Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Are You Using Your FAQ Page to Attract Traffic?

Do you have a page for frequently asked questions (FAQ) on your site? Don't think you need one? Maybe, let's take a look at different formats for building what in the old days was essentially the one (or more) place where your site visitors may find out about questions or issues that had cropped up with others. information that follows or is released with major news announcements a knowledge repository for the use of a new product how to use a site to find what you need, or how to fill a form or a claim (I wish US Airline... Read more →

Before Hitting Buy, Search for Customer Reviews

It will take one one or two extra steps, and it may save you from untold aggravation -- when buying online, do your due diligence, don't expect search engines to do all the work for you. Cristopher Carfi and Jeff Jarvis both posted their respective commentary to a story published by David Segal in the New York Times recently about a bully finding his pulpit on the Web. As Carfi puts it, the villain in the story flips off customers for fun and profit. Given that the search engine is being used to the bully's advantage in the story, Jarvis... Read more →

Is Twitter the News System of the Future?

I was probably the first person to write that Twitter is the modern TV back in April. It is increasingly the place where you watch what other people say they do. Some of them are paid at work to be there, others are sponsored. Organizations and brands are keen on paying to talk in the stream -- Twitter ads launched this past April. In an interview with the Telegraph, Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO, said that its first few months had gone well and the company was now looking to localise its advertising offering via its promoted tweets. More recently, Twitter... Read more →

Jumping to Conclusions

Just because you can, does it mean you should? One of the benefits of engaging in conversation, ideation, and/or creation is the ability to explore an issue or a situation with one self, and/or with someone else. Exploring means keeping an open mind, being ready to see things you were not expecting, and to evaluate them on their own merits. In fact, much of the skill of critical thinking is based upon your ability to suspend judgment while you evaluate information. It's something you can learn in school and train for at work. Here are some examples of the value... Read more →

The Importance of Being Grateful

Something worth being full of: gratitude. [image by *Micky] If you enjoyed this post from Conversation Agent, subscribe, share and like it. Read more →

Should You Shift all Your Spending Online?

When I was working in businesses that catered to other businesses, or as we say, B2B, one of the strongest components of the marketing communications mix was lead generation. More seasoned marketers over the years told me how much they pined for the big budgets they used to have. Since I never had to deal with the largesse they lamented as vanished, planning meant making trade offs. Fewer choices meant much of the effort ended up being focused on acquiring new customers. Finding, qualifying, and nurturing leads This is the bread and butter of direct marketing and lead generation activities.... Read more →

Power Tools for Content Aggregation and Curation

Maybe you don't have the resources to develop a lot of content, or maybe you're a professional association that wants to serve its members better by being super helpful. Add that there are many more content creators, inside and outside organizations, and you see how curating information as content strategy could be a very elegant option. Noting the evolution on the World Wide Web quickly to show you a pattern that went in lockstep with use. You had forums and discussion boards, many still very active, Web sites, then journals, which evolved into blogs with RSS (real simple syndication) capability... Read more →

Customer Conversation in a Service Economy

Are your employees corporobots? If so, you've not only dehumanized them -- you've stripped your company of precisely what gives it the possibility of creating an enduring advantage. In an economy that even when producing products is mainly based on service -- internal and external, domestic, and foreign, up and down the organization ladder, and across departments, which does not mean that for collaboration to occur we need to put everyone in cubes; collaboration is an attitude -- customer conversations equal execution. Service, which is also the way you build and deliver a product, is part of what differentiates your... Read more →

The Power of Good Communication

I have maintained for a long time that sometimes the biggest problem for organizations and individuals, the reason why they get in trouble or don't get the results they were hoping for, is poor communication. Which in turn means inability to get their messages across, and potentially make connections. There is a misunderstanding about communication that needs clearing -- it's not about merely creating messages and sending them out. If you look up the definition of communication in any dictionary, you will find a version of the following: Two-way process of reaching mutual understanding, in which participants not only exchange... Read more →

Unplugged

I always liked unplugged performances because they felt more intimate and real. That genuine quality and raw nature of the sound is what engenders connection. I've been thinking about this concept lately, of wanting to unplug and go back to experimenting with ideas by doing them as artists do with sounds when unplugged. Less performance for a public, more conversation with smart and accomplished colleagues. It's more fun to riff off the insights of who is working on creation than to debate who is or isn't the rock star in the room. We could discover there is more there there.... Read more →