Posts tagged social media
How To: Market to Millenials
Nov 1st
The following excerpt is from the article 6 Pro Tips for Marketing to Digital Natives and was written by Lauren Drell, Associate Editor of Supported Content for Mashable. View the full article for even more advice!
Are you trying to reach an audience of 17 to 34-year-olds? They’re “Millennials” — those who came of age in a post-Internet world — and they’re unlike the consumers that came before them. Millennials can sniff the hard sell, and they won’t buy it. The way to win over these digital natives is to add some value, provide utility, entertain, acknowledge their individuality and get friends involved.
Most importantly, be mobile — it’s less a tip than it is a must. Millennials grew up on the Internet, and they’re extremely connected. On average, they have 2.4 devices, between smartphones, tablets, laptops and Wi-Fi music players. They’re more likely to research a product on their mobile device than Gen X, and they’re pretty much always connected. Intent to purchase desktop computers is falling, and smartphone penetration is on the rise, expected to hit 38% by the end of 2011, making mobile even more of a priority for this demographic.
So, if you want to market to millennials, here are some tips for reaching and converting them.
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Cater to Their Needs
According to Matt Britton, the founder and CEO of millennial marketing agency Mr Youth, the key to appealing to this demographic is driven by certain major needs including:
Recognition: Be appreciative of your fans’ interest and support of your brand (it doesn’t have to be monetary — even a “thank you” will go a long way). Branding isn’t just important for companies — millennials are all building their own personal brands, too. If they get a shout-out or their work is selected in a UGC campaign, that’s going to help them build their brand. Getting a nod from a well-respected brand — like when Honda mowed a fan’s name into the lawn at headquarters as part of its “We’re fans of you, too” campaign — goes a long way toward fan retention. Britton says recognition of this nature is “a longer path” that will lead to more brand loyalty over time as deeper relationships are formed between consumers and brands.
Rewards: Who doesn’t love swag? For millennials — who are either in school or haven’t amassed much savings yet since they’re relatively new to the workforce — swag is valued social currency. But rewarding is most effective as a retention tool, and not an acquisition tool, Britton says. Offering a prize to your 10,000th follower might get you a few more fans, but they’re only there for the free stuff and not because they love and live your brand. On the other hand, rewarding your existing fans is a great way to bolster their connection to your company. Whether you’re offering first-to-know content, an exclusive coupon or a prize, be sure to reward the existing fans who got you where you are today. These are your loyal fans who are most likely to stick with you, unlike a fair-weather swag junkie.
Information: The Internet has put a ridiculous amount of information at our fingertips, and one huge reason we use the web is to find more of it. Therefore, brands can play a huge role in content creation, using platforms like Tumblr to build a brand and publish content, as if it were a media company. Britton cites the French Connection YouTube channel‘s webisodes as a stellar content series. The webisodes features videos “as told by” French Connection apparel — the magic dress (above), the jumper, the blouse — to show off the season’s pieces. The videos are quirky and entertaining, but most of all, they position French Connection as a fashion-forward and digital-savvy brand.
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Gamify With Friends
The newest era of games, like Words With Friends, let you play with your friends, serving to strengthen bonds, foster friendly competition and help people keep in touch.
Gaming has evolved from a solo activity to a fun and engaging group activity, and game mechanics are key to capturing — and keeping — the attention of digital natives. All it takes to gamify is to offer points or pit friends against one another with a leaderboard, like with the new location-based application SCVNGR and its spinoff, LevelUp.
Through LevelUp, brands can offer the “$10 for $20 worth of food” kind of rewards that, when redeemed, unlock the next “level” of even more savings, thereby enticing the consumer to become a repeat customer — it’s a “the more you play, the more you win” model that can quickly become addicting.
“LevelUp turns the daily deal space on its face, turning value to the consumer immediately, which is very much a millennial characteristic — now, now, now,” says Chris Mahl, chief brand alchemist at SCVNGR.
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Give Them Ownership
Millennials tend to be brand-loyal, and they want to have a stake in the company as a sort of reward for their loyalty. They don’t want to just consume content, they want to participate and create content. Just look at Doritos’ user-generated Super Bowl ad and SCVNGR‘s create-your-own-challenge aspect, which Mahl says is a great way to engage millennials and lets them become authors of the game.
