Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

3+ Lessons on Twitter Interaction from Stephen Fry

“We should always remember that feelings come first with human beings.” [Stephen Fry] The quote is not from Twitter, it's from an interview Fry did at the George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight#. Much of the interview touches upon recurring themes on the changing nature of interaction (or lack thereof) in social networks, especially Twitter. 1. Opportunity in serendipity At the 3-minute mark, Fry talks about the moment that changed his life, the hinge that created a change: his decision to enroll into Cambridge, the commitment to making it happen by paying for the admission exam, and the individuals who decided to help.... Read more →

Lessons Learned Edition

Making Sense: Business Lessons To the People of New Jersey. Elon Musk: The intent was simply to prevent a fair and longstanding deal between an existing auto company and its dealers from being broken, not to prevent a new company that has no franchisees from selling directly to consumers. Where Have All the Retail Data Scientists Gone? SAS Analyst Day Report Out. RSR: Innovation doesn’t always come from within an industry – sometimes the best ideas are transplants from other industries. Making Do: Media Lessons Survey of nearly a thousand web pages looks at interactive features for news. via Nieman... Read more →

Why Have a Blog?

Blogging has seen quite the evolution in the last twenty years. Why have a blog today? A more pointed question for many might be: Why on earth would you still bother with blogging? Three themes emerged from those early days of posting online what we were thinking: 1. Search + Social This meant individuals paved the way for companies and businesses that started by listening and monitoring to evolve their presences and go direct to customers first with proof of concept projects to teach the organization to be innovative, work organically, and think socially. Along the way, we wondered about... Read more →

How Content Creates Value and Delivers Business Impact

This is the topic of my pre-recorded 15-minute talk for the Sales Acceleration Summit (#salessummit), which will be held tomorrow. The event will be live from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PST. Here's the abstract of what I am going to cover with a quick 12-slide presentation: The success of branded content has not gone unnoticed among many marketers who do understand the need for content marketing as they court the attention and preference of digitally enabled, multi-screen empowered, and product savvy customers. To implement this facet of digital/social strategy successfully, marketers need to become content creators. As publishers, brands... Read more →

What is the Map? Where am I on the Map?

To expand on the topic of user-results-focused approach, two data points people are constantly looking to interpret and understand: What is the map? Where am I on the map? Combined, they create the impetus for most of the conversations in business past, present, and possibly future. Because the root of the questions is purely human. It is the backdrop that informs and influences behavior. Building on this concept with current real world examples. The Internet of things Beyond the conversation about everything being connected, there are real world application of how it would be helpful to have that connection in... Read more →

Your Customers are Slipping through Leaky Experiences

Loyalty programs are a misnomer for rewards-based marketing schemes -- incentives, or how Kathy Sierra puts it, bribes. Gaining "likes" on a brand Facebook page in exchange for a chance to win an iPad (not the brand's product) should not be confused with having customers line up outside your store for hours to pay hard-earned money to buy an iPad. The difference is this: in the first case, a brand offers a reward for taking an action -- "like" me to (maybe) win = bribe; in the second, the action takes the customer on the path to the personal reward... Read more →

News for Print, Most Practice, Mobile Perspective

Making Sense: News for Print The newsonomics of Newsweek’s pricey relaunch. Nieman Journalism Lab: The newest Newsweek strategy is both old-fashioned and radical. It’s old-fashioned in the sense that it is reviving a ghost print brand with printing presses on two continents. It’s radical in its pricing. Even the high-flying, high-quality weekly New Yorker only charges about $79 a year, while Time goes for $30 and The (monthly) Atlantic for about $25. Newsweek is going way beyond those prices. The Face Behind Bitcoin. Newsweek: Far from leading to a Tokyo-based whiz kid using the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" as a cipher... Read more →

Skin in the Game

Most of us live lives constantly on the go, with little-to-no-time for testing hypotheses or even formulating them, and experimentation becomes something that occurs by chance. The quest for predictable outcomes blinds us from the reality that business and most specifically commerce is about risk creation. Our conversations often suffer from a lack of appreciation for the micro-trade offs that are constantly necessary to make something work. Translating to layman terms: we idolize the macro-bulshitters and trivialize the people who adapt, iterate, and do what it takes to make it happen. Yet it is the process of learning by example... Read more →

5 Top Posts On Brands, Digital Content, and Creating Value

Simplicity Requires a Clear Understanding of What and Who Creates Value “[...] we believe that the power of simplicity lies in the ability to make choices. Choices of what to pursue and what not. Making these choices would require a clear understanding of what and who creates value. +++ Content Marketing, Content Strategy Becoming social is a content-based proposition. Just like being searchable. From the early days to mainstream adoption of social networks as communication tools making the case for brands as publishers is the associated benefit of direct to customer interactions, including the more recent introduction of Google's own... Read more →

eCommerce Site Social Discovery Going Mainstream

This is one of the findings by 8th Bridge in its Social Commerce IQ™ Retail 2013# report -- their annual analysis of how over 800 retailers are using social commerce to improve the shopping experience. From the report summary of findings: This year shows significant adoption of curation & social discovery features on ecommerce sites. 86% of retailers planning site redesigns for 2014 are planning to add social shopping features and 10% of the retailers covered in this report already support it. Other key findings: Facebook still drives the most traffic and conversions, about 200 times that of Twitter for... Read more →