Who comes out on top? Well that depends, the numbers don’t tell all.  ”How many” is not as important as “how well”. Do you follow these profiles? Who do you think does it best?

1)     QR Code Doesn’t Work

Not all QR scanner are created equally.  It’s unfortunate, but true.  Some smartphone QR code scanners are ill equipped to translate your long-winded QR code.  The solution? Keep your QR simple.  If you can, stick to a simple shortened link or something similar – this will ensure maximum exposure. Also consider the size of your QR code, and how your audience will be scanning.  Billboard QR codes need to be massive because your customer is scanning from many feet away, business card QR codes can be much smaller, but still need to be big enough to be read by the scanner as well.  Also consider print quality – a fuzzy QR code won’t scan.

2)     Medium Not Considered

The point of a QR code is to make a static medium more interactive.  TV is an interactive medium, and thus QR codes on TV are pretty useless. QR codes online, are equally useless.

3)     QR Destination Not Mobile Friendly

This is by far the most common mistake made by QR code marketers.  QR codes are designed to be scanned by mobile devices… thus, if your destination page isn’t mobile friendly, you’ve just failed the QR code marketing game.

4)     Wi-Fi or Network Unavailable

Depending on if you can control where your QR codes are being published, you may want to do your research to determine if a free Wi-Fi signal is available, or at a minimum a Network signal is available for data usage. Making your QR campaign a hit may be as simple as ensuring a signal is available.

5) Awful Content or Landing Page

The quickest way to lose your customers interest is to send them to a poorly designed, static landing page.  You have all but 5 seconds to keep their interest, if your landing page doesn’t do this… you’ve failed. Finally, to spread news of your campaign, you must make it easy to spread the news.  Encouraging sharing on your landing page is highly recommended to increase the awareness of your campaign.

We hope these common mistakes have helped you for your next QR campaign. As marketers we are responsible to consider the entire customer experience for a campaign.  Further to that, the more craptacular QR campaigns in the marketplace, the quicker this technology will just become useless background noise to consumers.  We have to use it correctly – so please take this tips into consideration.

Have any other mistakes you want to add to the list? Have we missed some?  We’ve love to hear your thoughts.  Share your feedback in the comments section below.

As we start another year, many of us stop to reflect how we can learn from past mistakes and improve in the future. Here’s a list of five simple resolutions to ensure your social media efforts are successful in the coming year.

Resolution 1: Be genuine.

With so many products available to compile messages, automatically respond or post when you’re unavailable, too much of this can be a downfall. While there’s nothing wrong with using these services in some cases, over-automation can stifle conversation and engagement. Take the time to respond to comments and inquiries and don’t be afraid to make things personal.

Resolution 2: Take the good with the bad.

Social media has allowed individuals to speak candidly and openly with companies like never before. However, this also opens the door to negative and sometimes hostile feedback. So what can you do about this? Some companies react defensively, don’t respond or even unnecessarily delete comments. This can destroy the credibility you are working hard to build. Rather than always viewing this type of feedback as a negative, see it as an opportunity to find out more and show you care about finding a solution. Sometimes a conversation over Facebook or Twitter can actually diffuse the situation while also building your credibility for other customers who witness the dialogue.

Volkswagen got off to a rough start in 2012. Here’s an example of what can happen when companies don’t respond…

Resolution 3: Focus on relationships, not selling.

While return on investment is important, try not to make it your focal point. Focusing on sales to the detriment of building a community will ultimately leave you unsuccessful. Rather, try to view sales as a by-product of having a strong and effective relationship with your client base.

Resolution 4: Keep things fresh.

Nothing’s worse than following a link to a Facebook business page to find out that it hasn’t been updated in months. Not only are you losing opportunities to spread valuable information, but you’re leaving a bad impression that you don’t care or don’t have anything interesting to share. Social media requires hard work and requires creative thinking about how to best represent your company and generate meaningful dialogue. Having regular and quality material keeps your followers engaged and ensures they will return for more.

Resolution 5: Be interesting.

