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Connect to Better Business Service with VoIP

June 25, 2014 by Thomas Leave a Comment

avoiperBusinesses can utilize modern technology to become more efficient and increase cost savings while providing better customer service. One of those technologies is VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol phone systems.

With that in mind, why should your business consider switching?

More than Just a Phone Service

While VoIP offers the same features that you get with regular phone service, it gives you much more.

You get voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, and other features. But other features enhance your business that you can’t get with traditional phone companies.

Many of these features can allow your business to be more productive.

The ability to transcribe your voicemail messages to email allows you to record important information without having to replay the message.

It also permits you to receive your messages in a convenient fashion even when you are away from the office and contact customers more quickly.

Improved Customer Service

Coaching tools on VoIP allows managers or supervisors to listen in on phone conversations their employees are having with customers without disturbing anyone. They can even whisper instructions and advice without the client overhearing. This not only makes a good training tool but can help employees deal with difficult clients.

Auto attendant allows customers to be connected with the right extension without having to be transferred. This saves them the time and hassle of going through a live person when they already know where they need to go.

Improved Cost Savings

Using VoIP helps save businesses money because VoIP providers are cheaper than traditional telephone companies.

It also allows people to connect to the system from anywhere as long as they have a VoIP phone. You can access the system through email, which is ideal when you are traveling.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money or change your system completely to switch over to VoIP. Just use a VoIP converter and connect it to any standard phone.

You can find systems such as the Ooma Telo VOIP phone system from major retailers like Walmart.

Improved Staff Relations

A VoIP service allows you to hold conferences with your staff even when you are away.

Just connect an IP phone and you can hold meetings over important topics from anywhere.

It’s also ideal for the staff members that are working from home full-time or even a day or two a week. It’s much easier for them to keep track of what is happening at the office and to feel part of the group. They also receive calls as if they were in the office and no one can tell the difference.

As more businesses offer the option for staff to work at home, a VoIP system becomes even more valuable.

It is one way of making employees feel like they are part of the team while giving them the flexibility they value.

As you can see, a VoIP system provides numerous benefits to a business whether in employee relations, customer service or with cost savings.

See how it can help your business and implement your own VoIP telephone system.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Joyce Morse is an author who writes on a variety of topics, including SEO and technology.

Filed Under: Business Life Tagged With: bc, communications, customer-service, technology, VOIP

Book Review: Spin Sucks, By Gini Dietrich

April 3, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

Gini Dietrich is on a mission.

She is aiming to shift the practice (and then the perception) of the public relations profession, one mind at a time.

It’s a tough row to hoe, when we are inundated daily with reports of sneaky native advertising, journalist fakeouts, and “astroturfed” social content, much of it generated by so-called PR pros.

But Gini and the Arment Dietrich team represent the good guys, and in her new book, Spin Sucks: Communication and Reputation Management in the Digital Age, she explains exactly how communications, PR and media relations can be done with integrity and still get stellar results.

In fact, the tectonic shift is taking place everywhere. Power that used to reside in the hands of a few gatekeepers is now democratically spread out to the masses. You can no longer spray out a press release to a purchased list of emails and hope for the best. In a strange way, the digital tide is forcing us to hone our storytelling craft by taking away the crutches we used to rely on. Spin Sucks is full of real stories of success and #FAIL, told in Gini’s down-to-earth style.

Spin Sucks, by Gini Dietrich

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is running a business (large or small), regardless of whether you’re working with an agency or doing it guerrilla style. If you are working with an agency, this book will give you a great baseline knowledge of an integrated marketing/communications/PR/media relations strategy. If you’re going it alone, use the book to experiment and be successful enough to hire a team of pros.

Key Takeaways from Spin Sucks

  • Be a storyteller, not a spinner.
  • Content creation is a long-term strategy, not a quick fix.
  • Create assets that reflect a mix of paid, earned, shared, and owned media.
  • Be honest and transparent in your dealings with the public; manipulation will backfire.
  • It’s time to stop working with content farms, scrapers, and plagiarists.
  • Get comfortable with the fact that your customers are really in control of your brand.
  • Learn to say “I’m sorry” with no embellishment or caveats.
  • The best way to repair online reputation is by overwhelming the negative content with your own great, useful, customer-valued content.
  • If you want to be prepared for the future, stay tapped into all of the disciplines that make up marketing communications…the lines are getting blurrier and blurrier.

What’s your best communications “war story?” Have you had to deal with a communications crisis?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Disclosure: I was given an advance free digital copy of this book for review purposes; however that in no way altered my opinion or the content of this review. My personal story of guerrilla digital PR is mentioned in the book.

Filed Under: Business Book, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, book review, communications, marketing, PR

Six Steps to Getting the Attention of Journalists on Your Own

April 4, 2013 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

By Gini Dietrich

I am a communications professional. My entire career has been spent at PR firms – first at Fleishman-Hillard in Kansas City, then Rhea & Kaiser in Chicago, and I started Arment Dietrich in April 2005.

One of the most important things I learned early in my career was how to build relationships.

It started with journalists, then moved to the executives within our office, and finally with the executives at our client’s offices.

I spent many years cultivating relationships with journalists: Getting to know their beats, understanding what they would or wouldn’t cover, and even knowing when they celebrated their birthdays so I could send a card or cupcakes or booze.

And then 2008 hit. Newspapers folded, popular magazines went under, and a lot of my friends – those I’d known for more than 10 years – lost their jobs.

Suddenly the journalists who were left had to cover automakers, small business, and manufacturing…even though small business might have been their only beat previously.

They were too busy to take phone calls or go on media tours or even sit with you for an hour to talk about what you had upcoming.