“Millennials are creators, not followers,” says Mahl. “They’re not about being told to do something — they’re about creating it themselves.”
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Be Everywhere
New research shows that when consumers are contemplating buying a product, search is the most important factor. Make sure your SEO strategy is well executed, and make your website pop — it should embody the personality of the brand and house all relevant brand information, including links to social pages.
As with all marketing, it’s important to have a presence on major players, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but you should experiment based on where your segment of millennials are spending time and where you want to go as a brand. Fashion brands, for instance, are experiencing great success with Tumblr and Instagram. Just remember that no one platform holds the key to millennial success — “the channels are only as good as the ideas,” says Britton.
Social Media Series: Facebook Offers Free Ads to Small Businesses
Oct 10th
The following excerpt from the article ‘Facebook Offers Free Ads to Small Businesses’ by Diana Ransom was published on Entrepreneur.com. View the full article.
Last week, Facebook announced a new program aimed at helping small businesses retain existing customers, build awareness of their brands and reach new customers among the social network’s 800 million users.
“Our goal is to give small businesses a boost by helping them find customers the best way possible — through recommendations from friends,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said in the release announcing the initiative.
Facebook is teaming up with the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an education effort designed to provide local businesses with webinars, case studies and tips for boosting their marketing efforts. The social media giant also plans to give away $10 million in advertising to 200,000 businesses, starting in January 2012. That amounts to a freebie in the form of $50 worth of credits toward Facebook ads.
Businesses interested in receiving the $50 freebie will need to first take out an ad on Facebook. Like pay-per-click ads on search engines, when a consumer clicks on your Facebook ad, the advertiser (you) are asked to pay a set rate for that click — anywhere from 5 cents to 25 cents. Facebook, starting in January, will give you $50 worth of those clicks for free. Note that the freebie will be awarded to owners on a first-come, first-served basis up to 200,000 businesses.
That might not sound like a lot, but, according to users, a little can go a long way on Facebook. In one example, Jim Olenbush, the owner and broker of Cantera Real Estate, a real estate firm in Austin, Texas, was able to target a Facebook advertisement of his company’s listings to a specific set of potential customers whom he suspected would soon move to the area.
The idea came from reading the newspaper and learning that a large company in another state was planning to relocate to Austin. According to Jason Falls, a social media maven, blogger and author of No Bullshit Social Media (Pearson, 2011), that one campaign cost Olenbush just $200, but, in return, he sold about 10 homes. “We all know that the commission from selling 10 homes amounts to a lot more than $200,” he says.
Usage of online social networking sites like Facebook is growing. In July, more than 213 million Americans were active on the Internet, according to media research firm comScore. And the second most visited site for the month was Facebook.
Facebook’s own data suggest that more than half of its 800 million active users have made a connection to a small business. That amounts to about 700 million connections between existing and would-be customers and local businesses, adds Facebook.
Did you know MBS offers you advertising incentives, too?
To help you effectively get the word out about your buyback, we’ll pay for you to advertise on Facebook! Better yet, we do all the work for you; all you have to do is let your MBS Representative know you’d like to take advantage of our offer during your buyback setup! It’s just another way we help our partner stores stay competitive!
Social Media Series: Facebook Timeline’s Benefit for Brands
Oct 6th
Facebook is making major changes to its platform and your store needs to stay in the loop! Check out the following article Why Facebook Timeline Will Be Huge for Brands, written by Zeny Huang, Emerging Media Strategist at JWT New York, and published on Mashable.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, introduced the new Timeline feature at the company's f8 Developer Conference.
When Facebook unveiled Timeline last week, many users were struck by the idea of humanizing your profile by summarizing your life and connections.
But what if you’re not a human at all?
Timeline may have a similar effect on brands as well. In fact, the brand benefits of Timeline could be huge, and will let companies tell a more engaging and authentic story. This is one reason (beyond the 800 million active users) that brands should be celebrating the new changes to Facebook even if the network hasn’t yet confirmed that brand pages will employ Timeline. Here are a few more reasons we hope they do.
