Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

When in Doubt, Copy

Mark Earls On Originality from The School of Life on Vimeo. What's the best strategy for a social creature to interact with other social creatures in lots of different ways? The winning strategy is -- copying. Your ability to outsource the cognitive load that copying represents means you are never alone. You are a conduit for and access of other people's thoughts and ideas. Culture, says Earls in this long-ish talk is nothing more and nothing less than the accumulated wisdom and experience of other people. Culture doesn't give you the right rules for living. It just makes it much... Read more →

Be Kind, for Everyone you Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle

[Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood Cover] You probably recognize this as a quote, and you are right. It's from Plato: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”. I don't talk enough about diversity here -- not just in the sense of women in the workplace, etc. What I mean by diversity is individuals who are wired differently. The first time I met Jim Collins, I had no idea who he was. Sure, he was perched on a stool placed at the center of a big stage in front of hundreds of people having an amiable conversation... Read more →

Brands Create Their Own Future

This is the season of predictions. Just the other day, we looked at more than 100 thought contributions to content strategy seen through the social media and marketing lens. The more uncertainty in our lives, the harder we look to firm up what's next. Whenever we discuss trends, we notice signals in our present culture in an attempt to explain what is happening and seek actual evidence that it is indeed occurring by stabilizing with data what we observe via stories and anecdotes. Then we plan to reach for that trend with our brands. So in a way, we do... Read more →

Are we Optimizing our Way out of Creation?

In the Dangerous Effects of Reading, David Tate invites pause and reflection on our daily consumption habits: I think we should all agree that getting faster at judging things is bad, but I think the real danger in having a super-efficient-filter is that your default mode is exclusion – you reject long enough and you lose the ability to create things that pass your own filter. You stagnate at work for fear of everything you do being judged like every news article or viral video that you view. So how do you break the power of consumption? By creating your... Read more →

Timing the Future Starts with What You're Doing Right Now

Thanks to a recent tweet by @Jgombita (UPDATED with reference to tweet) I re-discovered an interview I did with Erin Nelson at Explore B2B last April and then curated as part of a post on content marketing for SEO Journal. Take note if you're working on getting your content discovered through connected individuals. Also, many of the highest Google search posts are conversations with industry experts I published here. Hopefully, Erin won't mind my highlighting the second part of the interview where I talked about this blog as a learning tool. +++ Your blog, Conversation Agent, is among the Top... Read more →

Statistics Suggest that When Customers Complain...

Zig Ziglar passed away last week. His work touched many of the people who in turn made positive deposits in the relationships economy. A quick look at the quotes attributed to Ziglar, and you will see the many ways in which he authored our thinking today. Among my favorites: Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business. Complaints are a gift of interaction in disguise. +++ Valeria is an experienced listener. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a... Read more →

Content Strategy Seen Through the Social Media and Marketing Lens

In most organizations where I worked, the digital strategy group responsible for Web functionality and content rolls up to marketing and works alongside customer support and marketing communications, which in turn often include brand and public relations teams. The size of the first group depends on the volume and percent of Web commerce as compared to direct or channel retail. Introduce social media and the plot thickens. Especially when it comes to content, every group should get involved and contribute based upon experience and visibility into data and customer feedback. It's early days, and companies are still figuring out where... Read more →