As long as you have a phone number attached to your Facebook account (which I’m wary of for personal accounts, but fine with for business accounts), a text message with the word “opt” sent to 32665 will provide a temporary password that expires in 20 minutes and is good for only one login. If you frequent busy wifi networks (airports, libraries, universities, etc), you’ll definitely want to utilize this feature. Keeping passwords safe on unsecured networks is paramount to protecting your social identity.

Since I mostly deal with my personal page on Facebook, I’m most excited about the other feature that Facebook has released, but this has great implications for your clients’ accounts as well. If you visit your Account Settings page, under Account Security, you can view all the places you are currently logged into Facebook. Then, you can remotely log off. This may be one of the simplest features Facebook could add, but, in my opinion, one of the most useful. Think about the potential impact: had to respond to an urgent Facebook message and left yourself logged in at the Apple Store? Hop online and log off, from anywhere. Phone gets stolen? Don’t let some stranger facebooking your friends (or worse, fans) add to the burden of a missing phone. Simply sign on from anywhere and log off from that session.

So how does this affect your client’s business? If both features are utilized properly, you can save your clients a great deal of stress and take these preventative steps to assist with online reputation management. A hacked account can lead to countless problems: spam messages sent to all fans, incorrect/offensive content posted, deactivated account and more. It doesn’t take much to unlike a business, and nothing will entice users to do that more quickly than a hacker posting something bad.

The content in and of itself isn’t the main problem though. When somebody hacks your account, you lose your customers’ trust, threaten their online security and show weakness in your own. Facebookers want to feel safe and protected on Facebook. If your client’s account shows security weaknesses, unliking that account will help users feel safer with what they click in their newsfeed. At the same time, offensive and irrelevant content posted by a third-party (maybe a hacker, maybe the guy who found your client’s phone and thought an offensive joke would make for a good update) will clutter your fans’ newsfeeds. It’s easy to unlike a page or hide the clutter from your newsfeed that you don’t like or find offensive/irrelevant and, therefore, silencing that business. Even if the user doesn’t unlike or hide your client’s business from their newsfeed, they won’t likely be trusting anything posted on that page for a while. Especially if a spammer posts a bad link, users will be very wary about clicking on a shortened URL anytime soon after.

So what can you do for your client, or how can you direct them to protect their Facebook accounts? If you’re going on vacation, you’d make sure you’d locked all your doors and windows and that you didn’t have a spare key lying somewhere a burglar could find it. If you’re halfway to the airport and didn’t remember if you closed the garage door or not, you’d call a neighbor to have them check. Your client’s Facebook page should be treated with the same preventative measures as your home, especially now that Facebook has made it tremendously easier. Remembering to log out and then utilizing the new features from Facebook can be immensely beneficial.

First, always log off when you’re done with Facebook. It may be a pain to log in again and again, but it’s significantly easier than redoing all your Social Media efforts after a hacker has deactivated your account.

Second, utilize the temporary password if you aren’t in the most secure of locations. If you aren’t 100% sure that the network you’re on is secure, and that all users on that network are trustworthy, be safe, not sorry, and text Facebook for a temporary password. Storing the number in your phone can make this a very quick step to protect yourself.

Finally, if you aren’t sure if you logged off from a certain location, hop on Facebook and check. Its quick to find out if you’re logged in somewhere and log out remotely. When I checked this feature for the first time, I found that I was still logged in on four different devices, when I should have only been logged in to two. You might be surprised where and how often you or your clients forget to log out of their accounts.

Facebook has even created an option where you can receive e-mails if a new device (computer, mobile) logs into your account. This would give you time to respond immediately if an unauthorized device logged into your account. If you travel a lot, this isn’t a bad idea. The e-mails may be annoying at times – if you often log in from different devices – but much less annoying than apologizing to your fans for spam links filling their newsfeed.

Online reputation management can really make or break a business. While there is a lot that goes into maintaining a good reputation online, your time is better spent taking every precautionary measure you can and using your time to focus on improving. If you’re spending your time dealing with hacked accounts, you’ll spend your time fighting a bad reputation instead of spending time building a good reputation.

