NetSpeak Technologies

I am glad that I canceled my 14 day Free Trial.  I have been sick in bed for a few days and I wanted to learn some information that would be useful to my position as Technical Sales for YourHost.com. One of my pet peeves is to waste time and see others waste time.

Sometimes I buy from Amazon and other well known audio places just because they typically make everything pretty user friendly.  I was linked and referred by www.Audible.com a I knew of a book on Marketing I would like to hear but was wary of how it would load into my phone or just download and play,  but they wanted $7.95 to join, and then I stumbled upon a 14 day trial. The flow of signing up was not clear (my first clue) , so I jumped on a chat with a nice person from Audible and she showed me the link to sign up as they were not showing you anything until you put your Credit Card Info in.

I asked if you put your CC info there would be no charge for the first 14 days and what happened after that. She said it would be $14.95/mo. I said what happened to the $7.95? That is not there, it is $14.95. I also asked if the book was downloaded, can I get it easily to my iPhone and they said sure it will go into Itunes and you can get it on your phone. Wrong.

Ok so being sick I wanted to see what they had to offer and I downloaded a free book on marketing. I listened to half of it the first day and today I listened to part of the 2nd half, and I heard the guy talking about faxes and other things well made me want to check the publishing date to make sure I was getting the freshest information.  Publishing date 1994 …Really?

I saved two screen shots so you could see for yourself that I did not make any of this up.

The bottom line is if your going to offer something for free to entice for a long-term relationship, make it worthwhile that is current and can be used.

In summary, difficult to work with, and deceptive.

There were other reasons I cancelled but this was what irritated me the most.

P.S. I could not get the file onto my phone and so I downloaded the app from ITunes and I logged into Audible.com’s app and saw the file, but the download was disabled…. that did it, so I listened to it on my laptop….grrr

Customer Service, Marketing

Making a Flash player can be a task that keeps one from an otherwise quick  entry into the streaming world.

We do not feel this should be difficult.  We have no idea why streaming companies make their Flash and even Windows HTML Codes and files  a mystery to it’s users and YourHost.com is here to change that for the better.

The goal is to get our users online as as painless as possible.  As you get accustomed to the player and to the systems, then you can branch out and test codes, and make your own players.

We understand YOUR needs and has customized a JW player that you ONLY need to grab the HTML code, copy and paste the name of the file you wish to stream from ouur  administration tool and Bamm!!!, your streaming your files Live or archived!

See the Customized Flash Player here and write or call us us if you need any assistance.  We will be releasing a fully customizable player that you can add your logo, donation-tithe, ecommerce links which are endless to make for a better viewers experience.

Marketing, Streaming

I just got off the phone with an old friend Alex Mendoza, CEO and founder of Stylophane regarding his new product that tracks and reports Facebook users.

We both agreed that Facebook will probably rival Google in it’s size and popularity. We discussed the word to describe Facebook as a sliced “Gated Communities” . When you think of Google VS. Facebook, Google Open VS. Facebook Closed.

Anyway, he told me an amazing story about making this Facebook tool and when it was ready they launched a small grassroots social blogging push. Well obviously the right person reading, picking it up, and running with it, got his product to be the talk of the European Fashion community. Were talking major major fashion blogs. He has been getting calls all over the world from major designers and big player companies asking about his product. (companies not mentioned for obvious reasons..)

The takeaway is this, You can spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on Google ads and you may get a handful of customers in the end, but if you run a similar model in Facebook, you end up with a load of loyal fans that you can nurture.
I hope I have explained it well enough to understand, but if your not sure visit

Stylophane

Nice Job Alex

Pay-Per-Click, Social Media

Tracking is key! In the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Stephen  Covey used an analogy of a woodcutter who was sawing for several days straight but was becoming less and less productive. The process of cutting dulls the blade. So the solution is to periodically sharpen the saw. That same line of reasoning can apply to both brick and mortar and online stores.

Many companies will launch different campaigns when it comes to marketing. They will try sending out emails to their current customer base, They will advertise in different places, both  online or in local areas,  some companies will cold call to generate leads, and others will launch PPC (pay per click) campaigns. All of these methods are effective “tools” for the job done. “Tools” however can lose their edge.

Tracking tools a very important to any website in any spaces. When using tracking tools also known as web analytics you can find out information such as where your customers are coming from, or how they are finding you in the first place. You can find out how long they stay on your web page and what they do when they’re there. You can also find out how many people visit your site versus how many people actually make purchases on your website.

With all this knowledge any business owner or marketing director can find out exactly where your customers are coming from and can focus on making that aspect more effective. In effect “sharpening that saw”.

Marketing also takes time, money, energy, and resources.  With these tracking tools companies also find out what just plain doesn’t work for you business and therefore know what is mot worth the extra time and effort.

I urge everyone to go online and try out Google analytics. Google Analytics is a free service with some tracking ability that all companies can benefit from. It is great for basic stats.After using a low end tool like Google analytics you should have an idea of what statistics are most important and from there you can step into a better solution.

In this industry knowledge is power and the know a company knows about their customers the better they will be able to serve them. Never forget to sharper your saw. It never hurts to have an edge.

Analytics, Marketing Analytics, google, information, internet, Marketing, statistics, tool, tracking, traffic, web