Get to Know USA Datanet. You will like their people focused culture

USA Datanet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Warwick Valley Telephone Company. This publicly traded (NASDAQ: WWVY) carrier, headquartered in Warwick, New York has been the provider of choice for businesses and residences for over 100 years. Warwick Valley Telephone is an Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) in parts of Orange County, New York with Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) status throughout New York and New Jersey.

When Warwick Valley Telephone acquired USA Datanet, it added the full capabilities of an experienced, market-leading communications technology company. Together, the two brands scope of services include voice, data/Internet, video, e-fax, email, conferencing and mobile communication.

Powered by Technology

The Hosted IP Voice system by USA Datanet utilizes high-speed Internet Protocol (IP) connections to carry both voice and data communications on a single, broadband conduit. This allows for:

• Secure, fast, reliable connections
• Dedicated, T1-level Internet access
• Transmission via private connections, not public Internet
• Network privately owned and managed

Supported by People.

And while the technology is advanced, the USA Datanet advantage is the tireless personal service we provide to each and every client.

• Expertly trained technicians and installation specialists
• US-based customer service call center
• User-friendly control panel available 24/7 online
• Simplified vendor management – one contact, one contract

Wellient empowers you to take a proactive role in your daily health routine.  Working for you around the clock with personalized medication reminders, adverse interaction alerts, automatic prescription renewal counts, daily follow-up upon hospital discharge, health test monitoring, portable health records, emergency response in case of accident, medication price comparisons and traditional and non-traditional medical information tailored to what you say is important to you. Stay on track, be healthier, feel better, stress less and save time and money.  Wellient is easy and low-tech for you to use, but high-tech and robust behind the scenes.

By launching a comprehensive new platform of health management and information services, they are transforming your medical history into usable and potentially life-saving information. It is no secret that a bewildering and fast-growing amount of data is available on the Web. A filtering service focused on the most reliable sources of information is needed. A service that is built around your specific needs. We are out to help change attitudes and behavior in a friendly, private and easy way.

Because experience and scale really do matter when it comes to something as important as emergency assistance, here’s one important thing you should know about Road America:  on a 24/7/365 basis, they provide consistently high quality assistance services to more than 21 million valued customers of our 120 major corporate clients.  Since 1978 they have set the standard for providing assistance services in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.  They handle all our communications with you and your clients personally – nothing is outsourced. Our state-of-the-art Call Centers In Miami, Florida, and Columbus, Georgia, route every caller to exactly the right Service Provider for that unique disablement.  From an available network of 50,000, they have carefully selected 15,000 rated, qualified, insured, trained and inspected Providers.

BACKED BY THE STRENGTH OF MAPFRE®

Their horsepower isn’t confined to North America, either.  As the US subsidiary of MAPFRE Asistencia, their network has a direct presence in 43 countries, offering insurance, reinsurance, assistance and specialty risks services.  They custom tailor products and services to meet the needs of thousands of corporate clients and millions of their insureds around the globe.  The group is certified as conforming to the ISO 9001:2000 International Quality Standard, and has earned Moody’s A1 financial rating every year since 2002.

Click here to visit the Road America Website.

This new web design and online marketing company is a new breed of no-nonsense interactive company, where functionality, cost effectiveness, design and strategic ideas are guaranteed.  Kompete’s mission is to always to seek to empower the client to manage their websites in-house, thus allowing Kompete to focus its efforts on delivering online results for the client’s business.  Their unquenchable thirst for new ideas and tireless advocacy of working smart assure the clients that their online solutions will outperform their competition’s online efforts, today and in the future.

Kompete offers cost effective smart web site packages for any size budget, and their crew is passionate about creating winning online solutions for any type of business model.  Their creative, technologically advanced, and flexible interactive solutions will stand the test of time, propel lead generation, online orders and impress visitors.  At Kompete you always win, because they understand that their success is only through their clients’ success.

Since the visitor to the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.

Most users search for something interesting (or useful) and clickable; as soon as some promising candidates are found, users click. If the new page doesn’t meet users’ expectations, the Back button is clicked and the search process is continued.

