I love QR codes. I was an early adopter of them, having created a QR code generator and tracking system in 2009. I developed a process where renters in Philadelphia could see the availability of apartments and schedule a viewing by simply scanning the code on the building’s front door. QR codes are great for providing quick, simple and timely information, thus the reason they’re called Quick Response (QR) codes. However, I knew that this technology, like all great technologies (think email) could be easily abused by people who either didn’t “get it” or who were simply trying to be cutting edge. I think we are at the forefront of this technology being abused.

The popularity of QR codes is going to be severely diminished by the user’s annoyance. I recently scanned a QR code on a bus station billboard and was taken to a non-mobile friendly site. I couldn’t see anything on my phone. I scanned a QR code on a business card and was taken to another non-mobile friendly site instead of being given a vCard. Why did I need this to go to your website? I knew we reached absurdity when I was driving through Western New Jersey and got stuck in traffic. Up on a billboard was a QR code from a local bank – impossible to scan while driving 55 miles per hour (New Jerseyians usually drive much faster than that) and still impossible to scan even just a few feet from the billboard stopped in traffic. All of these experiences would make me want to give up on QR codes forever if I wasn’t so personally enthralled with the technology. I’m convinced with every lousy QR code produced; two or three users will be permanently put off. After a while that can add up to a lot of people not using a potentially beneficial piece of technology.

So what qualifies as a “good” QR code? Let’s start with the type. Do your users a favor and use the standard QR codes (see above) that most readers can easily decipher. There have been a litany of alternatives requiring special apps and gateways. I recently saw a major food chain feature a Microsoft Tag, a QR Code that required me to sign in with a Windows Live account (I quickly abandoned it). [UPDATE: Microsoft seems to really believe in their tags. I've been contacted by fanboys, PR people and others (who after Googling may or may not be affiliated with MS) about this statement. Regardless of who is behind it, I don't want to be wrong so I decided to try it again with different codes and I re-downloaded the app. After doing this, I was NOT asked to sign in with a Window's Live account.] Lowe’s has been using QR codes to communicate gardening information for plants [UPDATE: a message from Microsoft's PR agency says that Lowe's is now using Microsoft Tags, but I haven't seen them in person. My last visit was two or three months ago, so I might have missed them], movie posters use QR codes to deliver trailers to a person’s phone, and there are codes that have been used for coupons and mobile tickets. These are all good examples of how the technology can work. I think some of the best uses of QR codes are still to come: I wish electronic devices such as monitors, TVs, refrigerators, etc. would print a QR code on the back of their devices that points to a mobile version of the device’s user manual. I usually lose those things and rarely refer to them, but it would be an efficient use of the technology. With the upcoming Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act, I’d like to use QR codes to know where my food came from, if it was recalled and how far it traveled.

There are many smart possibilities for QR codes as long as marketers remember their purpose:  delivering additional, valuable information at a specific point of time. Using a QR code to deliver a how-to video, coupon, ticket, vCard, phone number or directions are wonderful uses of the technology. Using codes to repeat the same information already in front of you is a waste of great technology.

Jim Nichols is Vice President – Digital at Stern + Associates, a full-service communications firm that fuses the best of public relations, traditional media, digital, marketing and direct engagement strategies through its  Connected Communications ^SM approach.  He can be reached at jim@sternassociates.com

The major news out of ICANN, the global non-profit that regulates domain names, is that brands can now purchase their domain extension. That means instead of having .com or .net, you could have .forbes, .nike or .ford.  It won’t be cheap, or easy, or fast: ICANN fees will run about $185,000 just to register the domain, not to mention that ICANN works at a glacial pace. To give you an idea, they’ve been batting around ideas like this since 2000 and just got around to moving forward in 2011.

But the cost and time may be well worth it for companies who can suffer thousands or millions of dollars in brand damage due to internet fraud. As an interview on CNN-Money aptly pointed out, banks could significantly benefit. Financial institutions could direct customers only to trusted sites that end in .citi or .boa, for example. It could also help prevent counterfeiting, as luxury brands could ensure genuine products are only available on .coach or .rolex domains. Finally, it gives companies a chance to control a bit more of their online identity, albeit at a price. The risk of an unscrupulous person trying to hijack your company’s identity will have a tougher time when official pages end with a .brand extension.

I wrote an earlier post about how internet real estate was beginning to dry up. Domains are important in the world of branding, but it is the placement within search engines that can really drive new business among audiences who haven’t yet “discovered” your business. We’ll have to wait and see how Google, Bing and the rest handle these new domains once they finally go to market. My prediction is that Google would rank those extensions very highly.