According to Dr. John Medina’s book Brain Rules, vision is our most powerful sense, and “we learn and remember best through pictures, not through written or spoken words.” This helps explain the popularity of infographics, photo apps like Instagram and visual blog platforms like Tumblr. We increasingly consume information through photos, from browsing friends’ Facebook albums to mobile Twitpics. Accordingly, Facebook has made photos a main focus of the new Timeline profile.
Compared to the current Facebook brand page (which only allows the profile picture and five thumbnails to be customized, hiding photo albums and tagged photos beneath the Wall), Timeline unlocks new possibilities for branding, raising awareness and creativity. The “Cover,” an 849 by 312 pixel image spanning the top of your profile, can be changed at any time and is major real estate for a brand — perfect for a product shot or promotion push. In addition, brands could call out important photos on the Timeline by clicking a star on the post that expands the photo to widescreen.
Brands can be more interesting
Currently, the hidden “Info” tab on the Facebook brand page serves as a dumping ground for every bit of information about a brand in a boring text format. When deciding whether to drive paid media to Facebook or a brand site, brands face the challenge of choosing between growing their Facebook community or providing a more informative and better user experience elsewhere. Now, the decision tips a bit more in Facebook’s favor as Timeline makes it easier for people to find information by pushing the Info section, photos, apps and map to the top of the page in a clear navigation bar.
While conversations on Facebook still matter, information and content have become more prominent in the Timeline design. The infinite scroll prolongs the lifespan of brand content, giving people more to engage and consume, which will lead to more chatter, and focuses more on quality of posts over quantity, since posts don’t disappear “below the fold” of the Facebook wall.
With the focus shifting from building conversation to sharing content, the purpose of a Facebook brand page will be less about selling and more about telling an authentic story. Brands can express what makes them unique and build an emotional connection with fans through behind-the-scenes photos, blooper videos, real-time mobile pictures, sound clips and exclusive news. In addition to expressing the brand in the present, a brand can utilize the Timeline to speak to its past to reignite nostalgia and sentiment that may be associated with it.
It simplifies what it means to be on Facebook
The focus on telling a brand story lowers the barriers to entry for brands on Facebook, especially small businesses like a car repair shop, florist or restaurant that don’t have the budget or content to sustain a community. Prior to Timeline, brands often felt confused as to how Facebook fit into their brand strategy and felt the need to have a gimmicky app or sampling incentive for people to “Like” or engage with their page. According to ExactTarget, of the people who “Like” Facebook brand pages, 40% are doing that to receive discounts and promotions. Now with the larger post size and photos, Timeline can easily serve as a brand blog, providing fans with frequent and engaging updates in a neatly packaged profile.
The same challenges of building a brand hub and bringing the brand to life on Facebook still exist, but the design of Timeline will make content creation easier by providing a skeleton for brands to fill in.
What do you think of Facebook’s new features? Share your input on our page!
October’s Monthly Marketing Plan: Custom Facebook Tabs for College Stores
Oct 3rd
We understand that the competition is trying to overcome your market share. That’s why we created these monthly marketing plans to help you advertise in new and creative ways without all the effort.
This month, we offer our partner stores custom Facebook tabs designed to specifically advertise textbook rush and buyback to your fanbase. They work the same was a welcome tab, offering your students the information they need right from your social media sites.
These tabs not only communicate key details about your store’s events during these all-important times, but also help to drive traffic to your website with the click of a button! You can even customize the details we’ve provided to match your store’s specific offerings.
Add these tabs to your store’s Facebook page easily by following our detailed, step-by-step instructions. We’ve designed them to be as user-friendly as possible so there’s no HTML knowledge required; all you have to do is cut, copy, and paste!
Still have questions about how to add or customize your tab? No worries! Our experts will be at the all-new Social Media Station during Symposium and can walk you through the process right then!
Our Buy tab provides students with all the reasons they should choose their college store over the competition.
Our Sell tab tells students when your buyback is and why it's the best!
A Picture’s Worth a Thousand…Followers?
