Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

What do You Know About People?

Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. Yet, often the design of the customer experience doesn't seem to take that into consideration. There are many reasons why that is the case, starting with the very top one -- we know too much. That is we think we know, therefore we stop looking. This matters to how we experience information and interactions through our mobile devices. There are some universals that experience designers think about. For example, Stephen Anderson lists a series of questions in a great deck on seductive interactions. I agree with his list. People: are curious are... Read more →

Top Posts at Conversation Agent

If you're like me, you follow how the content you produce is shared and built upon by looking at your blog's statistics, the comments you receive and the reactions -- likes, shares, @ replies, RTs -- in various social networks. There are some posts you probably know the moment you write them that they will be useful or fun and enjoyable for people to share -- right time and place, etc. More often than not, I find that the posts I love are not necessarily the most popular ones. Here is a list of the top popular posts at Conversation... Read more →

You Have More Content Than You Know

When businesses think about content, they usually focus on the marketing and communications materials they produce. There is also a wealth of user generated content, which are various kinds of raw media produced by end-users in the public domain, that could be mined and organized. Are people talking about your industry? Even better, are there groups or individuals who are passionate about your brand or your service? In that case, part of your content strategy with curating information should acknowledge and recognize their contributions. Brands like Apple, IKEA, and Ducati, to name a couple, do have a passionate core of... Read more →

Brand Haiku: Apple

When most Americans think haiku, they think of the sort of verse that goes like this: three lines of 5/7/5 syllables, perhaps with a bit of humor to it. And since that's what people expect, it's probably what I should write. The 5/7/5 syllables idea is based on a misunderstanding of how Japanese verse really works. The phonetic units in Japanese -- they're not syllables -- don't have an equivalence in English. Syllables are an apples to oranges approximation, since the English language's syllables can be many different lengths. The net effect is that 5/7/5 syllables in English yields a... Read more →

Don't Pitch, Connect. News Discovery and the New PR

Increasingly, your customers are getting their news online. Especially when we're talking about newer generations of consumers, people and their social graphs are the last mile. Journalists and bloggers are online probably more than your customer base. More and more, publishers discover news by connecting the dots on content and information that is being shared in our networks and social graphs. Read more →

Escaping Mediocrity

It's actually a misnomer -- if you're doing your own thing, you're not escaping anything, you're just, well... doing your own thing. And I urge you to do that, with every fiber of your being. What I write may be interesting, and at times inspirational, and hopefully for you it stops there, then you're into exploring your own ideas and potential. It's useful to know your limits -- as information, not as a boundary. Within reasonable terms, the boundaries, the rules, are usually established by those who are looking to make everything conform to the way they think -- and... Read more →

BlackRock Takes Stock of its Social Media Assets: Employees

A couple of days ago I attended my sixth BlogWell. This time as a non member. It was great to see so many friends and former colleagues on the corporate side -- and to make new friends, while learning about the social efforts of large organizations. The local hosts at SAP near Philadelphia made everyone feel at home. This is a company that is doing some good work with social media, and learning with the development community. Many of the case studies during the afternoon were interesting, which is code for nicely done and looking forward to hearing what is... Read more →

Can You Really See What's Next?

What will happen a year from now? What should your sales forecast be? How about five years from now? Will the industry change? Who are going to be likely entrants? These are questions business owners and management teams wrestle with as they do their planning. Can you really see what's next? My perspective has changed after the last time I read Seeing What's Next (Amazon affiliate link) by Clayton Christensen, Scott Anthony, and Erik Roth, and I have six years of additional industries experience under my belt. So I thought I'd give the book another go. For those who don't... Read more →

How to Source and Credit Content

Online media makes it easier to copy things. As it is the case with so many other activities, however, execution is key. In researching information for this post, for example, I came across a post Lee Odden has written about 5 ways to source content on Twitter. He says: polls -- I do mine very informally, usually when I'm researching a story Twitter chats -- in addition to participating, I was the founder, then co-host of #kaizenblog by crowd sourcing -- some use this to learn which topics interest their network searching for questions -- this can also give you... Read more →

Designing the Customer Experience

I've been doing more travel recently. And I can in all honesty say that there is plenty of room left for improving customer experience in the travel industry -- airlines, hotels, car services, even airports. Since there is no guaranteed security, we should stop pretending that if we treat people poorly, all will be well. It would be an excellent idea to have service personnel at all of these companies, yes even government employees, go ahead and experience a normal day of travel as a regular person, someone without the special privileges of not having to be screened, or not... Read more →