Do you think the new Facebook tools are going to be helpful? How else do you keep your Facebook accounts safe as part of your ORM?

Post Script: As I finished writing this post, Microsoft and Facebook have announced an Instant Personalization partnership. If you visit Bing in same browser window as Facebook, you’ll get an option to “accept” using Facebook data in your search. Major props to Facebook on opt-in rather than opt-out, though, and I’m only speculating, this was probably Microsoft’s idea, not Zuck’s. Either way, let me be the first to say, this will NOT kill SEO. It may, however, deepen the marriage between Social Media and SEO, which I think is a great thing.

As I was walking back to the table, I started thinking about how this is a lot like the online sales process: so many reps from all forms of online media trying to sell the inventory they have, but not necessarily the inventory that’s best for the client’s initiative. Not everything can be in black and white, and we need to be able to propose solutions that are in shades of gray. It’s our job as digital reps, especially multi-platform digital reps, to do more than sell. In many cases, we become the agency’s strategic partner. We know our solutions capabilities better than anyone and it’s our job deliver a well-conceived plan that can be justified through research and case studies. If it’s better shaken, why are so many reps pushing it stirred?

In a recent Media Post article, Woe The Digital Sale: Do You Know What You’re Selling?, Amy Auerbach wrote, “Agency buyers’ priorities are around client service, doing a good day’s work that ends earlier than 9 p.m., and having a life. Salespeople actually can contribute to all of those things… Help buyers manage their time by delivering RFP responses that are on-point and flawless. Over-communicate and provide extra research and rationale when you make recommendations.”  As digital reps, it is important to serve as an extension of the client’s team, and to not only create a partnership, but to be the “go-to” rep for ALL of their digital needs.

In today’s nearly over-saturated marketplace, buyers tend to stay with what they know works and people they trust. While building these relationships can take months, even years, losing them can be instant. One of the fastest ways to fall off of an RFP list or lose your preferred vendor status is to give the planner the “same ole, same ole” with each proposal. To be a successful AE, one must be part Brand Manager, part Media Planner and part Research Analyst. Those who can best embrace these roles will ultimately win the IO.

It is an extremely interesting and compelling presentation about Google’s fresh attempt to position itself as a one-stop shop for online display advertising. We know that they have been making inroads in all sorts of areas (Google Display Network, Google Ad Exchange, etc.) for some time, but this is the first time I have seen it packaged up so nicely and squarely targeted at advertisers, ad agencies, etc. Google does have the muscle to resolve a lot of the issues that plague our industry through integrating all of their solutions and makes a compelling case for using their platform.

What does this mean for all the rest of us? I think that remains to be seen, but it is clear that Google sees value in aggressively pursuing the dollars that are currently running through other ad networks. If they can do for display what they did for SEM by making it ultra-turnkey to flight display campaigns, it could change the way people are buying display advertising, even at the biggest shops.

That said, what Google has in technology, it lacks in customer service. We know this from the stories we hear from many of our clients. It is their ubiquity that makes it hard to provide a customer experience (not computer user experience) that many businesses and agencies need. Their hands are in almost every pot. Even some of their technologies acquisitions have been orphaned to focus on others (Doubleclick being the most relevant example here).

The other thing that Google doesn’t do is create brilliant advertising concepts. It’s one thing to own the network and develop tools to analyze success of online marketing campaigns from a metric perspective, but coming up with the idea that will affect consumers’ buying decisions is another. Admittedly that’s not Google’s business, but in the rapidly changing advertising marketplace, technological innovation is often confused with marketing insight. Good ad units, networks, and metrics do not a great marketing campaign make. They are simply the vehicles for the ideas that will turn heads and open pocketbooks.  What makes advertising work is the compelling, inspiring, revolutionary presentation of ideas that inform the way people see their own needs/wants/desires. This has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with creativity.