• Users appreciate quality and credibility. If a page provides users with high-quality content, they are willing to compromise the content with advertisements and the design of the site. This is the reason why not-that-well-designed web-sites with high-quality content gain a lot of traffic over years. Content is more important than the design which supports it.
• Users don’t read, they scan. Analyzing a web-page, users search for some fixed points or anchors which would guide them through the content of the page.
• Web users are impatient and insist on instant gratification. Very simple principle: If a web-site isn’t able to meet users’ expectations, then designer failed to get his job done properly and the company loses money. The higher the cognitive load and the less intuitive the navigation, the more willing users are to leave the web-site and search for alternatives.
• Users don’t make optimal choices. Users don’t search for the quickest way to find the information they’re looking for. Neither do they scan web-pages in a linear fashion, going sequentially from one site section to another one. Instead users scan; they choose the first reasonable option. As soon as they find a link that seems like it might lead to the goal, there is a very good chance that it will be immediately clicked. Optimizing is hard, and it takes a long time. Scanning is more efficient.
• Users follow their intuition. In most cases users muddle through instead of reading the information a designer has provided. Users act like “If we find something that works, we stick to it. It doesn’t matter to us if we understand how things work, as long as we can use them. If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.”
• Users want to have control. Users want to be able to control their browser and rely on the consistent data presentation throughout the site. E.g. they don’t want new windows popping up unexpectedly and they want to be able to get back with a “Back”-button to the site they’ve visited before: therefore it’s a good practice to never open links in new browser windows.

So what exactly is Social Online Marketing? Social Online Marketing requires the use of Social Networking sites such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Digg, Blogger, Twitter and YouTube to add/edit content for others to be able to access. Information placed on such sites allows consumers to not only view it, also link to it and/or post their own comments about it.  The end result of Social Online Marketing is to increase visibility on Social Networking Sites, create inbound links, and increase traffic to your website which can be tracked through analytics software.

Not only are Social Networking sites useful for Social Online Marketing, their content can also be informational to their viewers. Social Networking sites can allow people to catch up on trends in the Internet world. There are many blogs for example that offer information solely on Internet news. Social Networking sites don’t just give information on the Internet; they can also give readers access to almost any information imaginable.

Although consumers are in control of Social Networking websites, they don’t have full control; Social Online Marketers can also participate in these sites. Customers don’t necessarily want to be marketed to all the time, but they want to be communicated with, which can be done through online discussions. Consumers are out there expressing their thoughts, opinions, recommendations and complaints about your products regardless and not accessing/engaging in these conversations is ignoring an excellent opportunity. By engaging in conversations with your customers and hearing their thoughts, you can get feedback on what changes/improvements your product can use as well as give you an opportunity to address their views through your comments. All the hype of Social Online Marketing is causing an exponential growth in users and its possible uses as a powerful online marketing tool.

Before starting your Social Online Marketing campaign it is important to think about what exactly it is that you are marketing. Brainstorming about your Online Marketing goals should include research of your target demographic and your key competitors.

Once able to locate your target audience it will enable you to answer key points that define what Social Online Marketing tactics will be successful. The following are questions to keep in mind about your users when determining how to proceed in your campaign: where do they spend a majority of their time when online? (or sometimes even when offline) and what are their hobbies, interests and needs?

By researching your leading competitors you can gain knowledge of how they have tackled Social Online Marketing. Whether competitors have published in wikis, posted on blogs or created a Facebook Fan page they should all be easily traceable through their website. Many Online Marketing attempts can be found just by performing a link search of their website.

You can create a custom Social Online Marketing plan for your website since you now know who your consumers are, information about them and what your competitors have done.

Although Social Online Marketing is relatively easy to perform, it is nearly impossible to engage in every single website out there, nor is not necessary (in most situations) to use every form of Social Online Marketing. The more relevant avenues your campaign exhausts the more likely you are to have a successful results, which more often than not means the more time you have to spend on your Online Marketing campaign the better your results will be.

There are massive amounts of Social Online Marketing websites currently available, with literally hundreds of new ones emerging each month making it even more impossible to access them all.

