more rigorous and less community-driven than in past years: 30% Community Voting (that’s YOU); 30% SXSW Staff... Read more →

Live Crisis Scenarios in Digital

We live in a world where news is discussed and disseminated with increasing speed -- reporters are embedded in the live stream with companies, customers, and employees, and there are limitless potential news outlets. Whether the crisis lives online or off line, a company still needs to plan for all possible contingencies and scenarios, do a situation analysis to respond -- and recover. I feel the same thing is true for understanding a crisis and navigating risk as it is for business in general -- you need to make a commitment to doing it. Some of the things you'll need... Read more →

Why and How Influence Works (my SxSW Interactive PanelPicker)

What would happen if I told you I could get you hired some place where you'd love to work? Or if you learned that I could hook you up with the right business partner and you'd end up making tons of money? How about a talk with a few connections and you'd sell books by the truckload? What if I could help you sell your company? I have done all of those things and more, successfully. You wouldn't know from the number of comments to my posts, or retweets, would you? A funny thing this about influence. Everyone's after it,... Read more →

Content doesn't Scale

Do you know how much content is online? Do you know how much of that content is genuine and original? An eBook written by a subject matter expert or someone with love for the topic outperforms dozens of decent articles written by a content farm using the same terminology. It outperforms them where it matters -- in the opinion of your customers. Those articles may get people to your landing page through search, customers actually enjoy reading the original eBook, and gladly pass it on to their network. Original content is hard -- and expensive -- to create. I know... Read more →

Emotions, Trust, and Control at the Heart of Customer Experience

While organizations measure the outcomes of service in concrete terms -- the flight arrived on time, the rep answered the call on the first ring -- we use different variables to judge the experience. A good or positive service experience depends on intangibles like the way we felt, which is subjective. The variables are what Sriram Dasu and Richard B. Chase call ETCs, which stand for emotion, trust, and control. In a recent article on MIT Sloan they write about the results of research around a simple question: How can service organizations make their encounters with customers more positive? Service... Read more →