When they finally make their move as it seems they are now (look at the cover of Advertising Age), Google moves with such force that it seems like the entire playbook is being rewritten. We all know that it isn’t, but when a giant moves the ground definitely shakes. The best thing about giants for all of us little guys is that they can’t move or turn fast. That leaves lots of room for us to operate as the David to their Goliath (and we know who won that battle). We had best be ready to do what only we can do and do it better: serve our customers with excellence and help them cultivate the genius ideas that will help their businesses engage the marketplace. We can’t confuse what we do best with what the Googles of the world do best.

Then again, this could all just be a bunch of amazing advertising on Google’s part…

We’ve grown RMM from a five person shop in 2005 to a national company with fifty-seven employees in six states. I thought it would be valuable to share some of the keys that have propelled our growth over this time.

We’re big believers in process definition & continuous improvement. We’ve gone through almost everything we do as a company and have defined the process to ensure that we offer consistently high levels of customer service, including minimizing “dropped balls”. By clearly defining our procedures, everyone involved knows exactly what to expect from each other & we find that we can offer consistent excellence in running campaigns for customers. Defining procedures also helps us identify inefficiencies and continuously make changes to ensure maximum effectiveness. This has become critical as we run hundreds of client campaigns per month, and our growth is a testament to our teams’ ability to deliver excellence consistently.

Another key component of our process definition is employing the KISS principle.  I don’t mean dressing up like Gene Simmon’s band, but the adage “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. Online advertising involves lots of complexity; each of our display campaigns has over twenty steps from initiation to fulfillment across six different teams. There is a significant amount of work that goes into defining & refining procedures, but the bulk of the work really comes from keeping it simple: defining the mechanisms to simply handle the majority of cases, while allowing the flexibility or having exceptions for the edge cases. The hard work is to simplify a complex process.

We love automation. We use it not for the purpose of abstracting human contact & intelligence, but for mechanizing rote or routine tasks so our talented team members can focus their efforts on what they do best! We have found that investing in automation results in happier team members who are more productive and can offer more creative, “solution-oriented” responses to our advertising clients.

I’d love to hear more thoughts & ideas on how others are finding results by focusing on improving operations.

Web Analytics
Any effort begins with a web analytics package. This should be a no-brainer. If you have a website you need to know how much traffic you’re getting and where it’s coming from. Are search engines sending you traffic? Are the blog posts that you’re writing generating any traffic for you? Even the simplest analytics packages can provide this data for you. There are dozens of choices so initially I’d say don’t get too bogged down in this feature vs. that, just start collecting data. You can switch later if something becomes important.

Here’s a handful of options, in no particular order.

• Google Analytics – probably the most popular. It’s free and feature loaded. 95% of sites on the web will never need more than this. The only drawback is that the data isn’t instant, today’s traffic shows up in tomorrow’s numbers.
• Woopra – a very good choice, feature rich tool with live data (see today’s data right now), campaign and conversion tracking, and more. Pricing is reasonable and is based on the number of pageviews a site recieves, but there is a free version which should be sufficient for most small sites.
• Piwik – this is another free tool, and bills itself as an open source alternative to Google Analytics. It has all of the features of the most robust tools, with the added benefit that all of the data is entirely yours because it runs on your own webserver.
• KISSmetrics – this is a newly available tool, and has an interesting twist on other options. They track people, not visits. This likely makes them a great choice for those new to web analytics. Pricing starts at $149 per month.
• SiteCatalyst – this has traditionally been the choice of larger sites that require advanced reporting. There is no free version, but the data is customizable and real time.

Taking it a Step Further – As soon as you begin working with web analytics, you’ll probably start to have questions about which visitors are the most valuable. This is where things begin to get interesting. Suppose you’re running two campaigns, an AdWords campaign and a web banner campaign, which of them is generating the most business for you? Which of them generates repeat visits or the most pageviews? Any of the packages listed above can provide this information for you. For more information try reading Avinash Kaushik’s web analytics blog or the SEOmoz blog.