Examples of Social Online Marketing websites include, but are not limited to:

1. LinkedIn is a Social Networking website that revolves around networks of professionals. Your professional network of trusted contacts gives you an advantage in your career, and is one of your most valuable assets. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return. Their mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. They believe that in a global connected economy, your success as a professional and your competitiveness as a company depend upon faster access to insight and resources you can trust.
2. FaceBook is another Social Networking website that gives users the ability to keep in contact with friends. People can publish notes, upload photos, view news from friends, join networks and so much more. By posting a photo of your brand on your companies FaceBook page it allows friends to view your product and hopefully generate traffic to your website.
3. YouTube is a video sharing/distributing Social Networking website. It allows visitors that don’t register the ability to watch videos or those who do register the ability to access the websites full potential, offering many of the applications that sites like Linkedin do. YouTube is one of the fastest growing and largest Social Networking communities currently available, so it is a great avenue to perform Social Online Marketing.
4. Blogger is one of the more popular blogging networks. By commenting in open-ended conversational marketing it allows the community to have a lot of control over conversations. Social Online marketers can create their own blog to share specific information to the community and plug their own product/brand.

In most Social Online Marketing communities it is recommended to not start out by promoting your brand or website. If you start out by “spamming” you are likely to get kicked out of that social community. Not only could the site administrators ban you from their site, but it could also scare consumers away from your direct online marketing tactics.

What is the next step? Initiating contact with your customers is important, but it is just as useful to continue to keep contact with them. You can’t just start something and not finish. Starting posts on a blog is great, but you need to show users that you are not just visiting, but are there often to listen to them. Customers are likely to add comments or thoughts to your posting which would in turn require a response from you.

Social Online Marketing sites are useful, but their content needs to be easily accessible by searchers. By making access to your Social Online Marketing attempts possible through a link on your website it makes less work for your users to view them.

So you were able to define your audience, locate your customers on the Internet, build a social relationship with them and promote your brand and website through Social Online Marketing. How can you tell if your Social Online Marketing techniques are working? Most analytic software allows goals to be set up and allows for the monitoring of conversion rates. (Note that you need to know what you are measuring first)

When just beginning your Social Online Marketing campaign it is recommended to perform one technique at a time. If using more than one Social Online Marketing technique it could be hard to tell which one elicits what results. To be certain which tactics work best, you should start your campaign by performing one Social Online Marketing form at a time. If you start a multitude of tactics at one time it will more than likely give you an excellent result, but will leave you wondering which one is better for me.

On the other hand, if you are familiar with Social Online Marketing and know which forms are necessary for your campaign it is best to perform more than one tactic at a time. By promoting multiple forms of Social Online Marketing at once it will give you quicker results than marketing just one at a time.

At Kompani Group we offer monthly online social marketing maintenance services. Ask us about what we can do for your company.

Making Design Matter.

The new Michael Wolk Design Associates’ web site has been launched. Kompani Group helped Michael Wolk convert his old site into a more user friendly showcase of his work. Check out the new site at www.WolkDesign.com

Making Design Matter. That’s our philosophy at Michael Wolk Design, and just like our design itself, it works on several levels. Making implies action. Our creative process doesn’t end in thought or discussion – it ends in creation. Every idea is developed to its fullest potential here, rather than passed off to someone else. Design is what we make. Anyone can create something functional, and anyone can create something beautiful – but true design will always accomplish both. PRATT had a motto – “Be true to your work and your work be true to you.” In my experience, being true to your work means allowing design – rather than money, politics, or other outside influences – to control the energy. Design is design; everything else is everything else. And we make design matter, in the sense that it needs to be physical. It transcends fantasy and speculation; it is exciting and inspiring, while remaining firmly grounded in the reality of time constraints and budgets. Most important of all is making design matter. Design matters to me – it’s what i love to do, and it’s what i do better than anybody else. Making Design Matter is what I stand for.

