become quite popular, as one example.
We continue to innovate and create new
revenue streams to support our model.
What would you say to any woman
entrepreneur who wants to start
her own company?
Don’t fear failure in some kind of
abstract way. Ask yourself, truly,
what is the worst that can happen if you
fail? Take the answer to the worst conclu-
sion—you fail, you lose everything you’ve
put in. Now, for most of us, there is a
safety net. We can rebuild. So, you may
find that the “worst” is bad, but not tragic.
And then I say: Go for it!
Why do you believe it’s important
for women to be involved with
technology?
Women are the majority of Internet
users. The majority of women blog
in equal numbers to men, and control over
80 percent of the household dollars spent,
including on electronics and technology
decisions. And yet they are not so repre-
sented in any hall of power, from politics,
to commerce, to media. And certainly not
in the tech space, despite the fact that any
new web apps user base is likely to be 50
percent women. So, there may come a
time when BlogHer and its mission are
obsolete. But we are not there yet.
How important are blogs for driv-
ing conversation between the blog
reader and the author? Why do you think
conversation is so important?
Our expectations are different now.
We want what we want, when we
want it, and we expect to be able to be a
part of it. This applies to the political con-
versation, product conversations, you
name it. Blogs are a leading channel for
this. And if people don’t want to listen, we
can all create our own personal platforms
now.
enterprising Women Copyright 2009, Enterprising Women magazine (www.enterprisingwomen.com).
All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
Valeria Maltoni:
Conversation Agent
VALERIA MALTONI has taken the art of
conversations and made it a science. She is
the go-to person corporations and thought
leaders call to understand business com-
munication in this new world. Her blog,
Conversation Agent is one of the most
respected blogs prominently featured on
the prestigious Ad Age Power 150 list. As a
self-described “communicator in a market-
ing world,” Maltoni looks at technology
through the lens of conversation.
Conversation Agent is a fantastic
name for the blog. What was your
inspiration?
Growing up I was always the per-
son connecting others. I’m biased
by action and using insights to make
something happen. I thought why not
combine the idea of conversation—of
things and people together and the idea of
agent, in terms of taking something to a
new place. It wasn’t scientific. It was more
like observing myself.
The selfish motive (in starting the blog)
was that I love learning. That’s my first
passion. I wanted to include thoughts that
would give me feedback and insight as to
what people were thinking.
What have you learned about con-
versation driving business?
Whenever I am tempted to fall back
on traditional marketing models
and just send out a message or use tools
in the traditional way, I remind myself how
exponentially better the results are when
customers are given the opportunity to
“
‘Your marketing results
are exponentially better
when customers are given
the opportunity to give
“
feedback and access the
conversation.’
– Valeria Maltoni
give feedback and access to the conver-
sation. That’s what stops me from going
back to my habits of using traditional mar-
keting.
How does a business start having
a conversation with their custom-
ers or clients?
I think one thing to consider is to
start internally and look within your
organization. Don’t just stop at the work
flow chart. Ask yourself: What are the skill
sets and voices in the organization that
you can bring to the forefront? Can they
represent the business in their own way?
To have a conversation, you cannot
control the message. The more educa-
tional, informational and entertaining you
can make the message from your organi-
zation, as a team, the more you are part of
the conversation, and the more you control
the conversation.
How should businesses begin to
use technology?
You should start evaluating the
technology to understand the
dynamics the technology allows. The tech-
nology is a container. Ask yourself: Would
I approach my customer using a tele-
phone, e-mail or a letter? What are their
communication styles? Where are the
people of influence to my customers?
Where are the analysts? Where are the
journalists and others who may have a
sway in the decisions your customers
make. What happens in those spaces?
For example, take Twitter. People use it
to have rapid conversations. What sort of
dynamic exists in that space and what can
35
Web
2.0
you insert into the conversation effective-
ly? As you create your technology strategy,
ask yourself how it integrates with your
marketing and business strategies?
Always remember, technologies come
and go. It’s what people do with them that
matter.
What is the one question every
business should be asking?
The one question every business
owner should be asking is “How am
I doing?” If you don’t know that you are in
a vacuum. All business owners should
realize it’s what they don’t know that can
hurt them.