Click Heatmaps
Once your site has some traffic to work with, you’ll want to identify what on your site is working for you, and what isn’t. Does the site’s navigation structure do a good job of drawing people further into the site? Does one section of the site continually underperform in relation to the others? Web analytics can only take you so far, now you need tools to evaluate how effective your site’s layout is. Heatmaps to the rescue.

A heatmap is a tool that shows you where visitors are clicking on your site. While that sounds pretty simple, the data is VERY revealing. Here are the tools to provide this data.

• Clickdensity – very affordable tool with nice data presentation. And, they include a hover map, which can give you information about which content your visitors are reading.
• ClickTale – this tool has some nice features over the others, in the way of reporting. The heatmaps can be displayed a couple of different ways, data sets can be filtered, and they also provide information on form conversions. They also provide complete click paths and hover maps. This is the most expensive tool in the list, but you get the most data.
• CrazyEgg – fantastic tool, beautiful interface, and quite affordable as well.
• ClickHeat – this tool is different than the others. It’s an open source package that you install yourself. It’s not as feature rich as the others here, but its free which is what you may be looking for. This will be sufficient for most users, but advanced skills will be needed for installation & setup.

One quick note, anyone familiar with Google Analytics will know that there’s a site overlay that shows you where people are clicking. This is not the same thing, and if you rely on this you’ll be missing data. The site overlay tool only shows the LINKS that people are clicking on. If they click on an image hoping to leave the page, and it isn’t a link, you’ll never know that you’re misleading your visitors with that image. Unless, of course, you’re using a real heatmap tool such as the ones listed above.

If your site is having trouble with converting the traffic that it receives, give one of these tools a try and find out where your visitors are getting stuck. It’s simpler than it sounds, and the imagery is both fun and informative.

Taking it a step further – Hover maps will tell you where your visitors are looking (assuming that the eyes follow the mouse, which is a fair approximation in most cases). This will tell you which content on your site is getting the most attention.

A/B Testing
Once you know which parts of your site are drawing the most attention, you’re going to want to make changes to the other areas to increase conversions. Don’t just wing it, test everything and find out what works the best! A/B testing is the process of trying two versions of one piece of content (text, button, image, etc) to find out which works best. Most of the time you will be testing a call to action, but the tool isn’t limited to this.

Here are the tools available.

• Google Website Optimizer – this is the most popular tool. It’s likely the most well documented and it’s free. It’s also capable of A/B tests or multivariable testing.
• Genetify – this tool is a free, light weight script that you install on the pages that you’ll be testing. It provides all of the information needed to determine what’s working and what isn’t, but there aren’t pretty graphs or charts on the reports.
• Visual Website Optimizer – this is a fee based service for website optimization that’s loaded with features. It is capable of handling multivariable testing, and it even includes heatmaps. This service also includes real time reporting. The pricing is reasonable and they’re loaded with features.

A/B testing is real work. It takes time to determine what to test and create multiple versions of the same content. It’s time well spent though. The lessons learned here produce real results, because you’re actively involved in improving your conversion rates. Every major website that you see today does this, whether it’s to increase sales or draw more user comments.

One thing to keep in mind as you’re testing the attributes of your site is that it takes time to determine the results. Without getting too technical, statistics comes into play, so the smaller the data set you’re working with, the less accurate the results will be.

Take it a step further – You really should be A/B testing everything; website content, calls to action, conversion funnels, imagery, navigation structure… everything. This is the tool that will make your website and all of your marketing materials a well tuned machine for bringing in new business. Once you’re comfortable that your website is doing everything it can, A/B test banner creative, AdWords messaging, landing pages, email marketing, etc. Obviously the tools listed above can’t help with anything outside of your website, but don’t let that stop you. Once you have the data from the tests, plug it in to Split Test Calculator and it’ll tell you which is the better, as well as how confident it is in its answer.

If A/B testing is a new thing for you, there are a couple of resources which will help you through the process. There’s an Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing at Smashing Magazine which is quite good. Which Test Won & ABtests.com both show the results from tests, which is pretty informative.

