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!

 

Giving Time, in Small Chunks, Over the Web: A Prediction Mashup for 2010

It looks like it'll be hard to get through mid-January without seeing predictions across the blogosphere for the hottest trends of 2010. (And there're lots of expressions of good riddance to 2009, to boot.)

The most interesting prediction I've seen was published on Mashable and written by Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org. His predictions concern changes in social good behavior for 2010. He's in a position to know.

His predictions:

1. Social activism will explode across the web.
2. Micro-volunteerism will become extensive.
3. Giving work will become as important as giving money.

Mr, Rattray's conclusion:

These three trends – providing new ways of giving voice, giving time and giving work – represent the future of social change on the web.

I don’t mean to imply that giving money will stop being important. On the contrary, the web will continue to be an essential tool for fundraising in 2010, and for good reason – donations are the lifeblood of non-profits and the Internet is a highly efficient means of raising money. There are also an increasing number of effective fundraising platforms that leverage the unique power of the web to enable new types of giving – including well-known innovators such as Kiva and DonorsChoose, and new entrants such as Vittana.

But fundraising isn’t where the innovation will be in 2010. Instead, we’ll see the rise of new forms of participation that move beyond fundraising and make 2010 the most interesting year yet for social change on the web.

Interesting trends to spot. Read his post. Sign up for The Extraordinaires at BeExtra.org

What do these trends need that we can offer? Communications and great content. And training presentation materials. And more...

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Cross-posted to StraightTalkPR.com

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.  

The Color of Our Content

I've spent a lot of time —

No, let's put it another way: I've spent way too much time picking colors for our blogs. But in the course of doing so, we've found several sources of information for using colors in blogs and websites. Here's a rundown of the resources we've found:

— My favorite is Color Scheme Designer. Quite flexible and full of information and possibilities.

— Wikipedia's article on "Web Colors."

— HTML Color Codes.

— Several color resources at December.com.

The last two sites were recommended by my daughter, Sarah.

— Doug Davidoff