On Hold Waiting Room Part 2 On Hold Waiting Room Part 2 Holdcom's Senior Script Consultant, Rob LeFever, shared a story about his first experience at a hospital on his own. He had woke up that morning with a slight pain in his neck. But the pain grew more and more intense. Meanwhile, an advocate - a volunteer who assists with patients in the waiting room - would check up on him. When putting a customer on hold, it is crucial that you understand your customer's pain and their specific situation. Knowing your customer's needs is the key to optimizing their waiting experience. On Hold Communication - The Original Social Media On Hold Communication - The Original Social Media With all the hype and buzz surrounding Social Media, many companies are scratching their heads trying to figure out its true ROI. It seems every month there is a new online product or community that is gaining user acclaim and notoriety. From the popular LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to newer applications like Google Buzz, most social media novices are overwhelmed by all the different programs and barely have time to manage one profile, let alone six or more. With invitations to join different social media communities flying across the Internet like a meteor shower, some have jumped in while others have run for cover, watching from the tree line. If we step back for a moment and analyze what Social Media is in its simplest form, it's communication - or more accurately, the exchange of information from one to many in a highly social environment. Message-On-Hold is the Grandfather of modern day Social Media.
CollegeWeekLive: Effective Social Media CollegeWeekLive: Effective Social Media This morning I stumbled upon CollegeWeekLive,a two-day virtual conference featuring live representatives from over three hundred universities. Since I have attended several virtual conferences on topics ranging from Social Media to B2B marketing strategies, I was curious to see how universities adopted this model of interactive outreach. Since Holdcom has provided message on hold and eLearning programs for Ramapo college and other institutions, I wanted to explore innovative ways that we could contribute to colleges’ audio marketing strategies. After registering and waiting a relatively quick loading time, I was transported into a vast, brightly lit lobby populated by walking, coffee drinking, chatting avatars. I followed one smartly dressed avatar and clicked on the “College Halls” section. Each booth had a live chat option.
SOCAP Social Media Ambassador SOCAP Social Media Ambassador by Andrew Begnoche For me, October is an exciting time of the year: The Baseball Fall Classic, the change of seasons, and, oh yes, the SOCAP Annual Conference, which will be held this year on October 17th - 20th in beautiful San Francisco. I'm really looking forward to this year's conference, not just for the fantastic keynote speakers (Craig Newmark of Craig's List , John Gerzema of Young & Rubicam, Charlene Li, Author of Groundswell & Open Leadership, Dan Roam, Author of The Back of The Napkin - to name a few), but for the destination of San Francisco, including a Wine tour sponsored by Gallo Wineries. However, this year I will not just be an attendee, exhibitor, or speaker - I will be a "Social Media Ambassador." So let's get started.
Voice Influence through Social Media Voice Influence through Social Media Today’s lesson in social media marketing comes from an unlikely source: Kim Kardashian. According to an article about generating traffic with Twitter on Mashable.com, the celebrity holds the most influence over her followers, even though she is several million behind Twitter-giants such as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. But hasn't web 2.0 taught us that it's a numbers game? Her secret is that the majority of her posts are “calls to action” that encourage her fan base to interact with her “brand,” or her image. Her comments aren’t simply micro-blogs about her life, a la Ashton Kutcher, but targeted “updates” that ultimately redirect traffic back to her site – and its working, since “her website ranks 54 out of all Twitter websites that [yield] clickthrouhgs” and “top 20 of entertainment category,” beating out news and sports feeds. It isn’t numbers, but scope of influence, that drive Web 3.0’s return on investment.
Audio Tweeting Audio Tweeting With speech-to-text capabilities and a technology that is constantly “on-the-go,” audio tweeting, or “micro-casting,” has become the middleman: it is more succinct than traditional audio messages, but more robust and personable than strictly text tweets. Whether audio tweets are used to wish a relative happy birthday or to broadcast press releases, they should be incorporated into social behavior. This dynamic is a novel way of communicating with your audience – and the more channels you have access to, the more people you will inform. Audio tweeting can be used for anything- ranging from personal jokes to sales announcements to reminders. Do-it-yourself audio-tweets are fun and charming, but if you are representing your business, you would only want the most professional quality. Here is a list – provided by our good friends Mashable - of five audio tweeting applications that are easy to use and offer a wide range of options.