By now you can tell that when you pay attention to the details, there is plenty that you can do to bring in business through your website. The primary benefit of these strategies is that they’re all quantitative. If you find something that works, you’ll know it, and vice versa. As you apply these methods, they can inform your entire marketing effort. If you know of other tools, or other strategies give a shoutout in the comments.

In the past five years, give or take, product placement has gone from carbonation to technology. We’ve had the Apple logo shoved down our throats so much so that every time I eat a granny smith, I think about how much I spent on my iMac – no regrets of course,  just high tech advertising at its best.

Before digital media, the sponsorship heavy hitters included Coca Cola, Budweiser and car dealerships. When Brad Pitt drinks it, we drink it. Now that search engines, subscription and social networking sites have become “products” in themselves, we are seeing more and more of their presence in commercials, feature films and on our favorite TV shows.  So, just how far away are we from hearing the words, “this broadcast is brought to you by Twitter?”

Living rooms across the country were astonished by this year’s Google ad during the Superbowl. Does Google.com really need a commercial to grow its profit margin? “How much did that air time cost?” an eager Saints fan asked me. I have a good guess, but I bet Ancestry.com could tell you, considering they’re running Sunday ads on NBC during “Who Do You Think You Are.”

And let’s take the recent blockbuster graphic novel turned movie, Kick Ass. If any film could’ve snuck in a subliminal Pepsi can, Doritos or pizza, targeted at teenagers, it was this one. On the contrary – in this day in age, it was comic books, iPhones and MySpace.com. MySpace you ask? Yes – that blast from the past networking site is the communication device used to call the title character into fighting crime. Okay, a little behind the times in my opinion but perfect if they are trying to drive traffic back to  their site, right?

Is this an example of product placement? Absolutely. Free advertising? That still remains a mystery. Corporate sponsorship deals are very hush, hush – especially in the film industry. So, whether consumers will be rushing to their computers to join MySpace.com (again) or buy a set of nun chucks after seeing Kick Ass – that remains to be seen.

Move aside Pepsi and Starbucks – I’ll be drinking the iPhone and Facebook from now on!

So, your co-worker coaxes you to watch the trailer for Twilight when you came in for work this morning and it convinced you to be Team Edward all the way. Well, you’ll probably see the preview again in the theater a couple of times and wonder all along why you weren’t Team Jacob in the first place?  Regardless, you’ve seen the trailer twice as many times as you would’ve seen it ten years ago and you’ve invited all your friends to the midnight showing – now that’s how advertising works!

It’s almost impossible to go about your day online and not see an advertisement for an upcoming feature film.  The ad may be a banner across your e-mail server, or a pop up ad on your favorite news page.  It may even be free ticket dancing across your screen or a contest that entices you to check out the trailer.  What ever it is – online advertising for movies has become more and more aggressive since the first preview showed up on our laptops.

Take the movie Paranormal Activity.  This film was made for a dime in 2007 and sat on the shelves at Paramount for two years.  Needing to close out its fiscal year with a bang,  Paramount dusted off a copy and brought in the ad wizards.  With few dollars for marketing, a specific approach was taken: the movie would NOT carry a wide release unless 1 million votes were received on their official website, trailer included of course. And even though the indie hit was slowly making money already, the online approach to getting this film out and about was simply genius.  Once people heard about the scary flick on sites like Twitter who aggressively helped pushed the outcome by telling folks to “tweet the scream.”  People everywhere logged on to the site, watched the preview and made their choice.  When someone tells me I can’t watch a film – you better believe I will see it. And for online ad companies, this was a unique way to track what sites people were surfing, what advertisements linked them to the film’s website, how many people participated and how financially effective the campaign was. To date, Paranormal Activity has grossed $183 million worldwide so, you tell me.

Wikipedia claims that ten billion online videos including movie trailers are watched annually; while previews at movie theaters trail this number by thousands. Over 15 million people viewed the trailer for Paranormal Activity on YouTube, and that’s how online advertising has proved to be changing the film industry one click at a time.

First, a quick introduction. Guy is a notable blogger, serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist as well as a recent author.

