QR codes are fast becoming a requirement for businesses. They are basically small square barcodes that people can scan with the use of their mobile devices and the information contained within pops out. Businesses typically use it for linking to their websites, to help people find out more about them online.
But can QR codes help someone who’s marketing his personal brand? What exactly are the advantages of using QR codes in your personal branding campaign?
If your small business doesn’t yet have a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile or Twitter feed, a recent study may persuade you to finally join the social-media bandwagon.
Sixty-five percent of all U.S. adults now use social-networking sites, up from 61% a year ago and just 5% in 2005, reports Pew Research Center. The findings are based on telephone interviews conducted in April and May by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.
Most of the growth over the past year came from Americans over the age of 30, with seniors accounting for the bulk of it. One-third of adults ages 65 and older say they now use social-networking sites, compared with 26% who said a year ago. Still, young folks between 18 and 29 years old remain the overall biggest group tapping social networks today, accounting for 83% of the total.
According to a recent report Facebook is the latest company to pay hackers to find flaws in its site. Think of it as a freelance hacking job. 3 weeks ago the company launched “bug bounty,” an open invitation to find flaws. The tactic has been used by multiple companies online, including Google.
If you’ve leafed through your favorite magazine or gone window shopping lately, you’ve probably noticed QR codes, those small black-and-white boxes filled with a pattern of tiny black squares.
Proponents of these codes, also called 2-D bar codes, say they are the future of interactive shopping. They work like this: Shoppers with smartphones download special application software for free, then open the app and hold their phones over the codes they see in print ads, outdoor ads, direct mail pieces, business cards, and so on. In-depth information about a product is then displayed on their phones.
With the codes popping up all over, small business owners may be wondering if this is something that would work, or is even necessary, as a part of their marketing efforts. It’s a good question. But there are some other questions marketers need to ask themselves before they decide if QR codes will work for their business.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are capturing a larger share of the adult population than ever before, according to a report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. Two-thirds of adult Internet users (65 percent) now say they use a social networking site, up from 61 percent one year ago and more than double the percentage that reported social networking site usage in 2008 (29 percent).
Pew reported that, for the first time, its Internet surveys have found that half of all adults use social networking sites. “The pace with which new users have flocked to social networking sites has been staggering; when we first asked about social networking sites in February of 2005, just 8 percent of Internet users—or 5 percent of all adults—said they used them,” wrote report authors Mary Madden, a Pew senior research specialist, and Kathryn Zickuhr, a research specialist with the organization.
Looking at usage on a typical day, 43 percent of online adults use social networking, up from 38 percent a year ago and just 13 percent in 2008. Out of all the “daily” online activities that Pew asked about, only email (which 61 percent of Internet users access on a typical day) and search engines (which 59 percent use on a typical day) are used more frequently than social networking tools.
Would Google+ ads would perform at least as well as those on Facebook? One study says yes.
Whenever Google+ begins to make room for advertising, those ads are likely to perform at least as well as those on Facebook, according to an eye tracking study that modeled the instinctive response of consumers to the layouts of the two services.
The study was conducted by EyeTrackShop, a firm that measures response to media and advertising using panels of consumers who agree to let a webcam app track their response to visual stimuli. The idea is to objectively measure how viewers react to a layout or application, rather than merely surveying them about their reactions.
“We did mock up an ad on the Google+ site to test if they did a similar ad placement, what would you see,” said Jeff Bander EyeTrackShop’s senior vice-president of client services. “What we found is people look at them almost the same, which for Google is very good.”
Well, that was sudden. This week, Facebook announced more intuitive privacy controls that reminded us, when we shared links and statuses, exactly who would be seeing them. It sounds strangely like Google+. No, I’m sorry, it sounds exactly like Google+.
It turns out that this was what it took for Facebook to listen to us about those privacy settings! We kept threatening to leave, but Facebook knew we had nowhere to go. It is difficult to deliver a convincing ultimatum when you are on the open ocean in the only boat for miles.
Now we can do better. Millions have already signed up for Google+. Maybe we’re not so much moving as doubling down, but whichever it is, it’s made Facebook a bit nervous.
The 5 basic rules of calculating the value of a Facebook ‘fan’
A question that routinely comes up in social media circles is what is the value of a Facebook fan? (The question also applies to the value of a Twitter follower, Youtube subscriber, email recipient, etc.)
Invariably, whenever the question is asked, some mathematical savant – typically a self-professed digital alchemist – produces a proprietary algorithm that has somehow arrived at answer along the lines of $1.07 (Source: WSJ) or $3.60 (source: Vitrue) or even $136.38 (source: Syncapse), and so begins the race to answer this now quasi-hallowed question of the new digital age. The lure: He who can convince companies that he can calculate the value of a Facebook fan might have a shot at selling them something (from billable hours of “expertise” to social media campaign management).
All that is fine and good, except for one thing: Assigning an arbitrary (one might say “cookie-cutter”) value to Facebook fans in general, averaged out over the ENTIRE breadth of the business spectrum, is complete and utter bull****.
To illustrate why that is, I give you the 5 basic rules of calculating the value of a Facebook fan:
Rule #1: A Facebook fan’s value is not the same as the cost of that fan’s acquisition.
Should you post photos to Twitter via its new photo-uploading tool or through a third-party photo-sharing service such as yFrog, TwitPic or Instagram, your photos will soon be featured on your Twitter profile in an image gallery.
Twitter is rolling out “user galleries” to members beginning Monday. Galleries will display the 100 most-recent images the user has tweeted — dating back to January 1, 2010 — from supported photo-sharing services.
Galleries will live on a user’s profile and highlight a few recent images. A visitor can click the “view all” button to see even more images in either a grid view showing image thumbnails or a detail view highlighting the most-recent image and the text of the tweet that was shared along with it.
