Over on the left, as you can see, is a screenshot of a collection of Android smartphone apps.  On the far left in the third row down, look for the “Barcode Scanner” app.  This Barcode Scanner app is just one of the many apps dedicated to QR Code conversion!  The Android Barcode Scanner app can be used on both product bar codes as well as QR codes found anywhere.  Pretty handy, eh?

Rather helpful in the realm of Denver Internet Marketing, there are a variety of smartphone apps, as well as several internet websites, that allow anyone to do a quick QR code conversion (as long as the user has a picture of the QR code).

ZXing, or Zebra Crossing, is an easy online QR code converter to use.  You can either type in the url of a QR code that is currently on the internet, or upload your own image of a QR code found somewhere.  So, really, you don’t even need a smartphone to be able to make good use of QR codes and the opportunities they offer.  However, if you do have a smartphone, there are several popular apps you can use.   We already touched on one (the Android Barcode Scanner app), but here’s a little detail on a few more…

BeeTagg Pro

BeeTagg Pro QR Code reader advertises itself as “the world’s most advanced reader.”  This app converts literally all content types, from text to e-cards to geographic locations.  A number of static code conversions (in which the user easily generates their own QR code with this app) are available for free with the BeeTagg Pro app.  A really neat feature of the BeeTagg Pro app is that contact info can be generated into a QR code.  That is, a person’s email, name, age, location, etc. can all be contained in a little QR code.  This would certainly be rather helpful in terms of social media, particularly coupled with links to Twitter and Facebook pages.  BeeTagg is available for Iphones, Android, and Blackberry.

i-nigma Reader

I-nigma Reader calls itself “the most widely used mobile barcode reader in the world.”  I-nigma primarily aims to aid users in mobile barcode advertising.  The company believes an 8 step process can put a great positive effect into a marketing campaign.  This proposed 8 step process includes a campaign that begins with generating a QR code with i-nigma and printing a QR code into a magazine.  As far as mobile phone users go, i-nigma can be used to convert QR codes into a URL.  If advertisers follow i-nigma’s complete 8 step process, traffic to the website will be recorded so that it can be observed just how effective the campaign is.  When used correctly, it seems that this tool can give great insight into how well an advertising campaign reaches users through an fast growing medium: the mobile phone.

Free e-Book: Social Media for Business

You have a website, but is it getting found? Find out what you need to know about social media for business in our free e-book.

Download Now

Image courtesy of laihiu, released under a CC by 2.0 license.

Welcome to our latest installment of our Inbound Marketing series.  We hope you have enjoyed your read so far and have an action packed post for you today!  The context clues in the title and the straight forwardness of the header show that we are looking at link-building and videos today.  As a Denver internet marketing company, we have seen the benefits of these two sources of inbound marketing first hand for our company.

Did you know we have a few videos for our company? Well we do and it has been great for our inbound marketing. (See a playlist of our videos.) The unique thing about videos, what they do for link-building as well as inbound marketing as a whole, is create a viewable part of your company that will last forever.  Since Youtube is owned by Google, whenever a video is posted there it is automatically archived with your company’s name, links and the relevant keywords of your choosing (as long as you fill out the description and title with those things).

You may look at the videos and notice that Chris is only in one of these.  The people in these videos are employed through IWearYourShirt.com, a great company that focuses on helping businesses increase their digital footprint.  They cite their videos as the best part of paying them to sponsor a day because it is quality advertising that lasts. The video that Chris is in is courtesy of The Adventurous 500, a company built along the same principles as IWearYourShirt and specifically centered on video for businesses in Colorado (if you are in Colorado, check them out).  What we find with videos is that they are a more engaging and personal way of communicating a company’s services or products.

We started the conversation about link-building when we talked about how linking a site through a Youtube description brings in some of the heavy guns (Google) when it comes to link-building.  Link-Building is called such because it’s about getting a general link network built around the web for a particular website, in order to keep it ranked at the top of the search rankings for its targeted keywords.  Links are rated higher when they are embedded on sites of high prominence and traffic. For instance, if “Chris Strom LLC” is searched, the first query will be our website, then Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, and on down the page is Ustream as well.  Because of the amount of inbound links we have, our site is ranked first and then the other places our site is linked off of follows.  Besides having social media accounts (which we talked about in last week’s post) linked for a company, creating a blog is also great for link building.  If as a site the blog is set up to generate more links from the main site, then it is building even more links every time a new entry is posted and even more as it gets shared across the internet.