The title of the presentation was Using Twitter as a Marketing Weapon, a bullet list of his points is available. He covered eight major things about using Twitter for marketing, and used plenty of examples. Here we go.

Monitor – Guy gave a few examples of using Twitter search to keep up with conversations that are happening around companies, industries, product lines, and even all conversation through a specific account. Nothing fancy here, just recapping the possibilities. The main point here is that Twitter search provides powerful means to keep up with conversations about you, your competition, or anyone else.

Engage – Your company should have an account on Twitter. He didn’t spend much time here, so I won’t either.

Sell – Its possible to use Twitter directly to increase revenue. I’ve covered this before. Guy gave a couple of examples that are noteworthy. Dell Outlet has generated millions by announcing specials online. At this point Guy gave a shout out to Dell for their creativity here, and asked if anyone in the audience works for them. When someone stuck their hand up Guy jokingly asked if he gets a computer for plugging them, and the Dell person said, “First you have to learn to pronounce ‘Inspiron’ properly.” Ouch! Snarky! Guy didn’t skip a beat; he went right in to his next example. Kogi BBQ is a single truck that sells Korean Mexican tacos throughout Los Angeles. They use Twitter to announce where they’re headed a few hours before they move, and they’ve managed to build their Twitter following up to 60,000 people. They said when they pull up to a new spot there are usually about 50 people waiting for fresh tacos when they arrive. THAT’s pretty awesome.

Support – He talked about two companies that are using Twitter to provide support, Virgin America and Comcast. Apparently a passenger on a Virgin flight once tweeted that the flight attendant forgot to serve his meal. Someone at that account got in touch with the pilots, who then relayed the message back to the attendant and the man received his food after all. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is its a pretty powerful example of the use of Twitter.

Prospecting – This is the point at which Guy’s message started to capture my attention. He presented some pretty creative methods of finding potential clients through Twitter advanced search and Google’s search operators. Did you know that Twitter allows you to do localized searches, such as pizza in Austin? Suppose you want to sell equipment to wedding photographers, you can use Google to search through Twitter names (note that this will search through both user names and real names). Would you rather search through Twitter bios to find the person you’re after? That’s no problem! I have to say, I’ve known about each of these features of Twitter & Google, but had never put this together. Brilliant!

Get More Followers: Focus on Content – Here Guy stresses the importance of saying something that’s worth being heard. We’ve all seen tweets that aren’t worth reading, most of us have probably even posted a few. Guy provides a few sources for quality content, Alltop (of course) is an aggregator of news from across the web, StumbleUpon is content that people have voted up, and SmartBrief categorizes news into industry specific feeds. He attributes his success on Twitter (more than 200k followers) to regularly providing links to interesting/useful/insightful stories. His content is re-tweeted hundreds of times each day, which confirms his hunch.

Get More Followers: Tweet! – Once you’re on top of great content, take advantage of some tools that help you manage the flow of tweets through your account. Guy spent quite a bit of time talking about Objective Marketer, which is a service that allows you to automatically resend tweets throughout the day. Get 90 days free with the promo code “wiseguy”! Guy does send each tweet more than once; he said that over time he’s seen that when he sends a tweet a 2nd, 3rd & 4th time, the number of clicks on his links go up accordingly. So sending a tweet out for times in one day generates approximately four times the number of clicks. Once again, brilliant. He also introduced TwitterFeed & TwitHawk. TwitterFeed is a service that automatically tweets the contents of an RSS feed such as your blog. TwitHawk continually searches for a specific set of criteria and then will allow you to either automate a reply, or you can manually reply.

Tools – He spoke briefly about Twitter clients, you’ll definitely want one. Guy uses TweetDeck, I’ve tried several and it’s my favorite also.

On the drive back to the office, Nikki & I agreed that this was one of the best marketing seminars that we’ve attended. All of the info that Guy gave was relevant and helpful. I’m encouraged to renew my commitment to social marketing. And if I ever had any doubt, I’m now even more convinced that Twitter is greater than Facebook. Its openness and flexibility, when combined with the right tools, make it a pretty valuable weapon to have in your marketing arsenal. In case you haven’t done it yet, go follow Guy Kawasaki and RMM Online. As a bonus, if you want to get links to his talking points, you can text “alltop” to 44133.

