QR codes not about a Trend but, Tapping a Market OUTSIDE of the INTERNET: knock knock R you listening #QRAnise

This is a GREAT piece and it is on point! QR CODES ARE NOT ABOUT TRENDS OR FADS BUT ABOUT REACHING PEOPLE BEYOND THE INTERNET. REPEATQR CODES ARE NOT ABOUT TRENDS OR FADS BUT ABOUT REACHING PEOPLE BEYOND THE INTERNET. LOVE that! Don't you just love that! As business owners this is an Oprah Aha moment That alone, is enough to consider integrating QRCodes into your marketing strategy.

Add your QR code to your shop store: Someone's walking home when your shop is closed, yet they can scan and find out your sales by scanning.

Add your QR code to a Real Estate Sign: Now someone can find out how much your house is selling for, specs, and make an appointment.

Just do it people..Get with the program or be left behind like the last company in the 90's to adopt email.

QR CODE RESOURCES

Everything you need to know about QR Codes
LinkedIn Professional QR Code Networking group
All QR Code Blog
Fun QR Code Recipes
Check us out on Facebook

Amplify’d from ericaglasier.com

Why QR codes—and the entire coming mobile web—matter to you.

We’re all aware that the mobile web is coming. Moore’s law will have its usual impact on hardware, and the price of smartphones and dataplans will drop to negligibly zero, as it did with feature phones prior. Shortly, the freebie that comes with our parent’s mobile plans will be able to access a robust, roving web.

Understanding QR codes & mobile tagging isn’t about trendy marketing, it’s about the bigger picture. It’s about starting to think about the new web. A web that takes into account where and when people access it. Read more at ericaglasier.com

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Geolocation is Changing the World: Are you ready?

http://ww.Facebook.com/AniseSmithMarketing

Amplify’d from collective-thoughts.com

10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World

Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.

Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn’t been the technology itself but how we’ve used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.

Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We’ve decentralized media production and distribution. We’re doing the same for energy. And we’ll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce.

1. Checking in for Good: If Gowalla and Foursquare have taught us anything, it’s that people respond to simple incentives. By offering badges, mayorships, and other intangible rewards, millions of people are checking in to the places they go. Apps like Whrrl take this a step further and enable like-minded “societies” to form on a local basis. The next step is for these apps to add greater purpose by encouraging more meaningful checkins and offering corresponding badges and stamps, thus mapping the cause universe. Or for a dedicated app to be developed that rewards conscious consumption, social responsibility, and civic engagement. Yes, the CauseWorld app features a cause element, but it’s not about cause-worthy places.

2. Eating Locally: Sustainability demands that we source our food as close to its point of production as possible. Many so-called locavores subscribe to the 100-mile diet, which requires that one “eat nothing—or almost nothing—but sustenance drawn from within 100 miles of their home.” Given the difficulty of accessing and verifying this information in order to live by this standard, there’s a geo-powered Locavore app. It gives you info on in-season foods, those coming in-season, farmer’s markets, and links to recipes. This rather simple app is clearly just the start. In time, location-aware apps will guide us not only to the grocery store or farmer’s market but through them. All the while identifying foods based on our particular diet or sensibility.

3. Political Organizing: In the next presidential election, politics will not only be local but location-enabled. We saw the power of social media in Obama’s 2008 landslide victory. In 2012, location-based apps and technologies will play a central role in how campaigns are organized, managed, and ultimately won. Much of this will be visible through mobile apps and location-aware browsers. Activists and volunteers will be more empowered. Voters will be more engaged in the moment, right down to casting their votes. Behind the scenes, though, we’ll see massive new sets of data available to campaigns for targeting, empowerment, and optimization. The party, candidate, and/or cause that has the best handle on geolocation will have a measurable advantage. (The Elections app will soon be updated for 2010.)

4. Finding Green Businesses: The web has effectively replaced the paper Yellow Pages as a way to find local businesses and services. However, this “stationary web” experience is quickly being supplanted by the mobile web and mobile applications, which give us access to this information when we most need it. The Yelp and Around Me apps are popular ways to find restaurants, coffee shops, or hotels wherever you are, but what about green-rated businesses? Greenopia has transformed its printed, local guides into a dynamic, nationwide mobile application that lets you find local, green-rated businesses in any category. No more paper and a much better experience. The Green Map app is another that facilitates discovery and connects us to local green environments.