How Social Media Will Affect The Future of Audio Marketing How Social Media Will Affect The Future of Audio Marketing I didn’t know much about venture capitalist Mark Suster until I read Past, Present, and Future of Social Networking, a three part series he contributed to TechCrunch, which is further expanded on his blog Both Sides of the Table. What I gleaned is that he is not only experienced and accomplished, but has the wisdom to extract lessons from his mistakes. He incorporates these lessons into his behavior and is willing to impart his knowledge on to future start-up entrepreneurs. But what caught my interest were his projections into the future of social media. The “explosion of data is creating opportunities just in the management of the data in and of itself” – social data – where “products such as Sprout Social and CoTweet [and awe.sm] are emerging to help businesses better track and communicate with their customers and leads.” I’m curious how the audio marketing industry will incorporate these new tools.
Massive Influencers: Social Media 3.0 Massive Influencers: Social Media 3.0 Over the past several months there has been a rise in the demand for monitoring content, and startups have responded by creating browser-based user-interfaces that collate data from various sites – and it is up for the user to pick and choose, to be the “curator” of their online space [i.e Pearltrees, Paper.li]. The change of focus from content production to organization is no coincidence: social content has been toeing the line between value and spam for quite some time. By liberating content selection / visibility from the hands of monopolized search engines, more ideas will be heard: not just “any” ideas, but the right ideas. According to Forrester Research, “having masses of random followers is a problem…only about 16% of the total American online audience are considered Massive Influencers.” This realization harkens back to meeting a customer’s wants. But what makes content "relevant" to your customers?
2011 - A bleak year for PCs 2011 - A bleak year for PCs EDIT 1/12/201: Gizmodo believes otherwise, that landlines will live on! EDIT 1/11/2011: Here is an updated follow-up to the July 5th, 2010 article! According to the “Pew and American Life Project, 82 percent of adult U.S. consumers who own cell phones are increasing their web activity,” with “38 percent…rely[ing] on their phones to access the internet” and “43 percent access[ing]…several times a day.” This was from an article dated July 5th, 2010. Several months and one New Year later, tech-giant Accenture predicts, “an increasing potential for an end in sight for the relevance of the personal computer [or phone] in the home as we know it today.” The survey focused on “usage and spending on 19 different consumer electronics technologies among more than 8,000 consumers in eight countries in both emerging markets and developing economies.” But what do these statistics mean? Is this a similar situation to the landline vs. mobile phone dilemma?
Embracing Social Media Embracing Social Media Contributed by Productions Team Member Joe Blakely Welcome blogsphere! I am a new member of the Holdcom Production Team. Beyond that, I am a 2010 College graduate, yes that’s right, I graduated in 2010 and was lucky enough to find a job that relates to my degree: coincidentally, through a social media outlet. But I digress; I want to show the social media evolution through the eyes of 22 year old that has seen its rapid and constant evolving status. Everyone born circa 1985 can remember the days of dial up, the days when using the Internet for in the home relied heavily on warning every person in the house to stay away from the phone or else you got booted off. Fast forward to the end of high school circa the golden days of 2005-2006. But then Facebook, and other social media networks like it (Twitter and Linkedin) have changed and allowed basically anyone to join (you can even make one for your pet, no joke). Now it’s time for businesses to get their act together.
Elmo's World: A Social Media Flop Elmo's World: A Social Media Flop Five days and 3,670,000+ views later, and Elmo’s Youtube Interview is still going strong. Inspired by the highly successful Old Spice Guy personal Twitter responses, and the countless celebrities that “curate” Youtube by posting their recommended videos, the Elmo interview is part of a new social media marketing tactic to artificially stimulate “viral campaigns.” However, is the Elmo interview successful? The Elmo Interview’s first mistake is its form of “moderating” questions – where people voted on what questions would be asked. What Old Spice did successfully was that they didn’t plan to go viral – they reacted to customer feedback, and selected the appropriate questions that would support their image. What celebrity “curators” accomplish is that they successfully market their persona– Youtube gives them a time slot, and they can say / show whatever they wish. The human moderator is also strangely off compared to his cuddly counterpart.
TED Feature TED Feature In July of 2010, Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, gave a compelling lecture at TEDglobal about the mechanisms behind “how [we are] the only species that becomes more prosperous as it becomes more popular.” Ridley is a confident speaker, fast-talking but can pause for a dry joke or two, whose sincere passion comes across as egging the audience to engage. “We need to understand how human beings bring together their brains,” he says, “to enable ideas to combine and recombine, to meet, and indeed, to mate – in other words, we need to understand how ideas have sex.” In a refreshing move, he doesn’t overuse “innovation” or “invention” – rather, he provides historical, statistical, and evolutionary proofs why the exchange of ideas leads to “progress through specialization.” The customer service sector, when it comes to telephony, is a constant exchange of ideas.