If you are a company that has dealt with brand identity theft or digital counterfeiting, I’d get a team in front of ICANN pronto.

Jim Nichols is Vice President – Digital at Stern + Associates, a full-service communications firm that fuses the best of public relations, traditional media, digital, marketing and direct engagement strategies through its  Connected Communications ^SM approach.  He can be reached at jim@sternassociates.com

There is a land grab happening now in the internet world. Much like real estate, your success can depend on location, location, location. Instead of being situated at a busy intersection, today’s valuable real estate is in the first 10 spots on Google for a keyword your customer might search. As search engine optimization (SEO) begins to mature, obtaining one of these choice locations is going to get a lot tougher real fast.

Why? Google keeps its search formula under a lock and key the same way Coca Cola safeguards its recipe. What we do know is that Google values sites with high “page rank,” the age of a domain and the number of sites linking into the site (like a footnote or citation in a research paper). As time passes, sites already in the top 10 of specific keywords will continue to age. With that age, they continue to strengthen a few of the items that influence the Google algorithm (such as domain age). If the site is properly optimized for SEO, then the easier this process will be. If the domain name matches the keyword, it’s even easier. Within the next several years domain names with your keyword will be harder to come by and sites at the top 10 will have been there for quite a while. All of these factors can conspire against you in future rankings. Over the next 5 to 10 years many organizations that currently rank in Google’s top 10 for valuable keywords will likely be immovable unless, of course, there is a major change in how Google ranks results.

Why should your business care about ranking in Google? Think about your average customer before they know you and your company exist. How do they research their problem? An increasing amount of them, from simple consumer purchases to complex business needs, research their problem on Google. This could be a great opportunity for your company. If you build out your site properly to showcase what you do and how you do it, you should be able to rank properly for the words and phrases that will be easily found by probable customers searching for answers to their needs but don’t know your company exists.

Many companies are happy with the fact that they currently rank #1 in Google when someone searches their company name. That is all well and good when the customer already knows you exist, but business generation through a search engine is most valuable when your company is “discovered” by someone who doesn’t know about you yet. As product category and service offering keywords continue to get more crowded online, it is important to grab that prime, top 10 real estate while it is still possible to do so. If you aren’t focusing on search engine optimization now, you may well regret it in the future.

Jim Nichols is Vice President – Digital at Stern + Associates, a full-service communications firm that fuses the best of public relations, traditional media, digital, marketing and direct engagement strategies through its  Connected Communications ^SM approach.  He can be reached at jim@sternassociates.com

Acceptance of social media, especially Facebook, runs similar to the political spectrum. There are extremists on both sides: those who live on Facebook and those who want nothing to do with it. I, along with the rest of the American public, sit somewhere in the middle. There is a big rush in the corporate techie space to get everything on a social media platform like Facebook, from internal communication to job postings. Most of them are uncomfortable fits, but I think there is one area that does fit – corporate motivation.

During my time in television, I worked for a few massive corporations that tried to tie online motivation programs to certain goals. There’d be a website set up with a special username and password and I’d enter my accomplishments, whether it was energy efficiency or HR training, and build an interactive fish tank or fill up some digital thermometer with my accomplishments or whatever. When I’d first get the emails I’d sign up, marvel at the whiz-bang materials and then promptly forget about it a few days later. If I ever went back, I usually forgot the password and therefore wouldn’t update the status. Within a few months, the program was forgotten.

I’m not here to debate the effectiveness of motivation programs, but I have seen a common thread in my dealings with several corporations. Most companies want to build their own platform, which is red hot at first and then cools quickly. After the honeymoon period is over, executives start to get antsy about the lack of interaction. My mantra with online communities is to “fish where the fish are.” If most (I would never say “all”) of your employees are on Facebook playing games and interacting, wouldn’t it be easier to interactively track their accomplishments there? Could Facebook be used, somehow, to build a platform and leverage the interactivity there? Turns out Tom Taraci of Taraci Motivation beat me to the punch with a new Facebook app. It marries the interactivity and community of Facebook with the motivational goals many executives wish to achieve. It’s probably one of the most comfortable fits between using Facebook as a personal, social platform and a company’s desire to engage and motivate employees.

I have a friend that posts his running time on Facebook (he’s training for a 5K), another lets me know about her job search process…would I respond just as favorably if I found out my college roommate just became a six sigma green belt? My sister recently “won” an overseas trip from her company for exceeding her division’s goals and she immediately shared it on Facebook. But with an app like this, some of that information could be shared automatically so employees can receive the adulation from friends and family without the concern of sounding self-serving. It’s a process that could push the employee to engage more.

