Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

For Clarity Sake

It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, setting up a profile on Clarity.fm. I discovered the site through my friend and colleague David Berkowitz who also created a profile there, no doubt to support the work he has been doing within the startup community. I do have a sweet spot for startups and have worked with a couple on business models, even though the bulk of my work is on the enterprise side of business. How it works (from the site): 1. Schedule a Call Browse or search our community of experts to find the right one... Read more →

Amazon a Good Example of Content Strategy to Keep Business Promises

In brief: Jeff Bezos' yearly letter to Amazon shareholders is a strong example of using content to openly keep track of business promises made and kept. Every year, Amazon.com's CEO Jeff Bezos writes a letter to the company's shareholder to review how his decisions and actions affected the business. This is indeed an example of a blueprint for building a durable franchise in technology (hat tip David Lee). It is also a testimony to the effectiveness of communications in demonstrating how a company can continually make better promises as it closes the gap between the promises it makes and those... Read more →

Why Social Business Intelligence Matters

The aspect of social business intelligence I focus most in my work is inviting user input and feedback at early points of development. This can help improve existing service design experiences, products, and processes before release to then iterate before subsequent releases. It is also one of the reasons why I like the lateral association# of Maximally Valued Product for MVP, which in product development parlance stands for Minimum Viable Product, a strategy used for fast and quantitative market testing of a product/feature, popularized by Eric Ries# for web applications. Some sample use cases for social business intelligence I often... Read more →

The Audience Doesn't Come to See You

They come to see themselves. If you think about it, it's actually a relief. Once you know that is what people are looking for, and that's beyond the pure entertainment business, you make room for them. It's a simple principle, yet hardly easy to execute. +++ Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. To book her to speak click here. Read more →

12 Creative Business Catalysts to Help You Do Better

I pared down the number of blogs I read regularly since I published a list of 50 recommended (re)sources. With magazine like Flipboard, and the serendipity of social networks, good content tends to find me. To those who took the 100 PR people worth following on Twitter out of context, I'll remind us of something Eco said in an interview about why we like lists#: If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot. So this new list is again documenting a point in time on my growth path. My... Read more →

What Jeff Bezos Should do with the Washington Post

The news that Amazon's Bezos personally purchasing The Washington Post for $250 million is providing a strong example of the volume and range of opinions, information, and first hand experience accessible on the Interwebs. All content published freely by people close to the industry -- topped by Kara Swisher's eloquent open letter, which is being shared on all social networks, in itself indication that good journalism does not go out of style -- and readers close to the news organization. With paper product or not, The Washington Post still has plenty of brand equity and credibility. Borrowing the sentiment from... Read more →

Companies Still Struggle to Embrace Personal Brands

The perception gap: It's been a dozen years since the publication of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Millions of printed and digital words later, companies are still struggling to reconcile how to deal with the personal brands of the popular individuals who write or produce for them Organizations do hire individual stars on the strength of their knowledge, experience, and connections. All appealing qualities. However, they often find it challenging to leverage them on behalf of their brand(s) and business. The two critical points at issue are: (1.) A corporation usually has a broader line of products and services it seeks to... Read more →

Mind the Marketing Gap

Two Economist Intelligence Unit executive surveys# indicate that organizations are shifting focus and investments on interactive communications as part of an increasing emphasis on personalization. While people express indifference to superficial personalization, they are keen on more nuanced customization efforts. How are marketers reaching out to customers and prospective customers? Among the findings for the six industries surveyed -- banking, travel, clothing/apparel, media, entertainment, and auto: Banking shouldn’t overlook mobile as customers prefer to engage with banking brands on mobile devices — twice as much as for any other industry. However, banking marketers invest less in mobile than marketers in... Read more →

Focusing on Making Better Decisions

Luck favors the prepared mind, so the saying goes. In my book that means working on the being prepared and getting ready to welcome opportunity -- without making too firm of a plan. This is especially useful in times of great uncertainty. It's how you keep your independent nature alive and thinking. Which means putting more effort and focus on the decision making part. Results may or may not be there. And with change being so rapid, the next opportunity will likely look very different than the last one. Your ability to deliver is based upon how you approach the... Read more →

When Strategy Gets Out of the Way

A lot of what we seem to be doing in a product like [the iPhone] is actually getting design out of the way. And I think with that sort of reason — and they’re not just arbitrary shapes — it feels almost inevitable. It feels almost undesigned. It feels almost like, “Well, of course it’s that way. Why would it be any other way?” [Johnathan Ive] It's a similar concept with strategy. The more it seems obvious (in retrospect) it was the way to go, the stronger the focus and discipline invested to make it happen. +++ Valeria is an... Read more →