Browsing articles tagged with " marketing"

Jun
25

50 uses for QR codes

By Erica // The Mobile Web, Tips, Tricks, How-To's & Top 10's // View Comments

Ok! You’ve generated your neat little square thing, now where should it link to?

Whether your goals are advertising, informing, galvanizing advocates or garnering Facebook ‘likes’, the QR code is ready to link up your audience to convenient, tailored, local, on-demand info, interactivity, and reasons to think you rule!

Artists

The crafty artist might link:

from your band’s gig poster to an mp3 of your best track, or a secret remix/accoustic jam
from your opening’s flyer to your portfolio
from your art’s title card to your online store
from your ad to your represenation
to tickets for your showto a behind-the-scenes video of your process or installation (visual artists), live show (bands), movie shoot (filmmakers)
to a trailer for your next film
to a map of your street art installations
from your poster to your eBay auction
from band t-shirts to your music on iTunes
from your band’s gig poster to your online t-shirt store, with 15% discount
from street art to your manifesto
from stickers to social critique
from show flyers to your work on Flickr
from posters to your Facebook fan page

Self-promotion/branding

Business advertising

Products

The intriguing product might link:

to a coupon for a freebie/sample
to a video product demonstration
from product to a fabulous recipe, cooking demo, or glam serving photos
from ads to mobile shopping
to clues for a treasure hunt
to comparison shopping among major retailers
to a gallery of stars (or the not-so-famous) caught using your product in public
from your product to your customer service line
from properties/items ‘for sale’ sign to a sales agent
from product packaging to a mobile registration site
to read/write a review
to a mail-in rebate
to nutritional info, drug interactions, or material safety data sheet
to order refills online
link to a video of your product being destroyed in a hilarious manner
to a survey about your product (with a reward, natch)
to your inventory, so you, your staff or your customers knows what’s in stock
to a customer service or fan forum

Non-profits

The community-connected non-profit might link:

to a donation page
to an interactive map of your org’s work throughout your city
to an augmented reality view of your city’s issues
to sponsorship opportunities
to a video of a successful user of your org’s services saying thanks
from notable landmarks to informative videos of your city’s history
to mobile updates on disaster situations
to requests for supplies and volunteers
to a petition
to contact your government about an advocacy issue
to a hotline providing hope

Apr
8

Content, consumption, creativity and clicking on our convictions

By Erica // Human/Computer Interaction, Sociology of Social Networks // View Comments

Content. The iPad was designed for you to “consume” it. The big brands that are rushing to animate their brochures so you can consume them on the iPad are sorta philosophically stealing your human agency of creation and replacing it with mind-numbing broadcast. That’s not very 2.0.

con·sume

1. to destroy or expend by use

2. to devour

3. to spend wastefully

4. to absorb

5. to undergo destruction; waste away
6. to use or use up

Social tools allow us to create, contribute, and pass along. Different people have different levels of interaction with content—knowledge, information, art—but we value highest the most creative minds: people who create content with a grain of truth in it, be it music, images, mashups, curations, stories. He who creates something beautiful or elucidates the truth through syntopic analysis is celebrated by other humans, and rightly so, as having an intellectual gift.

The iPad has the capability to serve up those creative objects, but the high cost of entry means that marketing messages have the loudest initial voice.

Jeff Jarvis tells us that the mythic social media influencer—whether they exist or not and however useful in spreading ideas they may be—is merely the mouthpiece of broadcast. Marketing strategy dictates locating the widest reach for the lowest cost. Unfortunately for marketers of “content”, the quality of the message dictates it’s spread, not the follower count of the spreader.

Jeff also posits that all actions online—liking, fanning, uploading, commenting—are content too, and they are, to Google and Facebook. Who add their own powerful aggregations by connecting your social graph and your activites—and selling it to marketers.

The meta layer that Facebook ads to our actions is being created for only one thing: to make money. See how Pete Warden’s recent attempt to use ostensibly public data from Facebook to create something a little more meta–and how quickly he was nearly sued into oblivion by the web giant. (Pete was trying to use the content in a way that commented on society, showing interesting correlations like where the most fans of Glenn Beck live and what pages they’re most likely to fan).

Even as broadcasting and passive consumption refuse to die, Umair Haque takes us beyond the social media channel with the idea that organizations should develop a social strategy, using the new tools of connection for a more meaningful place in the world, producing more meaningful stuff (content, if you will—if relationships, voice, and ethics are content).

The tools can do nothing short of connecting people, and we’re squandering them on product placement: the one positioning opportunity you can’t TiVo.

The most important thing to ask about any technology is how it changes people.
—Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget

That’s the same as Umair’s explanation of ‘medium is the message’. The iPad paradigm, consumption, and the advertising-orchestrated conviction that every bit of personal data we give up—I like this, I fan this—is valuable content has an impact on us as we conceive of ourselves.

We might be letting the algorithms of marketing conversions dictate our thinking when we equate liking a brand to creativity. This situation was created by us, but not to serve the greater good. The humanist perspective places people at the heart of meaning.

Meaning comes from truth. Expose, expand, spread a truth and you are truly creating content.

Apr
2

Marketing in the age of unprivacy

By Erica // Sociology of Social Networks // View Comments

Old school marketing, you’re so effed.

The motivations that used to work on people have to be acknowledged on some level, however subconscious, to inspire action. But what if we can’t admit our wants and desires because we’re afraid they’ll be catalogued and later exposed?

Let’s look at fear and the need to belong. The fear that you won’t belong, tribalism. Conformity. That’s the force behind a lot of product marketing: deodorant, makeup, toothpaste.

