QR code has been around since 1994 and slowly gained its popularity in North America in the last couple years. Many major brands are using QR code as part of their mobile marketing strategy. The question is, how does small business benefit from this emerging technology?

[Getting Ready]

1. Plan: Just like every marketing campaign, you need to create a plan. You need to know your audience and what makes them tick. Creating the QR Code is the easiest part and the most difficult part is to get them to actually scan it.
2. Destination: You want to take them to a mobile friendly site because the only way to scan a QR code is via a smart phone. If you are taking them to a full website where it’s impossible to read on the smart phone, forget it! If you are using a wordpress site, there are many plugins that will convert your wordpress site to a mobile site in no time (WordPress Mobile Pack)

[Creating the QR Code]

There are many QR Code generation sites out there. My personal favorite ones is Zxing: This site offers some cool functions that allows you to create your own event calendar, contact info (great for networking event), SMS message and other cool stuff.

[Marketing Applications]

1. Business Card/Name Badge: You can use the [contact info] function in Zxing, so once someone scans the QR Code, your contact info will be saved to their address book.
2. Car Wrap: Include QR code with your vehicle. Make sure you add some sort of Call to Action (like Scan Me to Enter a Draw)
3. Facebook Fan Page: Take them to your Fan page

[Pros]

1. The QR Code is “almost” everywhere so people
2. No data entry is required (eg. type in your URL or contact info)
3. Eliminate typos (unless the spelling on your QR code is incorrect to begin with

[Cons]

1. Extra effort to download the app and scan it unless the incentive is BIG enough

Click the diagram below to download a PDF version of QR Code Visualized diagram. Enjoy!

Social Media doesn’t have to be time consuming or confusing and in fact it is not.

The 1st step is to take the time to properly set up at the very least Facebook, Twitter, ByzHub, Ping.Fm and Hootsuite

After set up is complete you need to engage, entertain and educate on your profession, notice I didn’t say sell.  You need to do this on a daily basis and the way you do this is through ByzHub via Ping.FM and Hootsuite.

It is important if you are in Social Media for your business that you are still social, be as transparent as much as you feel comfortable being.

In business you have separate bank accounts, in social media you need a business side as well as a social side.  I use Hootsuite for my social side and ByzHub for my business side.

Here is what you do, you sit down and you plan 30 engaging, entertaining or educating…questions, insights, answers.

Do this from a personal side and again from a business side, you want to establish yourself as the expert in your field.  Once you have your content then you use ByzHub and hootsuite to schedule them so that they are posted on all your social media applications starting tomorrow and ending in 30 days.

Make sure business posts are on your facebook fan page and NOT on your Facebook personal page.

You will see how in the next 30 days how many people start talking to you, this opens doors and more importantly it shows facebook that you are interactive and facebook will start posting your feeds on more news feeds.  You see you don’t decide whose news feeds you end up on facebook does, so convince them to put you on many feeds.