Content Wordshop

Ultimate Flexibility for Your New QR Code

"Mobile Marketing Isn't a QR Code," writes Chris Brogan, a Boston-based leading social media strategist. And the point he makes is well taken: Slapping a QR -- that's "Quick Response" -- code onto a flier or ad isn't worth much if the result is that your smartphone is directed to a website that isn't mobile friendly.

I haven't used QR codes much. But thanks to Eric Segal of Data Collaborative in Arlington, Massachusetts, I have a great tactic for using QR codes. The tactic is: Set up a special web redirect URL and embed it into your QR code. Presto! You have a long-term QR code that can be adapted for special uses.

Let's say you're printing a pop-up banner to go with a trade-show booth. You want a banner that can work for you at several trade shows annually, to reach a variety of audiences. The audiences are different. Let's say that one group likes blue skies. The other group likes cloudy skies. You're going to have booths during the next year at both the blue-sky and cloudy-sky trade shows. And you're going to have a booth at the green-grass show, too, which will attract folks who like both blue and cloudy skies.

What QR code to print on the banner? Your home page (mobilized)? A special landing page for blue-sky people. And then a new banner for the cloudy-sky people.

None of it. Send your QR code to a web page with a simple redirect script instead. Set up the default redirect so it sends traffic to your home page, or to your blue-sky page or to your cloudy-skies page.

But when the blue-sky convention is coming up, change the redirect so it points to your special web page constituting a mobile-ready landing page for blue-sky products and services.

Then, when the cloudy-sky people are about to hit town, simply change the URL redirect (but not the QR code itself. No new banner needed. Just a default web page  

A few weeks after the cloudy-sky convention is over, change the redirect to point to your index page.

The QR code itself could be as simple as www.ourcompany.com/QRredirect. Then all you need to manage is the code on your website that points a page about blue skies. Once the blue skies conventiuon is over, you could  change your QR code back to your web site.

At least until someone else wants the QR code to point to their page!

I'm staying in South Orange, New Jersey, for Thanksgiving. On Wednesday, I saw a poster on a village bulletin board at the railroad station offering a QR code for a survey on race relations at twotowns.org. But the QR code went to a dead link. If twotowns.org had used a redirect QR code, the redirect could have been set initially to go to the online race relations survey, and later to the site's simple index page.

Thanks for reading!

 

11 Lessons to Take the Fog Out of Your Online Conversations, Especially in Times of Conflict

Surely, one of the greatest dangers of online conversation is producing a dialog, to be preserved forever, in which — looking back — you'll see that you were talking past people you with whom you were arguing.

How embarrassing. What a waste of your best efforts, your brand, and your reputation. It takes a broad-minded person to examine such situations in hindsight and confess to such errors.

Robert S. McNamara, who died last year at the age of 93,both lived long enough and reflected hard enough to speak out, write about, and take responsibility for many of his actions in World War II, at Ford Motor Co., during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, especially, in Vietnam serving as Defense Secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. His candor was remarkable, even if some people say he did not go far enough.

I just watched his film, "The Fog of War," and found it fascinating. It consists of 11 lessons for life, many of them matters of being conscious to all possibilities in a given situation where communication is pressured by conflict and mistrust — such as in war, and especially across racial and ideological boundaries such as between the United States and the Soviet Union.

R.S. McNamara's eleven lessons of life, many derived from war:

Poor Charlie in Boston. Did He Ever Use His Domain? No, He Never Used His Domain. And Its Fate is Still Unlearned.

If there's anything more annoying than seeing someone squat on a domain for profit, it's seeing someone squat on a publicly owned domain for private profit.

But I suspect this is the case with the charliecard.com domain owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, known locally around Boston as the "T." It's the state agency, now folded into a transportation super-agency, that runs Boston's subways, commuter rail, buses, and ferries.

I recently received a replacement monthly pass for one that was lost. The transit pass is known as a "CharlieCard" after the famous song "Charlie on the MTA" [Read about it in Wikipedia or see YouTube below], famously recorded in 1959 by the Kingston Trio. (The mythical Charlie is also portrayed in the T's print and online material as the 1950s-ish character at right.) The card arrived in the mail with a notice that I can contact CharlieCard customer assistance at custserv@charliecard.com.

The problem, for me, is that there is no CharlieCard content at CharlieCard.com. Instead, the host of the web domain appears to be capitalizing on the T's inactivity in this matter with all sorts of rental car and car purchase links, all of which I'm sure drive revenue to the host and nothing to the taxpayers who own the T. Moreover, the links tend to add cars to the Hub's roads, the opposite of the T's intent.

Me? I hope I'm wrong. I hope that if the T cannot see its way to link the CharlieCard domain to the main CharlieCard page at the T's website (this page, perhaps?), or put up fresh content at CharlieCard.com, it might at least capture the dribble of dollars I think are accruing to charliecard.com's host in a continuing effort to keep fares and other user fees in check. And if the T is really selling car-sales and car-rental links on its domain, why isn't it selling a link to the locally based shared-car service ZipCar?

The Midwesterner: An Example of Thoughtful and Deep Content in a Blog

One of the best new policy blogs around is The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest, written by Richard C. Longworth. The writer is a former Chicago Tribune and United Press International reporter who now labors as a senior fellow for the The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

 Along the way, Mr. Longworth wrote Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism. That's his picture, off to the right.

Mr. Longworth's blog, which was introduced in late 2009, fills a crying need for thoughtful analysis that integrates the entire Midwest across state lines. His writing is careful and full, bringing the mind of a think tank to consideration of new ideas and the eye of a journalist to detail and story. Most of all, it's interesting. Mr. Longworth has a lot to say, and he's good at saying it.

I also like his listing of other Midwest blogs. For example, by browsing his list, I found For the Love of Dayton, which chronicles civic affairs in the city where my son attends college.

The Midwesterner is the sort of blog that should be attained by a senior individual who seeks to influence the opinions of thought leaders. It takes work, but it pays off. It's a blog written by and for people who simply love ideas that can move societies.

From a technical standpoint, the blog uses TypePad, my preferred blogging platform. I have just one quarrel with The Midwesterner. If that's its name, why is the URL something else, namely:

 http://globalmidwest.typepad.com/

I'd recommend that the Chicago Council on Global Affairs purchase a domain for The Midwesterner and map the domain to the blog. This would be a first-class move to serve what is already a first-class blog.