How many times have you followed a company or product on Facebook or Twitter, only to never think about them again? More than ever before, attention spans are short and vast amounts of information are being shared. Posting something that will immediately pique someone’s interest and then draw them into a conversation is essential. Try to imagine you are following your business’ page. What would make you stop, read and join the conversation? Putting yourself in a fan’s place can be valuable in developing interesting and engaging content.

What are your social media aspirations for 2012? What are you planning to start doing (or stop doing) in the year ahead?

1)      Sticking to Broad Terms

2)      Thinking Global – People like to know you’re a local company, don’t make them guess.  If you’re advertising in Calgary, put Calgary in your ads. Yes, this will force you to build multiple targeted campaigns, but your conversions will surely make it worth your while.

3)      Sticking to One ad – First set your ads to run evenly (despite Google’s warning) and always be running two ads against each other.  This is called A/B multivirate testing, and all the pros do it.

4)      Letting the Content Network Fly Solo – the content network is one of the largest contributors to useless clicks. Be sure to keep a close eye on the networks your ads are showing on and “exclude” ones that are not relevant.  Better yet, consider picking them yourself.

5)      Forgetting Negative terms – Negative terms are your lifesavers in the Google search pool. To ensure your ads are being shown to the right eyes, use negative keywords to weed out bad searches.

6)      Using Telephone Numbers– Telephone numbers in ads are nearly useless.  This person is searching via their computer, they are much more likely to click than pick up a phone.  Use all the copy room you can to encourage clicks.

7)      Stagnant Copy – If you’re trying to produce run of the mill ads, copy the competition.  If you want results, you have to be unique and different.  Be seasonal, be funny, be different, and reap the benefits.

8)      Forgetting URLs – Google allows you to customize your display URL… so take advantage and add relevant keywords.  These keywords will show up bolded if someone searches them.  Bolded keywords draw your customers eyes and results in more clicks.

9)      Not Refining Keywords – If you have deadbeat keywords sucking life out of your CTR, drop them like a bad habit.  The end result is a higher click-through rate and a lower CPC.

10)    Not Using Google Extension – Google extensions is also often overlooked.  This add-on allows you ads to be “click-to-call” ads on mobile devices, or they integrate with a Google Places account to show you on a map – cool… and effective.

See how you can use custom tagging for your Facebook posts and learn about the short-cut that Team Static HTML has made available for you and I to use for free.

Resources

Tagging Code Creator: http://fbtagging.thunderpenny.com/
Tagging Structure: @@[0:[page ID:0:LinkName]]

1) Keyword Paralysis

Google Adwords is a great tool if you know what you’re doing for online advertising campaigns.  It has plenty of tools to allow you to make educated guesses on your market and expected response rates of your ads.  But, with that said, it often does more hurt than good for new advertisers.  Part of the challenge of becoming a Google Adwords expert (whether self-proclaimed or certified), is that you need to understand the art that is keyword use.  For example, if I was trying to sell mortgages in Vancouver, an amateur Adwords advertiser will likely add the following terms to their ad campaign:

Vancouver Mortgages

Someone who is a little more adept when it comes to the in’s and out’s of Google Adwords would know to take these two simple keywords and come up with a list like the following:

Vancouver mortgages

“Vancouver mortgages”

“Mortgages Vancouver”

[Vancouver mortgages]

[Mortgages Vancouver]

+Vancouver mortgages

Vancouver +mortgages

+Vancouver +mortgages

And this isn’t even including variations of plurals, and adding the word “in” (as in “Mortgages in Vancouver”). See how quickly this tool can become quite complex?  Let’s move on the to the next mistake.