The funny looking box you see above is a not new technology; however the QR Code is pretty foreign to us in the U.S. QR stands for Quick Response. In the next decade, I believe QR codes will start popping up in U.S. media providing our culture with what we love best; content delivery that is easy and FAST.

The QR Code is a kind of 2D barcode that contains a plethora of personalized digital data. It is primarily used to send links to your mobile device. A simple snapshot with your camera phone and the QR Code sends the necessary information to open your web browser to a specific URL site or text message. 2D barcodes allow advertisers and publishers to push relevant digital content directly to consumers? mobile phones when they are most interested in a product or service. This technology bypasses the search engine stage, allowing advertisers and publishers to give people more information at the moment of awareness.

What are QR codes and what are they already doing?
Currently, QR codes are being used as a tool to get more information. You see a code in a magazine, snap a pic, and it directs you to the product site on your mobile phone. Japan and some European countries have taken this technology to a new level. They do use it for informational purposes; however it has opened the door to deeper consumer engagement and interactivity. QR codes are proving that they have the potential to do even more for advertisers and consumers alike.

Some innovative ideas:

• URLs/Coupons – Dick’s Sporting Goods announced its new mobile site with QR coding at the new Cowboys Stadium during the University of Oklahoma vs. Brigham Young University bowl game. This was the first marketing campaign to place a QR code on a jumbo-tron during a sporting event. University of Oklahoma vs. Brigham Young University fans were encouraged to take a picture of the QR code and were directed to a coupon for the store. If your phone didn’t have QR technology, no problem. The website URL and an email address were clearly displayed as other ways to acquire the coveted coupon. A deeper explanation of the campaign and the results can be found online.
• E-tickets – Imagine not having to wait in line for your Austin City Limits Music Festival wristband a week before the show starts or the three hour line on the day of. QR codes can completely eliminate the need for wristbands and tickets. After purchasing your ticket online you receive a QR codes to your mobile phone. A simple scan of your phone will show that you have purchased a three-day or one-day only pass. Once you have checked in, your ticket is marked as used. Also, imagine after you have checked in, your phone directs you to the ACL site, where you are able to view weather, time changes, band line-up, vendor maps, and more. QR codes could even eventually tell you exactly what song your favorite band is playing on what stage in real time. Most importantly, no lost ACL tickets and no need to be worried they won’t scan.
• Business cards & Resumes – An awesome way to set you apart from the crowd. Why not include your LinkedIn QR code on your resume? Or your company’s website on your business cards?
• Tattoos – I would grab some temporary ones for the office party. Or, if you want to go permanent that’s cool too. Just make sure it’s something to last a lifetime!
• Billboards – Disney in Tokyo has Mickey Mouse QR codes that send you to the Disneyland website. Billboards in subway stations allow for easy point and shoot.
• Branded QR codes- include a picture within the code and in color – These QR codes from BeQRious can have color or pictures imbeded in the code! Why not include your face on that resume? Or, put your company logo inside the QR code on that business card?
• Swag and self-branding – Additional information is gained by using QR codes. Therefore, the potential use for them is limitless. The code can contain anything from your information, to your likes and dislikes, to what you like in a guy, to what your plans are for that night. Why not create a coffee mug, a hat, a scarf, even a baby bib. You can create your own patches. Instead of bumping on your iPhone, why not scan someone’s QR code to learn more about them? Hosting a charity event? Raise funds on location with QR coding.
• Geography based tours and reviews – City Search and Antenna Audio launched a test run of geography based QR coding in the spring of 2008. QR codes were distributed around San Francisco in restaurants and at popular destinations. The codes included restaurant reviews, as well as audio tours and historical facts allowing tourists access to distinct decision making information.
• Loyalty points system – In Japan, Coca Cola uses QR codes to reward loyal customers. Vending machines have QR codes imprinted on them, and consumers are invited to earn as many as they can, ultimately redeeming them to get prizes.
• Secrets and acts of defiance – The Pet Shop Boys released a single in 2007 on which they denounced the idea of a British national identity card. On the CD cover, there was a QR code that directed to their attack on the system. Also, the entire music video sports different QR codes that link to civil liberties websites. Pretty cool that QR coding is being used to spawn political debate and protesting!
• Alternative paintballing – No more immediate bruising from the paintballs flying at you at speeds approximately 60mph (at least that’s what it feels like). Players wear t-shirts with their own individualized QR code. A player snaps your QR code from afar and a text message is sent to you informing you of your demise, allowing for a high quality game sans the pain!
• Intelligent advertising – changing the site location to match the weather. Dynamic QR codes are special codes can be updated in real time for businesses that sell products that might potentially have a need to change advertising in response to say, the weather. What if Gap had a billboard in the NYC subway station and the QR code directed the consumer to the GAP mobile homepage featuring a new line of flip-flops? Well, on Tuesday New York has a forecast of heavy rain. No, problem. Just switch out that QR code to direct consumers to the part of the website that highlights Gap’s new swanky umbrellas!
• A great idea by DDB Brazil for Editoras Online – DDB Brazil in a campaign for Online, a Brazilian online bookstore, incorporated almost every valuable player in the media arena. QR codes are the single piece that molded the dynamic parts of the campaign together. This YouTube video explains the intricacies of the campaign far better than I could here. By far my favorite in terms of innovation and success! 33 Interactions has a great post by Jenine Wong that gives an extensive description of the campaign as well.
• Tim Burton’s film “9″ used QR codes that allowed fans to view sneak peaks and hear commentary from the director.
• Green Day‘s album, 21st Century Breakdown featured QR codes in posters, promo items, and ads directing you to a site with exclusive downloads and images of the band.
• L.A. Candy, the newest book by Lauren Conrad sports a QR code on the back cover.

