Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Trick or Trade?

As any good business person will tell you, there is no true preparation for what will happen to communications in real business scenarios. In the same way communicators do, you make your bones on the job, and often the one way to raise above an issue is by sticking your neck out and not being afraid to confront some harsh realities. There's plenty to be terrified of in business these days -- botched or inexisting company customer service, even as companies do more in more channels and face potential customer issues or crisis. Dwindling contacts and allies in the media... Read more →

Top Business Trends

I've been thinking about a post on business trends for a while. I can comfortably go back to things I have written and said 4-5 years ago and show you how they're developing and future direction. Implications really depend on who you are and what you're doing. There are several conversations on trends going on at the moment: general trends -- a good resource by vertical is Trend Hunter consumer trends -- you're probably familiar with Trend Watching new trends -- ideas are organized by category at Springwise business trends -- compiled by places like the Institute for Global Futures... Read more →

Best Bang for the Buck

I saw a question on LinkedIn the other day that asked people to recommend the best bang for the buck for a certain service. It's a similar question to what are your rates? The details that usually don't get shared with that question, and should, are around the following areas: 1. Scope of work For example, we're trying to achieve xyz within a specific time frame and any other variables you already have in place or in mind. In some cases, you have no idea how to approach scope, you can get help in defining it. Price very much depends... Read more →

Under the Influence of Story

I'm under the influence of several stories at the moment. I admit it. You probably are, too. There's the story we tell ourselves about who we are, where we come from, and where we're going, which is tied to identity. Identity is much broader than our online profile. It's made of many pieces that speak to: heritage -- where we were born, where we live, our age, educational background, etc. environment -- transient external factors such as the economy needs -- they include both what we truly need and what we think we need and actually just want interactions --... Read more →

Are You a Disciple of the Targeting Cult?

The idea of knowing what people want to buy before you serve them an ad is genuinely revolutionary. Or at least it would be if it actually worked, says Richard Huntington. Making assumptions about people based on past behavior is a good way to be exactly wrong. I've brought it up before. Many do research on behalf of clients, or for a relative, or to write a blog post. Although we use search to get stuff done, search, alone, is not a dead on indication of purchasing intent. In other words, it is missing context. Let me give you an... Read more →

Going from Data to Information

Is there a difference? Yes, there is. Data is raw facts, information is what happens when data is used to educate, inform, entertain, enlighten, and alert us. We have plenty of data. Information is the stuff we can use. And we're starving on that one. We rarely want raw data, and we crave information, says Augie Ray. We still want to have access to a lot of data and content, however, it is the query set that is going to help up make sense of what we need to see -- and use. We have many social networks and tools... Read more →

Will Sound be Bigger than Video?

["Sound" from SoundCloud on Vimeo.] When I was about eight, my family moved to a new apartment building in the city. It was a newer building with four-stories and an attic, which, at three per story +1 for the attic, we shared with a total of 12 families. The young couple up on third was deaf (and they managed to be the least noisy anyway). A few months after they had their first baby, we were at their place visiting, when we noticed the baby was crying. He was all red and waved his arms back and forth, big tears... Read more →

I'm Not Buying It

We refuse to be your monetization strategy, said Shiv Singh at at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. For some reason, that post is not live on his blog yet. Instead, I found another that is good food for thought: when a trillion impressions aren't enough. It does sound like they're part of the same thought continuum -- and something Shiv is working on. He says: For example, I cannot accurately quantify the value of a Pepsi display banner advertising impression versus a paid search impression, a mainstream news story about Pepsi impression, a FourSquare check-in impression at a... Read more →

The Business Behind Conversations

This is my second time as a guest of the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast with Mitch Joel (SPOS #276). As it was the case a few months ago, when we talked about the rise of the influencer, our discussions are a lot of fun as Mitch is fluent in the art of teasing out topics. We talked about the business behind conversations. I've been thinking a lot about the conversation we never had about social media -- the pre-quel, if you will. Which is what is informing and shaping a lot of my current work and research. + Give... Read more →

How Willing Are You To Test a New Idea?

What tools do creators use for content discovery and research? For content discovery, I use: Eqentia personalized news email digest (Algorithmic Filtering) - I told it what I want and like among several categories, the software serves them up to me by email Flipboard tech and news categories (Shared Sources Filtering) - curated sources based upon topics, which can be personalized choosing among a growing roster of categories and sources Tech and business blogs in my Google Reader (Human Filtering) - here's where I experience the most serendipity based upon the people I follow Percolate (Crowdsourced Filtering) - often what... Read more →