Building links is tedious because it requires multiple posts across multiple platforms.  Keyword research and analysis is closely related to link building because proper keyword selection for your inbound link text is crucial.  We recently began linking our website’s online marketing page with the words “Denver online marketing” in nearly every blog post we wrote, and within a few months we were ranked on the first page of the search results for those keywords on Google.  It’s all about the work and breadth that the company is willing to go to keep their company high in the search queries.

Check-out our Inbound Marketing Success Stories

Link-building is an indispensable part of Inbound Marketing. Check out our Inbound Marketing Success Stories for more information on how we can maximize the potential of your website.

Download Now

Psst…we’ll let you in on a little secret.  This QR code over here on the left was made in about 3 minutes, with a simple website and a brainwave about what to link the QR code to.  If you were to scan this QR code through a QR code generator, you would be taken to a location of one of the most beautiful places in Colorado (and in the United States)!  We’ll take you through the easy process in a second, but the point is — look how easy Denver internet marketing can be!

Building a QR code with the QR Code Platform

step 1: defining what kind of content you want your QR code to generate into — be it a hyperlink, telephone number, or geographic location, the QR Code Platform online generator will adapt settings based on your choice.  For the QR code to the left, the exact latitude and longitude of the location chosen were pinpointed on a Google Map API, and plugged into the QR Code Platform generator.

step 2: deciding what you want your QR code to look like — okay, you can’t get too fancy, but you can certainly decide how large you want your QR code to be, as well as how many units the “quiet zone” is.  The QR code over on the left is a medium-sized QR code with 4 units of “quiet zone.”

step 3: generate the QR code — well, that’s pretty self-explanatory.  Once you have generated the image, you can choose from a variety of formats to save the file as (both rastor and vector options).  The QR code on this post is a fabulous .png.

QR Codes in the realm of Denver website design

In the last QR codes post, after we introduced the idea and basic function of the QR code, we gave a few examples of successful marketing campaigns that utilized QR codes to the fullest extent — many of these campaigns dealt with marketing via the world wide web.  So, here’s a few more ideas for QR code use:

• a map or location — just like the QR code shown in this post, it’s a great idea to have a QR code link to a map.  The map can be pulled up easily on a smartphone once the code is generated, and might inspire someone to take a spontaneous visit to somewhere new!
• coupons — this one is a no-brainer, having a QR code link back to a webpage with some coupons on it could certainly be motivation for a consumer to try a new product or service.  Coupons are already a great marketing gimmick, so why not get extra fancy and link back to them with a simple QR code?!
• online ordering and reviews — this is a great idea to design a website around.  We mentioned in the last post that Best Buy puts QR codes around the store so that customers can access reviews about products they are considering buying.  Pretty convenient, eh?

Next week, we will delve more into smartphone apps that read QR codes!

We all know that social media exists and most of us believe that it is in a businesses best interest to harness social media for their company and brand.  Where does Inbound Marketing fit into this though? As we (A Denver Inbound Marketing Company) continue our latest series, this is the topic we will cover in this edition.

In the title of the header this edition is titled “Opt-in Communications.”  We have titled the edition this because the section of Inbound Marketing we will be looking at, covers more than just Social Media, it also takes us through text and email alerts as well.

Before we dive into the meat of this subject, we wanted to offer some social media information for those who may not quite have a full grasp on what or how social media works.  Beginning with Facebook and Twitter for business. Then a few posts on the topics of content development and management for social media: Three Keys in Creating Social Media Content, Five Keys for Creating a Social Media Strategy, and Four Ways to Avoid being a Twitter Fail Whale.

So how exactly does Inbound Marketing and Opt-in Communications work? Well if we go back to our opening post we are reminded that Inbound Marketing is about meeting the customer where they are.  Which means having applications in place for the customer when they begin their search for a company.