Sep 21st
The following is an excerpt of the article ‘How to Make the Most of Twitter’s New Image Gallery’ by Lauren Fisher. View the full article.
Twitter has just stepped up their activity on the photo sharing side of things with the launch of a new image gallery feature. Essentially this pulls in photos that users have shared on their profile in chronological order.
You can see the most recent photos on someone’s profile instantly, but clicking into this brings up an expanded image gallery where you can view all the photos that have been shared via third party apps, showing up to 100 photos from January 2010.
This is a great addition by Twitter as it not only provides a history of your photo sharing in one easy snapshot, but presents a new opportunity for businesses that are willing to make the most out of image sharing, which up until now has not really been a major focus of many corporate Twitter accounts.
Here’s how you can use this new feature to your advantage:
Free Advertising
What this image gallery provides for businesses is really a free space for advertising on the site, where you have an entire billboard that people can see from your profile. Companies use this new opportunity, for example, to share photos of latest coupons or offers. By directing people to their Twitter image gallery to see their latest deals, companies can also increase their follower count!
What Twitter has given businesses here is a whole new page of web real estate that can be used for advertising purposes. While some may view this as a slightly cynical use of the new feature – it gives people what they want, mainly free or discounted items – in a way that is easy to digest.
Feature Your Followers
Many Facebook Pages regularly promote a ‘Fan of the Week’ where the company highlights one of their active fans through the profile image. Now, companies can do the same on Twitter, too!
This is a great opportunity to give something back! Companies can upload photos of up to four followers a week by uploading their pictures into a corporate Twitter gallery. This kind of promotion can personalize your profile and show that you’re as much about the people you follow as you are the content you push out.
Tell a Story
There is something special in the way that the Twitter gallery works, providing people with a clean and simple history of your photos and the accompanying tweets in chronological order. Imagine you’re landing on your company profile for the first time and you click into images: what kind of story would you like your images to tell?
Personalize your company and tell a unique story that people can engage with. This could be a regular feature such as sharing photos of your employees with tweets describing fun facts about them, allowing people to see a little bit more of your company than they normally would… Or, consider posting pictures of new products and their related information on a certain day each week.
How does your store use pictures to promote social media? Post your stories on Facebook or tweet them to @MBStextbook!
Social Media Series: University Co-Op Shares the Value of a Question
Sep 15th
With a fan base of over 20,000 on Facebook and nearly 2,500 followers on Twitter, The University Co-Op at University of Texas is definitely doing something right! But, how have they generated such a response from students and alumni alike? Put simply: they asked!
“Social media is all about creating conversations,” explained promotions manager William Kelleher, who monitors the store’s pages. “You have to maintain two-way communication; talk with people instead of just to them. So, before posting anything, I take a step back and consider how it will be received by our fans and then make sure that I include a question or call to action in each update.”
University Co-Op asked fans to choose their favorite Burnt Orange Tailgating logo.
Always asking for input, the store’s strategy has truly transformed their pages into interactive outlets where fans come to share stories, pictures and feedback on a variety of topics. One prime example of this approach is their newest initiative: Burnt Orange Tailgating.
Exploring the excitement behind UT football, this YouTube series is created by Texas fans for Texas fans, in every way. Using social media as a springboard, the store asks their fans to generate questions for the opposing team before each week’s game via Facebook or Twitter.
Hosted by former student athlete, Dustin Wise, the show then poses these often amusing questions to the rival team’s fans on game day, capturing their answers through video. Wise also interacts with Longhorn supporters, sharing their pre-game rituals.
“Football is huge here and our fans are as passionate as they come,” said Kelleher. “Through this series, we’re letting them broadcast that spirit. It’s been really successful so far!”
The final crowdsourced logo appeared on t-shirts sold in store.
One reason for that success is undoubtedly the fans direct influence on the series. From creation to implementation, they have had a part in it all.
“When we came up with the idea, we knew it would be a great way to crowdsource,” he said. “For instance, we first created three potential logos and had fans vote for their favorite on Facebook. After narrowing it down to one option, they made suggestions through comments about how we could improve it, and we listened. The feedback was outstanding.”