2) Keyword Overload

Using the above as an example, you can see how keyword lists can get quite large quite quickly if you’re trying to target a host of keywords. The challenge is to stay relevant at all time.  Google gives it’s advertiser scores based on their relevancy – called Quality Scores.  The higher your score, the cheaper your ads will ultimately cost you compared to the competition.  Staying relevant is very difficult if you are trying to target thousands of keywords, even if you get as targeted as I did in the above example.  50-100 targeted keywords per ad group are plenty, and any more, and you can likely separate them cleanly into two or more ad groups.  Here’s an easy example:

Say I was trying to sell solar powered security lights, here are some potential keywords I’d target:  Solar flood lights, solar LED flood lights, solar security lights, solar security spotlights, garden LED lights, garden flood lights. I would build three distinct ad groups for this ad campaign – one using “flood lights” as it’s major focus, another “security lights” and finally “garden lights”. Using the keyword paralysis example above, it’s easy to get 50+ keywords for each ad campaign using this technique.  The result? More relevant ads, cheaper clicks, higher CTR and more conversions.

3) Useless Keywords

Using the above two examples, the following words sitting solo as keywords would be utterly useless: Vancouver, mortgage, lights, security, garden. It doesn’t take a genius to consider why.  For someone searching the word “garden” how likely is it that they are looking to buy lights?  Not so much.  To truly take advantage of Google Adwords targeting tools you need to be as precise as possible.  Be specific, use long, multiple word keywords and you’ll see results.

4) Negative Keywords

This easily overlooked (because it’s slightly hidden) part of Google Adwords is your knight in shining armour. The negative keywords list can quite literally be a life saver, and is a must for all Adwords campaigns.  No matter how amazing you are at keyword selection, it’s likely that some inappropriate search terms will trigger your ads.  This is where negative keywords come in.  For example, if I was a used car salesmen in Miami trying to run a campaign, some of my keywords may include the following:

Used cars Miami

Seems accurate enough doesn’t it? Well consider this search by a car chase enthusiast: Cars used in Miami Fast and the Furious scene.  Oops, your ad just showed up. By using Google’s host of tools you should be able to weed out a majority of terms that you would want as negatives… now you can understand why this is a must.

5) Keywords & Landing Pages

Okay, you’ve got a hyper-targeted campaign on the go for smartphones, an enthusiastic clicker clicks and goes on to your landing page… and then they see nothing but news about “mobiles”. You dropped the ball.  If you’re targeting the word “smartphone” your landing page should use the term “smartphone”.  I’d highly recommend building unique landing pages for each and every one of your ad groups to help take advantage of better quality scores.

What are some keyword mistakes you’ve faced on Google Adwords?  We’d love to hear what you think.  Share your thoughts and comments below…

There are a variety of sites out there that display Twitter trends. Twitscoop.com and Twitter search are two of the many ways to keep on top of this mountain of information. I use them both on a regular basis but recently found myself wanting to try something new. Enter Trendsmap.com.

Trendsmap.com adds a layer of geography to Twitter trends. The map interface displays the areas that trends are occurring and allows the user to hone in on specific regions. This geographic targeting is a big bonus for marketers that want to target their Tweets to a specific location. With a few clicks you can start to see what is trending on a local level… and most times it’s a lot different than what’s trending on a country or global level.

Trendsmap.com shows some of the trending topics in Edmonton. The #yeg hashtag is always strong.

There are a couple of small drawbacks to the site. I find that it can be a bit resource heavy and it will sometimes freeze up… the same can be said for Twitscoop.com. I also find that the trending topics can be a bit old (sometimes up to a few hours). This isn’t a big deal for some but there are people like me that need to know the “right now”. I’ve been using this site for a while. Here are a few things I’ve learned….

• Edmonton likes hockey. I know this really isn’t a surprise but it’s something to keep in mind if you plan on using Twitter as a promotion tool. Head to Trendsmap.com during an Oiler game and you’ll see that hockey talk dominates the local scene. If you’re looking to launch a local Twitter promotion for your business… you might be wise to avoid kicking it off during an Oiler game.
• Local trends are key. It would be a lot of fun to be behind a trending topic that spreads around the world but let’s be honest… catching social media lightning in a bottle is easier said than done. Focus on the trends in your local area and see what you can do to capitalize on them. Edmonton has a very vibrant Twitter community and the list of trending topics changes on a near hourly basis. The #yeg hashtag is always strong but there might be additional ones that you want to consider. Trendsmap.com will help you identify these.
• Gain insight into other markets. A while back I was responsible for some Twitter promotion in another city. Trendsmap.com helped identify trending topics in the target market and helped me start my planning. I used these trending topics to identify influencers and eventually my research led me to some Twitter lists that fit my target demographic. The map overlay really saved me some time. It allowed me to fine tune my search to identify trends in certain areas of the target city and then helped me track my results after the promotion started.