Wanna fit in? Sure we do. And oral freshness is key! So here’s a YouTube ad (or “promoted video”) that’s supposed to light up our social acceptance sensors and inspire a click.

We’re talking about some intrinsic psychological factors here. Second from the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is, you guessed it, self-esteem, confidence and mutual respect. All of which perishes in the face of stinky breath. It’s practically vital that we check out this video and discover if we’re going to be outcasted social pariahs or what.

BUT…what if we were scared to? What if everyone found out we clicked that link? What if Google, who is totally writing this stuff down, spilled the beans and let the world know we’re stinky breath checkers?

Isn’t that more embarrassing than the problem it’s supposed to be solving (which might or might not exist)?

The motivation to fit in by not getting caught clicking embarrassing videos is actually stronger than the motivation to fit in by being Scopey-fresh. We’re pretty sure our breath is ok. But we have no idea what’s going to leak out of “secure” places next.

Who wants to own their insecurities? Ick!

This kind of exposure of our base intincts interferes with persuasion. It might be paranoia, but if the perception exists that my attention is being monitored, I’m not going to click.

Mar
30

Don’t pop the social media bubble!

By Erica // Social Graphics, Social Media Marketing, Sociology of Social Networks // View Comments

Umair Haque recently advanced a hypothesis that social media is a bubble, and that when it bursts we will see that we were not brought meaningfully closer together by the growth of social communication.

I don’t want social media to be a bubble, because I like it.

First, let’s define a bubble. We mean an economics-style bubble, like the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble. In this sense, a bubble is “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”. So lots of new relationships that aren’t worth very much. I think Unmair was saying we’ve been placing undue value on the relationships generated by social media, both from a personal standpoint (these aren’t real friends) and a marketing standpoint (these aren’t very devoted ‘fans’).

Here are the reasons I feel the shiny, soapy dome of social media’s bubble should be left alone.

The flowering of human creativity

“Thin relationships” are not a new phenomena to society. If we rechristen these friends “acquaintances”, you might recognize them better. Aquaintances are certainly not without value.

Clay Shirky’s SXSW keynote touched on the evolutionary impetus to share and to cooperate, calling it “spiteful” not to pass on information when it’s very little effort for you to do so. This is the link economy in action.

It’s easy to share links to interesting content. It’s fun to add to the conversation by commenting on blogs and liking updates. It’s gratifying to contribute content to the collective by taking photos, writing essays (blog posts), illustrating, designing fonts and photoshop brushes, and shooting funny videos. It’s meaningful to lead culture and capture the zeitgeist by giving birth to memes, defining ideas, pushing for human thought development.

The more the merrier

Thin relationships, or “weak connections” make these upper-Maslow interactions possible. You don’t need a high level of investment in someone to trade ideas. Their input is valuable precisely because they come from a different perspective, and aren’t bound by politeness or concern for your ego. I’ve mentioned the findings that novel input from new friends sparks more innovative, creative solutions. The more the merrier.

Marketing soap

From a marketing standpoint, I hate to put the idea out there (there being Google search) that we’re overestimating the worth of social media and it’s practitioners. It could sour corporate decision makers who ponder how much to invest in newfangled media.

This isn’t about protecting our jobs, it’s about making them better. My firm belief is that all marketing, communication, PR, customer service and sales efforts (not to mention internal communications) can be enhanced and made more worthwhile and productive by conversing instead of broadcasting. I don’t think organizations have a choice, because public expectation of brands/services/orgs has changed.

This being a nascent revolution in the mainstream, still, I don’t want to throw the word b-word around. I want to work to show that teaming up with customers to get them what they want is going to succeed.

Nov
3

Why workplaces should encourage employees to use social networks at work

By Erica // Social Media Marketing, Social Media Platforms // View Comments

Do you start your work day with Facebook and a coffee? Drop a tweet or two after lunch? You should. And your boss should eagerly foot the bill, because your social life lines can (positively!) affect his/her bottom line.

A recent study found that nearly 2/3 of employees hang out on social sites during work hours. These “time wasters” are thought to cost billions ($2.45 billion CDN, it has somehow been determined) in lost wages or revenue. Well over half (and some count it up to 70%) of employers block social network use at work, presumably to stymie these loafing time bandits.

That might be shortsighted. read more

Oct
22

Let the users do the talking…if you dare!

By Erica // Social Media Marketing // View Comments

Is aggregating your product’s lifestream the new brand website? Is Twitter the new black?

Witness Windows 7’s “what people are saying” social media mashup. Yep, someone’s even chronicling the OS’s debut on Flickr.You can’t get more wisdom-of-the-crowdsy, peer-influenced, he-said-she-said-recommendy than just aggregating your product’s lifestream & letting the users do the talking. What’s going to become of copywriters?

Of course Skittles kinda bombed with this approach last year when it was discovered that given the opportunity to mess with an intrusive brand, Twitterers will gladly take your hash tag on a terrifying unauthorized branding adventure. It helps to have a long awaited product like Windows 7 to get users excited, rather than having them focus on the execution as in the Skittles experiment.

Way to go, Microsoft – this is pretty darn useful! Blog posts, reviews, quick 140-char impressions. Having just got my latest Dell Vostro in July, I think I’m eligible for the free Windows 7 upgrade, and all this chatter is actually serving to get me excited!

Update: I’ve just learned the term for “aggregating your brand’s lifestream”: storystreaming. As in, telling your brand’s story by pulling in real time testimonials from the cloud.

What’s this blog about?

Erica Glasier writes about the way social networks and the participatory web are changing society and culture. Kinda like internet sociology. She's also quite keen on social media marketing.

If you're following an old link & looking for her awesome artwork, you'll find some of it here.