Emerging
Entrepreneurs
You don’t have to be in the tech busi-
ness to know that using technology to
improve your business makes good sense.
Lucie Voves and Laura Lee Williams have
used technology to boost business aware-
ness and get a few high-flying fans in the
process.
Lucie Voves:
Church Hill Classics
LUCIE VOVES started Church Hill
Classics in 1991 as a home-based opera-
tion selling limited edition artwork at her
alma mater, Dartmouth College, on the
street corner at graduation weekend.
Today, the company has a national pres-
ence and sells licensed diploma and award
frames, insignia desk accessories (such as
bookends, desk boxes, paperweights, and
desk sets), and sports arena frames for
over a thousand institutions across the
country. Their business continues to
expand and in 2007, Voves and her hus-
36 Copyright 2009, Enterprising Women magazine (www.enterprisingwomen.com).
All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
band, Joe, purchased a 47,000-square-
foot manufacturing facility, which employs
55 people.
When did you start using technol-
ogy in your business?
The early investments were primar-
ily in manufacturing equipment to
maximize efficiency and quality of our
products, and in systems to assist with
managing our royalty reporting needs. We
launched our diplomaframe.com site in
1997 and it has been central to our busi-
ness model ever since that time. We use it
to brand our products and support the
local college store retailers by featuring
their products and driving referrals and
sales through to them.
I have invested in software solutions
and equipment to streamline operations
over time, and in 2008 we launched an
extensive enterprise resource planning
system upgrade. This facilitates batching
of all component orders, streamlines oper-
ations, allows efficient one-off custom
manufacturing, and provides system-wide
order and status tracking. Most recently,
we have substantially upgraded our Web
site functionality to expand online, visual
frame customization capabilities for
school-specific designs.
What has been most successful
for you in terms of using technol-
ogy to market your business?
We have a company site (Church
Hill Classics) on Facebook, which
was the forum for our “Frame My Future”
scholarship contest, and we used it to
showcase entries, gather comments,
announce finalists, and build a fan base
that we can leverage again when we
launch the contest again this fall. We did a
great job last year building inbound links
from scholarship sites like scholarships.
com, and pulling in college age kids. This
fall, we want to penetrate more parents’
communities online, and we are identifying
potential avenues there now. Parents
spend the money to buy our frames so
they are our number one target.
We recently built a custom module for
our Web site to handle these contests,
allowing online submission of entries, sort-
ing and searching by name, school, and
keywords provided by the entrant. We can
select finalists and “turn-on” voting capa-
bilities for the final voting stage, which is
entirely popular vote. We picked 24 final-
ists for the scholarship and sent all of them
a kit with specific suggestions to get the
vote out for their entry so their job became
to promote themselves and drive votes for
their entry back to our site.
The winners were the ones who did this
best, and they promoted themselves and
the contest on Facebook, Twitter, personal
Web sites, and with the local press. The
grand prize winner even got his or her
school to do an e-mail blast to current
students and all alumni asking them to
view his entry and vote for him. We cur-
rently have a small contest going called
“Frame Your Graduate”—here is a link:
http://www.diplomaframe.com/contests
/14_frame_your_graduate_photo_contest.
cfm
What’s not to like about a company that
is showcasing and giving back to kids with
a great vision for their future? The strategic
tie-in with “frames” and “framing your
future” works well.
What was the most surprising fact
of using new media?
Most surprising to us is the ability to
build some real dialogue around
topics that are meaningful to our audience.
This is an area where our competition has
been slow to act, and we feel we have a real
advantage to be out front and stay out front.
The popular vote is great for traffic building,
and also makes the contest fair with no risk
of the company making an unpopular call
on the winners because we don’t decide
the winners—the public does.
How much time do you spend
marketing your business with new
media?
I spend about 20 percent of my time
on online marketing efforts, which
includes overseeing search engine optimi-
zation (SEO), Web site upgrades, and social
networking and related initiatives.
Do you outsource any of your mar-
keting with new media and how
much do you spend on outsourcing?
We work with one SEO consultant
company on a limited basis. We
have had a retainer with them in the past of
enterprising Women