Join the Conversation

Twitter and YouTube dominated most of the discussion at HOLDCOM’s first monthly Social Media Mixer on June 25th, 2009 here at our Glen Rock offices. The 60-minute meeting brought together staff, clients, partners and vendors of HOLDCOM to discuss the benefits of Social Media.

“This hands-on workshop style approach is aimed at discussing and developing Social Media skills and knowledge to generate leads/sales as well as improve customer service. Our focus is on networking with like-minded individuals to help expand ideas and personal networks. The opportunity to meet face to face and work side by side, really adds to the quality of each meeting,” said Andy Begnoche`, Director of Operations at HOLDCOM and the driving force behind the monthly meetings. “We’ve been exploring Social Media for the past 15 months, but have not dedicated enough time and resources to it. Committing to monthly meetings and opening it up to our clients, vendors, and partners will help us vet this and uncover Social Media’s real value from the business side as well as a Customer Service tool,” Begnoche added.

If you would like to learn more about this group or attend our monthly meetings, contact Andy Begnoche` at 800-666-6465 or email him andyb@holdcom.com. If you would like to receive a copy of the PowerPoint presentation for June’s meeting, please email socialmedia@holdcom.com and include your contact information.

Have a LinkedIn account or thinking about setting one up? Join us this July 23rd at 12:30 pm, as our topic will be focused leveraging LinkedIn as a Social Media tool. If you have information you’d like to contribute or would like to attend, email socialmedia@holdcom.com.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the influence of technology on our perception of voice recordings and the growing speculation that Holdcom’s voice talents were computer- generated, synthetic renditions of the "real thing”.

After reassuring our readers and clients of their biological authenticity…that Holdcom exclusively employs “live” human talent for ALL audio fulfillment… we still receive occasional feedback describing a recording as “robotic”.

A factor that may contribute to this robotic reaction is “compression”, a commonly used process that reduces the amount of data required to store, transmit or “stream” an audio file. Compression is an important consideration in a world that relies upon the continuous transmission, exchange and distribution of voice, information and rich media via telephone, television and Internet. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is a recent and increasingly popular development that depends on the use of compressed voice files and “codecs”.  (A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding, compressing and/or decompressing, a digital data stream or signal.)

Sometimes, as a result of its inability to properly process and reproduce certain frequencies in a sound, compression may generate audio byproducts known as “aliasing”. Aliasing (as in “digital aliasing”) is the term used to describe what happens when trying to record and play back frequencies higher than one-half the sampling rate. According to the Nyquist Theorem, successful reproduction of a frequency component in a sound requires that it be sampled at a rate at least twice its frequency. Aliasing is an annoying distortion that can add an artificial, mechanized characteristic to what otherwise is a natural sounding voice recording.

Holdcom employs signal processing, equalization and filtering (anti-aliasing) to reduce this unwanted effect whenever possible. So before you critique a voice talent’s performance, consider all the elements that may impact the listening experience, such as the environment, clarity of transmission, source of the sound, and of course, compression! Watch for more on “listening environments” in an upcoming issue of The Holdcom Voice.

1. Downsizing staff leads to more hold time.

2. Message-On-Hold is the least expensive way to promote your products and service.

3. Message-On-Hold maximizes your sales opportunities by keeping callers informed and engaged while waiting for assistance.

4. Reduce caller hang-ups.

5. Reinforcing customer service has never been more important.

6. You don’t want to miss any opportunities to do business.

7. Makes small businesses look larger and growing. Makes large businesses look friendly AND fiscally responsible by utilizing an economically sound marketing tool.

8. Provides and on-going opportunity to cross sell products and services to your customer base.

9. Requires minimal time and energy to implement, so you can focus on other priorities.

10. Implementing Message-On-Hold is an inexpensive way to show your employees & customers you are still investing in marketing and are optimistic about the future.

HOLDCOM is proud to feature a veteran voice talent – Gary, on our roster with 30 years of Voice Over experience. The Holdcom Voice is equally as proud to feature Gary in our July 2009 edition.

Gary began Voice Over work when he was in high school. His sister worked at a radio station in Chicago, where he would record the PSA’s.

After so many years in the business, we asked Gary if he still found things interesting or exciting about his chosen profession. He replied, “I love that I’m talking directly to the consumer and making a difference in their attitude toward the company I’m representing.”

Gary grew up on stage in Chicago and gradually shifted toward Voice Over, film, and television work. “I’ve had the privilege of working with the likes of Tim Conway, Mel Tillis, and my personal friend, Tom Lester, who played “Eb” on the Green Acres series,” says Gary. 

Be sure to sample Gary’s voice and get his experience for your next project at www.holdcom.com/voices.

Last month's Tech Talk article was about Search Engine Optimization. This month I'm going to expand on that by getting into Google's Webmaster Tools.

The Google Webmaster Toolkit is a Google site where a site owner can register their site to enhance and increase site traffic, connect with visitors, and analyze your web traffic. Most any site host offers free tools for viewing your site's traffic and hits, but more often than not they are just raw log files. With Google's Webmaster Tools, you can see nicely laid out and easily interpretable data about how your site is accessed, which search queries find your site, your site's current PageRank, and errors encountered by Google while indexing your page.

The first step is to register your site and verify ownership. Site ownership can be verified either by generating a special HTML page and placing it on your site, or adding a specially generated META tag to the header of your page. After the site is verified, Google indexes the site and it appears in your Webmaster Dashboard. The Webmaster Dashboard lists your index crawls (how many times Google has indexed your page), crawler errors, if you have uploaded a sitemap, and what queries reach your page.

Another great tool is that you can generate a sitemap. A sitemap is an XML file that is a listing of all the pages on your site and how they are linked together. It makes sure that you don't have any pages that would be unaccessible by a web surfer. Webmaster Central has a tool for generating a sitemap, and then you upload it to their service.

Google has several ways that it indexes your page and measures its relevancy, particularly the number of other sites that link back to your site. The best way to do this is to promote your website! Also, the frequency of your page updates figures into this as well. The more often your site is updated, the more often Googlebot has to crawl the site again. One of the best ways to frequently update your site is something I will continue with next month: Blogs!