After making the proposed changes, the store created a t-shirt featuring the final logo and sold it in store.
“Everyone wanted one of those shirts,” he added. “They really felt a sense of ownership over the item because they had essentially helped to make it; it was a really cool concept.”
With over 1,000 hits on the series’ promotional trailer alone, the popularity of the videos has been just as strong, demonstrating the value of University Co-Op’s cross-channel promotional efforts.
Their Fan of the Week contest brought out serious Longhorn spirit!
Burnt Orange Tailgating isn’t the first time the store has experimented with interactive advertising campaigns, however. In fact, they created a Fan of the Week promotion in the months leading up the Longhorn’s season debut to build excitement.
“We reached out and asked our fan base to post their most spirited pictures on our Wall, as well as tell us why they were such a big fan,” he explained. “Every Monday, I’d pick one and add it to our profile picture on Facebook. I also compiled all the entries into an album and reposted it to our page once a week to keep people interested.”
As a way to thank them for their participation, each Fan of the Week then received a personalized Prize Pack from the store.
“Everyone receives about $150 of in-store merchandise, but I wanted each winner to really enjoy their gift. So, the packages aren’t just one-size fits all. I try to change up what I choose based on what I think they would like,” he elaborated. “When one of our younger fans won, for instance, I mailed him a package that included our youth-size jersey. He loved it so much that his mom posted a picture of him wearing it on our page!”
University Co-Op also integrated a similar idea into their textbook buyback.
“We took pictures of students after they had sold their books at our buyback, and handed them a card with our Facebook URL on it,” he explained. “If they came to our page and tagged themselves in the picture, then they were entered into a drawing for a prize.”
This accomplished two very important things for the store.
“In order to tag a photo, students have to first ‘like’ our page, which boosts our fan count,” he said. “But beyond that, their tagged photo shows up in each one of their friends’ newsfeeds, increasing the likelihood that they will both check out our page and be reminded of buyback. It’s really win-win.”
They increased their fan base with a fun picture promotion at buyback.
The store’s willingness to interact with fans has created a true community atmosphere on their social media pages.
“When users generate content, it not only makes my job easier, but also makes them feel important,” he said. “We’re giving them a voice that they wouldn’t traditionally have and they love it!”
Because fans are so involved in the store’s pages, they are also much more invested in its success.
“We set a goal of reaching 20,000 fans before our September 3rd kickoff,” Kelleher said. “It was no easy task because that basically meant we had to gain 2,000 new ‘likes’ in just over a week.”
He added, “We asked our fans to tag us in their status or tweets to help us spread the word and entered everyone who did into a drawing for Burnt Orange Tailgating t-shirts. The response was overwhelming and although it took us a little longer than expected, we reached our goal within 2 weeks! Our fans are amazing!”
Along with the help of their fan base, University Co-Op also uses Facebook’s Sponsored Story feature to increase their following.
“It’s basically a way for Facebook users to learn about the things their friends like. So, when they are browsing on the platform, they’ll see on the right side of their page that some of their friends have ‘liked’ our page,” he explained. “It’s an easy way to spark interest.”
University Co-Op generated over 420 comments - just by asking!
Although the store has clearly experienced significant social media success, they have no plans to slow down anytime soon!
“Our goal is to always interact with customers on a regular basis and be a part of their daily lives. We’re ultimately trying to add value to their newsfeeds,” Kelleher stressed.
As for others in the industry, he has one simple suggestion.
“Asking for engagement is the best way to get it,” he advised. “Keep it interactive and they will respond!”
You Are What You Tweet:
The Twitter Tools You Need
Sep 13th
The Twitterverse can be hard to navigate, especially if you’re managing multiple accounts at your store. But, don’t worry; we searched through tons of websites to find you the very best Twitter resources around! The following services take the time and effort out of tweeting, keeping it what it should be: fun! Check out our suggestions:
Click the image to open MBS' Twitter page, then 'Follow' us for the latest industry updates!
Dashboard: These applications are a must-have if you are on Twitter. Allowing you to manage and monitor conversations across an array of social media accounts, dashboards help you keep track of exactly what’s going on at all times! Be sure to download the mobile application, too!