Trendsmap.com is just another tool in the expanding social media monitoring toolbox. Its map layout and relative simplicity makes it a worthy application to consider when identifying Twitter trends in specific locations. It also serves as a reminder that local trending topics are usually more important than global ones.

High conversion rates start with a quality design and a simple conversion path. Visitors are coming to your site with a problem and it’s your job to ensure your site helps them solve it.

There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to conversion. Making one minor change to your path or design will often make all the difference. Unfortunately identifying flaws in your conversion process can be difficult. Understanding some of the basic principles of website conversion can help get you on the right track.

Let’s have a look at the AIDA model…

A – Attention

Think about some of the conversion based websites that you visit on a regular basis. Some of the better ones probably have some sort of attention-grabbing graphic, often combined with strong typography at or near the top. This often highlights a product or service and is designed to hook those visitors and prevent them from moving onto the next site. This part of the process needs to tell the visitor that you’ve got the best solution to their problem and that they need to read on.

I – Interest

Now that you’ve captured their attention, you need to start the sell job. We’ve all seen the interest portion of the conversion path. This is the area that explains what your product does and highlights some of its most important elements. Having a tough time creating this section? Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and someone asks you for a couple of reasons why they should choose your product over the next one. Be careful with your language here – if it’s too technical and long winded, you might lose the attention of the visitor. If it’s too short and sweet, your potential customer might leave in search of a product with a bit more “meat” to it.

D – Desire

This is probably the most difficult step in the process. Your goal here is to keep the visitor around and give them enough confidence to continue to the final step. You’ll want to provide even more reasons why the person can’t live without your product. You’ll also want to highlight individuals or businesses that have already been converted. This is a good place to include a few testimonials or to highlight your competitive pricing options. This is also the best place to include even more product features and demonstrate the value of the item or service.

Think of the desire stage as a bridge between interest and action. You’ve brought your visitor to the brink of action. Now it’s time to push them over the edge and seal the deal.

A – Action

The action can take many different forms. If you’re selling a product, the action is closing the sale. If you’re promoting something or your goal is to collection information, the action is a completed sign up. A clear call to action is the key to this step. Your visitor needs to know exactly what they have to do to reach the end goal and it’s up to you to highlight the call to action and then keep the closing process quick and easy. You might want to experiment with your call to action mechanism – a simple change in the look or color of a “Buy Now” button can effect conversion.

Testing your action path on a regular basis is vital. The last thing you want is for a visitor to input their information and have an error message returned. Regular testing can also help identify “bumps in the road”. You want this path to be as painless as possible.
As more and more business moves online, companies will quickly realize that their conversation rate can make or break their operation. It’s important that you spend some time analyzing your website and ensuring that conversion goals are being met. Understanding the AIDA model will help you assess weak links in your conversion path and allow you to properly diagnose the problem. The remedy might be a simple text change or a complete overhaul.

Now let’s have a look at the AIDA model in action…

The Basecamp website uses the AIDA model to drive visitors to the conversion button at the bottom of the page.

Let me start by saying that I’m a huge fan of Swiss Chalet. I find their food quality and service to be better than many restaurants and their Chicken on a Kaiser is one of my favourites. I applaud them for embracing social media as a customer relations tool. I also applaud them for the work they’ve done on their Facebook page. The page is very active and can sometimes get a tad hostile with customer and even staff complaints. The social media team responds to almost every comment and it’s evident that they monitor the page closely.

The Swiss Chalet Twitter account (@MySwissChalet) is a bit different. I can see what they’re trying to do but I think they could do a lot more. There are a few glaring issues that I see. Let’s have a look…

Redundant Messaging – A quick glance at the account and you’ll see what I mean. 14 of the last 20 Tweets are almost identical… “Sorry for the bad service/food. Click this link and fill out this form and tell us how we screwed up”. I understand that they’re using Twitter to aid customer relations but is there nothing else to talk about? I did a search for “Swiss Chalet” and found lots of positive comments. Why not share some of those?