So a company would traditionally have Facebook and Twitter accounts already set up.  These are places that can foster conversation about the company and product and when put in place by the company, the conversation can then be dictated by the company (to a degree).  When a company has these sites set up and linked to their website, blog, and other web content, this can also lead to higher SEO as we wrote about here.  Yet another way that the different divisions of Inbound Marketing overlap to build a completed product.  Other social media endeavors include LinkedIn and Blogs, which most companies will want to have themselves set up on as well.

All of these things are known as Opt-In Communications because they are set up in a way to where the customer “opts” or chooses to receive information about the company in some way. Whether it’s a Facebook Fan Page Like, a Twitter Follow, a Link on LinkedIn, an e-mail or text alert sign-up, or a location service check-in.  In some way the customer has opted to show their use and hopefully appreciation of the companies facilities and products.

There are also E-newsletters, text alerts and RSS Feeds that are considered opt-incommunications. These things require landing pages (which we talked about last week), but are also places where a customer opts into receiving updates that a business could send to them.  Customers reaching this point of opt-ing in are typically considered “full-invested” because they have gone to the maximum point of opting into a companies updates.

Another section to cover is location based services.  Having this preset for a business allows for your wording on the description instead of a user generated one.  When people check-in they are showing to all of their followers where they are.  This is an opt-in on their part and phenomenal marketing for your company (if they are saying nice things of course, which hopefully they are).  A company can even set up to reward the customer for “checking-in” there.

Inbound Marketing is all about providing a place for customers to find.  Social media and other opt-in communications are the trendy thing right now in the online world.  So when these two come together not only do they create a more well rounded experience for the customer, it shows other potential clients how much the company “gets it” and is reaching out to them as consumers.

Free Inbound Marketing Success Stories

Reading through the Inbound Marketing Series? Want to know about practical application? Here is a collection of Inbound Marketing Success Stories from our proud customers!

Download Now

 

 

Japan has been using them for a while now, but the US only introduced them into the world of marketing promotions about a year ago. That’s right, we’re talking about smartphone quick response codes, more commonly known as QR codes. Calvin Klein began making full use of them last summer on the company’s billboards, and the little QR code squares are popping up more and more among everything from print ads to t-shirts.

As a Denver Online Marketing company, we think that it’s important to be aware of how QR codes work, since they can be so useful in the realm of advertising and promotions.  QR codes are essentially a very fast link to any sort of information — be it a website URL, or even a dialed phone number.  Anyone with a smartphone can make use of a QR code, once they have downloaded a QR code phone app (the majority of which are free).  The smartphone user simply takes a picture of the QR code, and in turn sends it through the QR code phone app, which will scan the QR code picture and quickly link it to the website, coupon, etc. that corresponds with the generated QR code.

Let’s go through a few successful QR code campaigns:

1.) First Bank ran a six-month-long campaign in the Denver International Airport.  The company posted billboards around DIA featuring QR codes that, when scanned, allowed the user to access free sudoku puzzles and various novels.  Along with free content came the bank’s reminder, “we’re here to help you save.”

2.) Best Buy stores use QR codes to allow customers to view product reviews.  Imagine…an easy way to research into a product while you are shopping. Personally we think it would make the process a bit easier — don’t you agree?

3.) The University of Colorado at Boulder library, a very large and sometimes hard-to-navigate building, is decked out with QR codes so that library users can automatically dial the front help desk, or easily find maps of the library.

4.) During the 2011 South by Southwest music, art, & film festival held in Austin, Texas, BestFit Mobile made full use of QR codes at their Apptastic party.  Not only did the mobile phone service company hand out stickers with QR codes, but those who RSVP’d to the event also had their submitted media and blog urls generated by BestFit Mobile into QR codes that were printed onto each attendee’s nametag.  Now that’s innovative!

5.) After the serious oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, an environmentalist group called Women of the Storm created a petition for people to virtually sign online.  The petition stated a call to action to fully restore the Gulf; this petition was generated into a QR code, posted on billboards and merchandise such as t-shirts, and has since had over 117,000 signatures.

In our next post concerning the rather exciting quick response codes, we’ll go more into ideas for what you personally can use QR codes for, and we will discuss a little bit about how to generate your own QR code!

P.S…generating your own QR code is pretty darn easy!

Free e-Book: Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

You have a website, but is it getting found? Find out what you need to know about search engine optimization in our free e-book.

Download Now

Image courtesy of Brdall, released through Wikipedia .