We recommend: Tweetdeck, HootSuite, TweetCaster or Seesmic
Amplify: Find out how far your tweets travel. Search for a URL, Twitter name, phrase or hashtag – to show how many users you reached, for the last 50 tweets on a designated topic.
We recommend: Tweetreach
Timing: Schedule your tweets so your online presence is ever present. Timely takes this a step further by analyzing the best time to send your tweet, based on when your followers are online, so you get maximum visibility.
We recommend: Cotweet or Timely
Measure: Find out how influential you are on Twitter and beyond. This service calculates a score on a scale of 1 to 100 based on how many people you influence, how much you influence them, and how influential they are. You can even earn perks with designated companies based on your Klout score; pretty cool!
We recommend: Klout
Monitor: Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, and anything in between, with hourly updates! You’ll receive notifications on who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com). It’s like the Google Alerts of social media!
We recommend: TweetBeep
Understand: Learn the impact your tweets have on your follower count. Investigate who unfollows you to discover what social media mistakes you may be making.
We recommend: Qwitter
Grow: This service helps you cut through the clutter to find other Twitter users in a specific industry. It’s like the yellow pages for Twitter!
We recommend: Twellow
Talk: Ever wonder #WhatDoesThisMean? Use these services to easily search a topic and identify related hashtags or to find out the meaning behind a specific hashtag so you can talk the talk when you tweet!
We recommend: Hashtags.org or Tagal.us
What social media applications do you use? Share your advice on our Facebook or Twitter page!
Transitioning to We-Commerce
Sep 2nd
The following excerpt is from the article “The Rise of We-Commerce” by Vivian Wagner, published on the E-Commerce Times website.
Can’t decide what to buy? Ask a friend, or your mom. Shopping’s always been a social activity, and social shopping sites are now harnessing the power and promise of networks. They are evolving along with consumer expectations and desires, shaping a new world for e-commerce.
MBS Systems inSite "Add This" feature lets students share their favorite merchandise across 340 social networks!
It just makes sense that consumers tend to trust the opinions and recommendations of friends before they trust those of advertisers, promoters and retailers. Social shopping sites, which combine features of social networking with online sales, seek to capitalize on the sharing and trust that exist between friends.
“Sharing is one of the inherent human behaviors,” explained social shopping site ShopSocially’s founder and CEO Jai Rawat. “People share all the time. It’s a natural thing for them to do. People love telling other what they bought.”
Social shopping lends itself particularly well to the fashion world, which has spawned several sites and services. One of the largest, Kaboodle, lets users create profiles, save wishlists, and communicate with other shoppers.
“Like Facebook, it allows you to build profiles and connect with other people,” Kaboodle’s CMO Steve Chien told the E-Commerce Times. “But people are coming to Kaboodle to talk specifically about fashion.”
Comparing dresses, purses and shoes — the kind of social banter that typically takes place in the shopping mall — happens virtually on Kaboodle, which has about 1.5 million users.
“The power of Kaboodle is tapping into the word-of-mouth marketing that’s happening in real life,” explained Chien. “There is an element of social discovery that we are replicating online.”
Your store can provide students with a similar social shopping experience right from you inSite e-commerce page! Through our embedded social feature, “Add This,” students can spread the word about their favorite merchandise, products, or services with the click of a button. While interacting with your site, they can then share their favorite items across 340 available social networking sites, creating both word-of-mouth marketing and maximum exposure for your products.
Even better, this feature provides analytics to help your store determine its most popular items. To activate this interactive function, simply navigate to the Social Networking Options menu within the iCM Design Editor.
Beyond social networks, students can also share their opinion of products within your site itself through comments and reviews.
To get started on a more social e-commerce solution, contact your inSite Client Representative for more information and assistance!
Using QR Codes? Don’t Forget One Key Step
Aug 30th
The following excerpt, from the article Survey: 83 Percent Of Young Shoppers Can’t Handle QR Codes, was written by Evan Schuman. View the full article on StorefrontBacktalk.com.