5. Traveling More Efficiently: We’ve had access to GPS navigation systems and static traffic information for some time, but only now are we seeing the full potential of these technologies. With access to more detailed traffic information that is specific to your route and updated in real time, we can minimize congestion and maximize traffic flow (as much as physically possible). The new turn-by-turn MapQuest 4 Mobile app is a good start, as you can get traffic alerts specific to the route you program. However, user-generated information from apps like Trapster and Waze can crowdsource more specific details, such as whether to avoid an intersection due to a toxic chemical spill. Or, if you want to avoid automobiles altogether, Google Maps makes it easy to use public transportation and take a bike.

6. Scanning for Ethical Products: With online shopping, we’ve become accustomed to reading reviews and making comparisons before we buy. This can now be done in the physical world through games like MyTown and services like Stikybits. By scanning a product barcode using a smartphone camera, you can unlock a treasure of additional information (not to mention deals) that can help with your purchase. This might include where it was produced, how far it traveled, the reputation of the manufacturer, chemical contents, carbon footprint, or the full lifecycle analysis. Location-aware applications can also transform commerce itself by giving us better access to local inventories and locally-produced goods. Whether it’s fruits and vegetables or books and electronics, if something can be found within blocks of your current location, it makes no sense to ship it from afar.

7. Networking Neighborhoods: One of the hottest categories in geolocation is neighborhood networking. The vision for many of these apps is to strengthen the very fabric of our communities. With DeHood, you can keep track of what’s happening in your neighborhood, share your favorite places, and grease the wheels for actually meeting people. After all, if you’ve made contact through the app, it’s a lot easier to say “Hello” in the real world. Blasterous is another that lets you share information locally, whereas BlockChalk does this on an anonymous basis. Finally, NeighborGoods uses your street address to facilitate one-to-one borrowing and trading of useful stuff. In the end, making connections with your neighbors can lead to safer, more productive, and more sustainable communities.

8. Tracking Environmental Disasters: The size and scope of environmental disasters appears to be growing. In 2008, we had the Tennessee coal ash spill, which was billed as “the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States.” And that was before we realized it was three times bigger than originally estimated. More recently, the BP oil spill set daily records for “largest environmental disaster in the U.S. ever.” In each case, geolocation technologies can be used by engaged citizens to monitor and track the effects. They can be used by response teams to coordinate containment and cleanup efforts. Ultimately, these technologies can be used to accurately measure the size and impact of a disaster in order to better understand its damages and costs.

9. Viewing the World Through an Eco Lens: Augmented reality (AR) follows geolocation as one of the hot trends in mobile technology. It enables you to view the world through a smartphone camera (or similar device) and see layers of geo-specific content or information. One of the most popular apps is Layar, an augmented reality browser/platform that lets you choose specific data layers or experiences. The potential for green- and cause-related content is tremendous. You might view green-rated businesses, LEED-certified buildings, or virtual GHG emissions as they enter the atmosphere. Combined with smart meter technology, you could see the most efficient and inefficient homes around you in real time. And for the cynics among us, you could view our mountains, forests, rivers, and oceans as they once were…before the effects of climate change and so many environmental disasters.

10. Capturing the Moment: Better access to information about what’s happening around us—right now—can dramatically improve quality of life. This sense of “geospatial awareness” is possible through today’s smartphones, whereby a piece of content or information—a moment—is captured and preserved based on the unique time and place in which it occurred. It is essentially to document spacetime. Protests, natural disasters, sporting events, parties, political crises…real-time information about anything happening anywhere at any time, as well as the history of what happened. This will take several years and a number of different applications to realize. In the end, though, it will revolutionize how we access and consume content. It will complete the democratization and decentralization of news and information…based on time and location. Read more at collective-thoughts.com

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5 Explosive predictions for Mobile in 2011

Amplify’d from mashable.com

5 Predictions for Mobile in 2011

1. Tablet Mania Hits a Fever Pitch

2. Photo Sharing Will Expand to Video

3. HTML5 App Explosion

4. Flash Still Won’t Matter on Mobile Devices

5. We Will See a Verizon iPhone

See more at mashable.com

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Search Engine Optimization vs Social Media Optimization

Google page rank is way less important than it use to be for your business.