With less focus on getting people to visit  a special website and remember specific passwords, I think this blend of social media and corporate life works. What other areas of corporate life do you think make sense on a place like Facebook or Twitter?

Image via Flickr user west.m

Jim Nichols is Vice President – Digital at Stern + Associates, a full-service communications firm that fuses the best of public relations, traditional media, digital, marketing and direct engagement strategies through its  Connected Communications ^SM approach.  He can be reached at jim@sternassociates.com

Back in November I told you about a National Labor Relations Board complaint against a company who allegedly fired a worker over a Facebook comment. That dispute ended in a settlement that required the company to change their social media policy in February.

Now a new case has been born but with a different social media platform – Twitter. The NLRB is preparing to file a civil complaint against Reuters news service over a staffer’s tongue-in-cheek tweet about the company’s handling of a union dispute. The employee was verbally reprimanded, but the NLRB claims the company infringed on the tweeter’s protected speech.

This complaint is part of a larger complaint filed by the NLRB. There seems to be a bit of bad blood between Reuters and the union with this Twitter fiasco (tweetgate?) coming along for the ride. Whether this case holds any merit remains to be seen, but it does reiterate the need for specifics in a corporate social media policy. As the last case showed, it is not advisable to issue a vague, generic “you can’t mention the company anywhere on social media” because that could run into protected speech issues. Instead, it is important to provide guidance on what is appreciated by the company and what is frowned upon. While the company is (and should be) concerned about protecting their brand in the social media sphere, a more guidance-focused social media policy will return greater benefits than a far-reaching list of dos, don’ts and the potential pitfalls lawyers dream up.

You can read the original post here.

Image By Analyn,  via Wikimedia Commons

Jim Nichols is Vice President – Digital at Stern + Associates, a full-service communications firm that fuses the best of public relations, traditional media, digital, marketing and direct engagement strategies through its  Connected Communications ^SM approach.  He can be reached at jim@sternassociates.com

The Associated Press witnessed first-hand the growth of a digital phenomenon – brand identity theft. On Wednesday the AP printed a story based on a fake press release sent from a site designed to mirror the look and feel of a real corporate newsroom, even down to the logo. On top of that, the URL was a pluralization of the real site’s URL. In our new world of semi-automated news distribution, the AP processed the story and sent it out to USA Today and thousands of other news sites. Thirty minutes later the AP retracted the story. Was there any damage done? No one really knows, but it shows how fast news can travel digitally and the power brand identity theft could have.

Over the last year there has been a rise in Twitter accounts posing as corporations. The first to enter public awareness was during the BP oil spill. A prankster created an account pretending to be from BP public relations and released insensitive, if not tongue-in-cheek satirical, tweets about the company’s stance on the Gulf oil spill. This was quickly followed by fake accounts for Paramount Films, Aston Martin and even chief satirist Stephen Colbert. This latest incident represents a graduation in brand identity theft – from simple Twitter accounts to well planned and executed faked websites and press releases.

This means that the stakes are now a bit higher. The reputation of news organizations are now on the line to make sure that the stories they print are indeed factual. This is not news to the news industry, but it is just elevated to a different level. When I was working in news, it was common to get one or two faked images sent to me from viewers. My favorite was the guy that took a picture of ice cubes claiming it was golf ball sized hail falling in his backyard. My email back to him, educating him that hail does not fall in the crescent shaped form from an ice maker, went unanswered. There was an uptick in events like this the last few years, but now with social media, the pace and incident rate is and will be increasing. Beyond the newsroom, it’s also important for companies who may be targeted to keep a close eye on what is being said about them online and on-air, and do a few basic things to defend their brand.

One key defense is speed. Companies must have an organized plan in place so they can react quickly when this happens, both online and offline. A good defense is also important: obtain all domain extensions of your site (.net, .biz), pluralizations of your site (mycompany.com, mycompanies.com, etc.) and even consider common newsroom alternatives (mycompanynews.com, mycompanynewsroom.com). A few dollars in defense investment could save you thousands of dollars in lost time and brand equity if a prankster targets you online.

Jim Nichols is the Senior Digital Strategist at Stern + Associates, a full-service communications firm that fuses the best of public relations, traditional media, digital, marketing and direct engagement strategies through its  Connected Communications ^SM approach.  He can be reached at jim@sternassociates.com

Image Via Wikipedia/Wiki Commons