Owner: Camacho Cigars, Authors: Dylan Austin, Gianni D’Alerta

Background/Introduction:

Before we started this project we planned and built the following two sites for Camacho cigars – www.camachocigars.com and www.socialcigar.com (at first we did not reveal that Camacho was behind this site). Through the two sites we built a subscriber list of 4,500 people in less than one year. Since then we have also built www.room101cigars.com, and we are currently working on a new revolutionary social networking platform and corporate site for Camacho Cigars/Davidorff.

Kickoff of the BlackBand project:

To start off, here is an excerpt from the press release, post project:

“The campaign objectives for Camacho included the creation of an engaging, opt-in viral marketing campaign, a successful permission-marketing opportunity as an outlet to sample yet to be released products. A four-part web-series was created without mention of Camacho until the final “reveal” episode. The viewers followed the satirical Independent Cigar Review Bureau, a fictional agency, whose sole purpose was to educate the world about cigar selection, as they used humorous, guerilla-style tactics to enlighten three characters that represented the most common cigar misconceptions”

Process:

1. We launched the site with this page: http://www.blackbandproject.com/home-temp/
2. We blasted Camacho’s mailing list of 1000 and the social network we created while I was at Propeller of 3500 people, not as Camacho but as the fictional company. The amazing thing was that the idea was so interesting that we had a very low spam report.  We also ran rich media banner ads that actually played a trailer of the project on the websites the banners resided.
3. Once the person signed up they would get one episode a week that would build upon the myths and misconceptions of cigar smoking. The Buzz just keep mounting… people passing the links to their friends… it was huge… in the online cigar world.
4. After they registered they immediately received their first “mission” http://www.blackbandproject.com/d57s-1/
5. A week after that http://www.blackbandproject.com/6ku6-2/
6. A week later http://www.blackbandproject.com/hr4s-3/
7. And then the conclusion http://www.blackbandproject.com/b7x3-conclusion/

Results:

1. We gained 15,500 new subscribers! With that permission to market to them anything in the future. They are already expecting more from Camacho, and we won’t disappoint them.
2. Every cigar website was buzzing about the project, we even got more hits on our Black Band Project site in one month that Cigar Aficionado.
3. After the last video was sent… a month later people got 3 cigars in the mail. So for a whole month, every week… the conversations where about the black band project. Then when the cigars shipped, another huge buzz.

Another Excerpt:

“From day one, the campaign captivated the cigar industry and generated sweeping buzz across the country, with thousands of cigar enthusiasts discussing who was behind “The Black Band Project” on social media outlets, including Twitter, Facebook, and cigar-industry message boards and blogs.

End results:

1. 15,000 leads
2. 4,000 people got the cigars (people who watched all the videos)
3. 15% overall sales increase after the launch of the new product.

Since all businesses have a number of case studies that are relevant to their target audience, we suggest that you establish a CSS style web site, with a blog and content management backend where posting a new page or new blog is as easy as writing a word document or an e-mail. If you take a closer look at your competition, you will also realize that they aren’t effectively using the social media and other means of SEO friendly web sites, which in turn will send you scores of inquiries from new prospects.

Building a well designed and professional site, writing content and educating you on how to maintain or update the site is fairly inexpensive, and can be done for about $7,500 – $10,000.

Even though our own site www.KompaniGroup.com and www.ActiveServe.com are more complex than what you may need, they represent the web 2.0 CSS type of web site we are talking about. Both of these sites are receiving new hits and leads every week, mainly because they both are optimized for SEO and because we are active in posting blogs.

Who is the best damn chef in Miami, and which chef has the most contagious personality. We think we know the answer. Check out the new Chef Michelle Bernstein website.  For Michelle we developed a site that has a simple and easy- to- use content management system which allows her staff to update textual content, press releases, and photos throughout the site. The integration fits perfectly with the design work created by Matt Cohen from CAT5 creative. Using a hybrid development strategy we have allowed search engines to index the website while allowing elegant flash slide show functionality. The same methodology was used to build and release two smaller satellite sites for Michelle Bernstein’s restaurants, Sra. Martinez and Michy’s Miami. Maybe now she will consider adding the roasted pork squares on a bed of water melon back on the menu? Anyway, Kompani Group wish they they never got pulled from the menu in the first place.

Click here to judge for yourself.