So, will QR codes be the “URL Killer“, as Garrick Schmitt and others have described it? In his article Schmitt says, “QR codes will become the primary bridge connecting real and virtual worlds.” As you can see from the aforementioned examples, these codes are one step in the direction of the inevitable merging and graying of media. One builds on the other builds on the next. The mobile revolution and the saturation of the online space have created a need for simpler URLs and innovative connections. And of course, as I mentioned in one of my previous blog entries, Mobile Marketing Prowess, the mobile consumer wants conversation. QR codes have opened the door to a broader and deeper range of personal targeting and communication, and they have the potential to become a value exchange of relevant, individualized, useful, and interesting information.

Don’t be fooled. Yes, the snake oil hucksters that schlep keyword stuffing and link spamming are doomed, but their future was never very bright to begin with. If this is your strategy you’ll get nowhere, and if you’re paying for this then you’re wasting your money. If you’re charging someone for this, shame on you.

The core aspects of SEO, however, are needed more than ever. Google alone averages more than 200 million searches per day. With that much daily traffic, their view of your website matters. Do you really want to completely ignore the potential to earn traffic from them? Or worse, leave it entirely to chance? If you get one ten-thousandth of one percent of that (that’s 0.0001%), 200 people per day will see your site. Do that many people cross your doorstep each day? Does your phone ring that many times each day? Clearly there is an upside to paying attention to Google.

The traffic that your website receives can provide keen insight into what your target market thinks about your company. Whatever the goals of your company, your website can help you get there. Increasing sales, improving customer retention, reaching a new customer base, improving the return that you get on your AdWords spend… these are all achievable. As long as you are measuring your website’s traffic and can recognize trends, you can reach your goals.

Don’t misread the data. Yes search is changing, it has been since it started. It would be a mistake to infer that this makes SEO irrelevant. Quite the contrary, the changes that Google is making strengthen their search results, which gives people greater confidence in the answers they find through Google, which means that more people will be searching.

Optimizing your website for search is more important now than ever. Frankly, it’s irresponsible to think otherwise.