Given the current retail fascination with QR codes—with recent trials at Tesco on subway walls, Macy’s on products, American Express on beer cans and eBay on practically everything—it stands to reason those little boxed lines are doing rather well.
A recent credible survey, however, found that not only are most younger consumers oblivious to what QR codes are, but the many who do know what they are can’t get them to function. In short, 83 percent of the 1,300 14-to-24-year-olds surveyed couldn’t access a QR code regardless of how good the offer was. Looks like some people skipped an important step in product rollout.
That news is pretty bad, given the strong mobile interest—or general high-tech and experimentation comfort level—of that demographic. If they’re confused or apathetic, the numbers won’t likely get better as surveys examine consumers in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. This particular survey was conducted between May 20 and May 30 by Youth Pulse (a.k.a., YPulse), which tracks marketing trends among the 14-to-24-year-old segment.
“I think the confusion for those who can’t figure out how to use them is that they don’t realize they need an app to read the code and, even if they do, they may not know the images are called QR codes in order to search for a QR code reader app,” said Melanie Shreffler, the Editor-in-Chief for Ypulse.
“When I first learned of QR codes a few years ago, a friend was trying to tell me what they are, and she said you just need to snap a picture of the image with your phone and voila. I asked how my phone’s camera would know what to do with that weird image. She thought for a minute and said ‘I have no idea, but somehow it must.’ I tried it and obviously it didn’t work. Eventually I went online and did a little research about how to use QR codes. I think that same scenario is probably happening for other users who are just learning about QR codes.”
Shreffler’s speculation is frighteningly likely. The problem here is best illustrated by the Macy’s experiment, where almost no signage and even less training of store associates pretty much left customers to figure it out on their own.
This study highlights one significant, yet often overlooked, detail about QR Codes: marketing. Though college students are undoubtedly extremely tech-savvy, they too need instruction sometimes.
Many retailers have jumped on the QR Code bandwagon without stopping to consider their strategy. As we outlined in our previous article, How to Create and Implement QR Codes, planning is key to any new promotion.
Don’t get us wrong; QR Codes are increasingly popular and hold endless possibilities for offering promotions and additional information in your store. Just don’t forget that you also need to include directions, such as easy-to-read instructions, along with your 2D barcode describing how students should use it.
As this excerpt points out, the same goes for your sales associates, who should all be trained on relevant talking points to explain what a QR code is and how it works to any potential customer. As with any new technology, education is crucial.
Taking these points into consideration will directly affect the success of your campaign and help you realize the true value of QR Codes for your store.
Has your store integrated QR Codes? Share your experience by commenting on our Facebook page or tweeting @MBStextbook.
Social Media Series: Create a Foursquare Business Page
Aug 9th
The following article was written by Erica Swallow, Associate Editor of Partner Content at Mashable. Read the full article here.
Foursquare business pages are no longer limited to large brands with the money and clout to buy Foursquare’s limited and in-demand dev resources. Business pages are now self-serve, Foursquare announced Tuesday.
For the past 18 months, Foursquare has created about 3,000 business pages in-house, relying on its developers and designers and coordinating with brand creative teams along the way.
It was a time-consuming, unsustainable and restricting growth model that limited the amount of businesses that could be “followed” on Foursquare. As a result, the location-based service tended to work with big names, such as Louis Vuitton, Zagat, The New York Times, the History Channel, Brooklyn Museum and the city of Chicago.
Now, any business can create a free Foursquare business page, enabling it to customize a branded page where fans can “follow” the brand and unlock its tips.
Foursquare’s new self-serve model for brand pages will be particularly beneficial to small businesses, who have gained from managing their venues on Foursquare, but have not had the ability to interact with users by leaving Foursquare tips.
The biggest improvement to the business page experience is the ability to have entire teams of people manage the same page. Foursquare introduced a new tool to enable brands to add multiple page “managers” to a page’s account.
Before getting started, brands should read through Foursquare’s FAQ on business pages to get an idea of what they’ll need to get started and maintain the page.
Does your store use foursquare? If so, what kind of tips or promotions do you include? Have you seen any benefits? Head to our Facebook and share your experience with others in the industry!