And the role of a communications professional changed, when it came to media relations.

Getting the Attention of Journalists

Almost exactly four years ago, Steve Strauss – the small business expert at USA Today – wrote an article called, “Should Entrepreneurs Twitter? Uh, No.”

I read it with great interest, mostly because I had had amazing success using Twitter to build our brand.

In it, he detailed the four reasons entrepreneurs should not use Twitter. I very thoughtfully responded on his article and pointed out the four reasons they should use it…and the other social networks, too.

Because my comment was thoughtful and professional, he called me and we talked about social media, in general. About 30 minutes into the call, he asked if we could go on record.

What came of that conversation was, “Twitter for Small Business…Reconsidered.”

Because he’s like everyone else – swamped with little to no time to listen to pitches from PR professionals – he reads the comments on his articles to see if there is anything worth revisiting or diving into more deeply.

The Response Campaign

Hence, the response campaign was born.

It’s not a very creative title, but my team and our clients know what it means: Spend the time to read and respond to journalists and they’ll eventually add you to their Rolodex of trusted resources.

Here is a step-by-step process to create this magic for yourself:

  1. Choose one newspaper, magazine, or blog that makes a difference in your industry. It can be Wall Street Journal or it can be one of your trade publications. Choose just one.
  2. Once a week, comment on one article, blog post, or editorial. If you disagree, fantastic! Say so. But do it professionally. Being negative or criticizing without a solution isn’t helpful. Professional discourse is.
  3. Keep this up.
  4. After about six weeks, the journalist will feel like he or she is beginning to know you and will call you for a story in the works.
  5. Every quarter add another publication, so you have four that you focus on each year.
  6. Don’t be afraid to go after the big publications. If your expertise adds value to the stories they’re reporting, comment away!

If you are consistent and post intelligent comments once a week, you’ll soon have developed relationships with journalists who call on you when they need someone to interview.

Yes, it takes some time. Yes, it’s hard work. Yes, it requires that you keep up with your reading. But it works 100 percent of the time. Wouldn’t you rather do that than send a news release to 1,000 journalists and not get a single bite?

Author’s Bio: Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communication firm. She is the lead blogger at PR and marketing blog, Spin Sucks, co-author of Marketing In the Round, and co-host of Inside PR, a weekly podcast about communications and social media. Connect with her on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: bc, commenting., communications, marketing, PR

Net Neutrality 9-25-2006

September 25, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

US Telecom Bill Is DOA

Net neutrality kills overdue legislation, as new Internet lobby force rises on Capitol Hill.

The Communications, Consumers’ Choice and Broadband Deployment Act looks to be on the verge of extinction.

[ . . . ]

The bill is the first piece of comprehensive telecommunications legislation in a decade. It covers a wide range of telecommunications and regulatory issues such as video franchising, universal service, and municipal broadband.

Still, passage of the bill hinges on Net neutrality, a concept not well understood in both the general U.S. population and the Senate.

A coalition of organizations and individuals led by MoveOn.org, the Free Press, Consumers Union, Gun Owners of America, Google, and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org, moved the Net neutrality discussion into the mainstream with a relentless Internet-based lobbying effort.

In both the Senate and House committees, Net neutrality dominated the sometimes disjointed debate. Despite the fact that bills passed in both houses that did not include Net neutrality provisions, the SaveTheInternet.com coalition seems to be on the brink of victory.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Filed Under: Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends Tagged With: bc, communications, Consumers’-Choice-and-Broadband-Deployment-Act, Net-Neutrality

Net Neutrality 8-31-2006

August 31, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality Heads Toward Showdown In Senate; May Get Sidelined

. . . Is Internet neutrality a solution without a problem? The hardware companies think so. They haven’t invoked the hoopla around the Y2K debacle, but that’s about the position that they’re taking. “We won’t direct traffic away from the content/service providers”

On the other hand, Internet neutrality groups cite as a battle cry the words spoken last November by AT&T Chairman Edward Whitacre Jr., who said content providers were “nuts” if they thought they could use “my pipes” without paying extra, referring to AT&T’s broadband and telephone DSL services.

The United States Supreme Court opened the battlefield for Congress to step in last year in its Brand X decision, which affirmed the FCC’s decision classifying cable broadband Internet access an information service and not telephone service. The consequence of the decision was not lost on Congress: According to the Supreme Court, cable is not a common-carrier and therefore does not require equal access to its “pipes.”

So, Congress has stepped in with the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 to solve what some Senators see as the problem. The act seeks to allow phone companies to negotiate national cable franchise agreements instead of the way cable companies must do now: negotiating city-by-city franchise rights. . . . Wags predict it the bill may get sidelined until next year

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Filed Under: Business Life, Community, SEO, Successful Blog, Trends Tagged With: and-Broadband-Deployment-Act-of-2006, ATT-Chairman-Edward-Whitacre, bc, communications, Consumers-Choice, FCC, Net-Neutrality

Great Find: 9 Things Every Blogger Should Understand

August 27, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Good Advice Is Always Good

I came across this piece by Another Blogger in early July. I’ve been saving it. Today seemed like a good day to share it.

Great Find: 9 Things Every Blogger Should Understand by Another Blogger
Permalink: http://anotherblogger.com/2006/07/06/9-things-every-blogger-should-understand/

Audience/Topic: Every blogger

Content: Ever read a book and thought, “I knew that!”? This list of nine points is the blogging experience clarified. Read it. Print it. Put it on your wall. Then read it again. Click the title shot to get the post.

<a href=

Thanks, Another Blogger. I couldn’t have said it better.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, business-writing, communications, critical-skills, personal-branding

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