Anyone that takes the time to mention your brand on a platform like Twitter is a potential brand advocate. Savvy companies use social media to massage relationships with these individuals. Find the people that like your brand, reward and acknowledge them, thank them and keep them talking. Make it your goal to have these advocates do a lot of the heavy lifting for you… because they will if they like you…

Not Following Anyone – Social media is a two way street. Keeping the social traffic flowing both ways is a lot easier when you’re following people. It’s very obvious that the folks at Swiss Chalet use the Twitter search feature. It looks like they seek out those people talking about their brand and then jump into the conversation. Taking the time to follow those people talking about your brand is a good way to further connect. By following the person, you’re letting them know that you care about what they’re taking about and you want to stay in touch. You don’t have to follow everyone but be sure you keep your influencers (both good and bad) a bit closer.

Add Some Personality – Most of the outgoing messages on this account seem “canned”. Adding some personality brings a human side to your brand. Show people that you care and make them want to interact with you. People want to talk to other people… not robots.

Add Some Flair – This profile is in need of some fun. Have a contest. Ask questions. Share some pictures. Make a short video on how you cook a chicken. Give us something. Contests seem to be the almighty fallback when talking about adding some “fun” to a profile but some creative content will work just as well. It’s clear that the folks at Swiss Chalet are putting some time into their social media. Take some of that time and create some unique and engaging content. Need some ideas? Check out this Wheel of Fortune game we play on the Fort Edmonton Park Facebook page or the puzzle that we did for Tourism Red Deer. Both of these are inexpensive and engaging.

Show Us Results – You’ll see that Swiss Chalet funnels all of their questions and complaints back to a contact form on their website. It would be interesting if they followed some of these comments and complaints up on social media. I’d love to see a post like, “Joe B. contacted us after he had a bad experience at our North Edmonton location. Here’s what we did to make it right – (Link to video)”. I’m assuming the people that take the time to fill out the contact form get some sort of response. It would be fun to see some of those responses and results.

Despite some of these flaws, Swiss Chalet is still well ahead of many restaurants when it comes to social media. I applaud them to taking the time to get involved but there’s so much more they can do to enhance the experience. One thing to keep in mind – many of the negative comments are in regards to poor food or service. The company should probably investigate these issues and aim to correct them. If you food is bad, fix it. If your service is poor, fix it. No amount of social media can mask a bad product or service.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m off to get a Festive Special…

It struck me that this was the wrong way to go about it. What’s the purpose of having hundreds or thousands of likes on Facebook? To generate business? To create interest about a product? To communicate with potential clients? Without thinking about the ‘the point’ behind their social media tactics, this business was essential paying people to like them… and to what end? Ultimately, whether they had 10 or 10,000 likes on Facebook was irrelevant if the likes were coming from disengaged, uninterested individuals.

Of course, Facebook ‘likes’ have their benefits. For one thing, you’re now in that person’s newsfeed. You may be able to communicate to a market you otherwise wouldn’t reach. There’s also the influence factor where a friend is more likely to pay attention to your brand simply because their friend ‘likes’ you.

It’s not that ‘likes’ have no value, but they shouldn’t be the main metric of success. There’s no end to the number of articles out there about “50 ways to get more likes on Facebook” or “How I got 10,000 likes in 2 weeks”. The problem with this is that without engagement, interest or dialogue from your client base, ‘likes’ can be meaningless and businesses should be careful about putting too much emphasis on achieving the coveted “high score”.

So what does matter? There isn’t a single formula, but possibly businesses would be better off striving for ‘shares’ or engagements over ‘likes’. They’re less generic, they encourage a reaction and they require the individual to be interested enough in the content to take some sort of action. Figuring out how to make your content more dynamic, interactive and shareable will likely give you better leads than obsessing over the number on the sidebar.