Amplify’d from www.organikseo.com

Why Google page rank is no longer enough

Changes in the way we use the web are changing the way to get your small biz noticed

The web and the way we use it have changed dramatically in the past decade. The web experience is increasingly mobile and social. This means that the way people “search” for information, and the tools you need to get your small business noticed, must also become mobile and social.

A couple of statistics provide further evidence of this shift in our use of the web. Facebook now accounts for 17% of all time spent online worldwide, while 10% of our online time is spent on YouTube. Additionally, new software is continually being developed to help us manage our social networks. For example, tools like HootSuite and Flipboard take all of your Facebook updates, Twitter feeds, all the new sites you subscribe to and turn them into a constantly updated and personalized news magazine. Tools like this make it less and less likely that you’ll need to “search” for anything.

The expanding footprint of Facebook and other social media channels are also offering advertisers an alternative to Google. As consumers are spending more and more of their online time on social networks, advertisers are following them and say they are looking for more and more ways to plug into these channels. Advertisers will spend $1.28 billion on Facebook this year.

So what does all of this mean for your small biz? If you already have a SEO budget, you may want to look at allocating some of that budget to social media marketing. If you are just starting out with your online marketing program, you should consider incorporating social networks into the mix. Not only is the trend social and mobile, but social media marketing can also be a very cost effective component of your marketing mix. Read more at www.organikseo.com

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HUGE list of BRANDS using QR codes

Get with the program peeps. Anise Smith Marketing is on this!

Amplify’d from fall.posterous.com

the list of massive Brands Using QR Codes #QR #Mobile

First, take a look at this Google Trends Chart which shows a steady increase in the world’s interest in QR Codes over the past few years. Now take look at the following list of 10 Massive Brands and their current or planned QR Code executions and draw your own conclusion:

1. December 2009 - Google announces that Favorite Places will contain QR Codes

5. February 2010 - Best Buy uses QR Codes to directly link customers to mobile shopping

8. March 2010 - Starbucks uses QR Codes in mobile APPs to allow consumers to pay at cash with a simple scan of a phone

24. August 2010 - Fox will use QR Codes to promote a variety of television shows including The Fringe, Lone Star and Glee.

29. August 2010 - SuperYellowPages and SuperpagesDirect Direct Mail will uses QR Codes to drive traffic to their mobile APPs

34. August 2010 - Exit Realty, Sotheby's International Realty and RE/MAX REALTORS® use QR Codes to Promote themselves and their Property Listings using the Clikbrix.com QR Code and Mobile Web solution for Real Estate Professionals. Read more at fall.posterous.com

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Mobile Advertising and Social Media is a great combination

Mobile + Social Media = a Great combination for your company.

Amplify’d from www.marketingcharts.com

Mobile Advertisers Leverage Social Media

About one-quarter of mobile advertising campaign actions in October 2010 led to social media post-click, according to the October 2010 Millennial Media SMART Report.

Social Media Drives Brand Engagement, Lead Gen

Social media, as a post-click campaign action, represented 26% of the mobile campaign actions in October 2010. The top advertisers on the Millennial network from the finance, automotive, entertainment and retail verticals leveraged the social media platform to drive further brand engagement, as well as lead generation.

Retail Promotion, M-commerce Grow as Campaign Actions

Retail promotion and m-commerce as post-click campaign actions experienced tremendous growth month-over-month with a 13% and 8% increase, respectively. Millennial analysis shows the increase is tied to brands in the retail and CPG verticals developing promotions to drive increased holiday sales through mobile advertising.

Traffic to Site Top Mobile Ad Destination

Targeted Audience Campaign Methods More Popular

Mobile Restaurant Interaction Spikes

Text Coupons Most Popular Retail-related Consumer Mobile Activity Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

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