I am a firm believer that QRCodes present a great opportunity for marketing purposes, it’s just that the desire to use and interact with a QRCode, on a mass scale has not been identified. Sure, there have been a lot of successes with QRCodes over the years, but within niche and relatively small groups.

As a consumer there needs to be a real desire to interact with a QRCode. Without that desire why would I purposely download an app in order to use them. The vast majority of QRCode still seem to encode a static URL, and that creates very little value in my opinion. It would take me less time to simply type into my browser and visit the company’s website, opposed to downloading an app, scanning the app and then being taken to the company’s website.

Personally, I think that the opportunity with advertising is stronger. Imagine me receiving my monthly tech magazine (which I subscribe to) and then within the pages are QRCodes alongside articles and advertisements. If I were then to scan a QRCode against the latest DELL laptop, lets say, I would be taken to a personalized microsite which welcomes me; knowing that I have visited that site only because of me scanning my personalized QRCode. It then either present more information about the product in question, or stores that as a ‘favorite’ and allows me to scan several more codes, before collating all my interests together and presenting back to me a personalized PDF or email with relevant product details, offers, and retailers in my area. The growth in the tablet marketing could well fuel this adoption.

This would first present me with some value, easier access to relevant and timely content, and present the publisher with an increased ROI because they are generating measurable interest from an advertisement.

Imagine a tradeshow, with QRCodes on all the exhibitioner’s stands. Whilst walking around and interacting with various suppliers I could scan the QRCodes. It’s then easy for the show organisers to see exactly what I have expressed an interest in, and present me make all the information that I need post-show directly to me.

There’s still a need for mobile phone manufacturers to embed the scanning technology within the base OS – but this may not happen. In the meantime the responsibility lies with the marketers to create QRCode campaigns that absolutely add value. Please no more QRCode on fizzy drink cans that simply take me to a mobile version of their website? Why would I want to do that? Even if I had a QRCode app on my phone?

Unfortunately we had some issues in the call logistics, which meant that some people were not able to attend – but we also had a number of groups sharing connections to listen. So the final number will be a lot higher I think. Either way, it was a pleasure to present this topic to our customers and business partners.

For those that were not able to attend the call, we will be communicating out the recording so there’s always a chance to watch it.

During the presentation I didn’t focus on what social media is, more on the opportunities that it presents when used creatively within a cross-media campaign. I focussed briefly on why this is such an important topic from the marketer’s perspective, and I referenced in several places an interesting report by Forresters.

In my mind there are three distinct areas in which social media can be used:

• Using social media as a broadcast medium to extend the reach of a cross-media campaign;
• Using social media as a way of actually acquiring new customers directly into a cross-media campaign;
• and integrating social media and cross-media campaigns together so they both add value.

Each level offers different advantages and opportunities for both the providers and the marketers. Each level demands an increase in the skills that you need to build these campaigns. However the higher the level of integration, the higher the rewards and return on marketing investment. Looking around the marketplace already there are companies that are starting to offer this integrated approach to marketing, and the rewards are obvious (well to me!).

Have no fear, social media is not going away, nor is cross media marketing. They will, and should come together to drive results and customer interaction.

Over the coming weeks I am planning on adding some more detail to these levels, and give you some ideas of how they can be used in the real-world. So check back in soon. If you have already been using social media within your cross-media campaigns then please share it with me. I am always after good examples.

At least the group claiming responsibility left an email address. I am guessing that they might have a few email awaiting them this morning, eh?

Whilst at MediaPro the folks at PrintSpeak did a quick 3 minute interview with me over the topic – as it was creating some ‘buzz’ on the floor’

So I thought that I would share it with you all (and thanks to PrintSpeak for enabled the ability to embed their videos into posts for me!)

The campaign was tightly integrated into what we (XMPie) were doing at a UK trade show (MediaPro Expo 09) and was specifically targeting people to allow them to jump the queues and get a ‘VIP’ badge to attend the demonstration.

This campaign was exclusive to Twitter; which meant that anyone that wanted to experience it had to be a member of Twitter.com and they had to follow the account that we had set up. This again kept the campaign contained to a particular medium. When the campaign was initiated we seeded the viral element on about 5 twitter accounts, and we created a small press-release that went out.

Everyone therefore came into the campaign by responding to a viral message promoting the campaign or came in because of the press-release. There were a few that responded because of word-of-mouth.

Looking at the final results I believe that the viral element to the campaign was ‘potentially’ seen by 20,000 – 30,000 people. I say ‘potentially’ because only a small percentage of people will actually read every ‘tweet’ that they see from someone they are following – so the chances of seeing the viral tweet from the campaign was small. To that effect I cannot really draw any conclusion – except that the potential audience was relatively confined and small (in comparison to what it could have been if we had continually tweeted the viral element).

140 people responded to the call-to-action and followed the Twitter account that we had set up – but only 110 (79%) of those people actually came into their personalised website (RURL), which is interesting. I can assume therefore a good 15-20% of those that followed the account were automated bots or accounts looking to grow there ‘followership’ (by hoping we would follow back). There were a few that simply didn’t realised that we had sent them back a direct message and that they needed to click on the link!

Out of the 110 people that came into their personalised website 90 (81%) of them actually clicked on, and went through the process of authorising via Twitter. By doing this it enabled us to do two things within the campaign. Firstly it enabled us to validate who they were (so that we could collate more, valuable data) and it enabled us to send out the viral ‘tweet’ on their Twitter stream.

So, to that effect we only sent out approximately 85 viral tweets, promoting the campaign (excluding the seed tweets that we started from).

It was hard to gauge at the show itself how many people actually came in and presented their Twitter VIP Badge – primarily because we had such a slick set-up that no-one actually needed to jump the queues! There were certainly a few people waving them about. But, if I am honest that was not the sole intention of the campaign. The proof that this could be done and the buzz that doing it has created was the real goal. MediaPro was a vehicle upon which to base the campaign.

Talking about the buzz, the campaign has created some very interesting conversations – both on Twitter and externally. Whilst the campaign pulled in complimentary comments it also pulled in some negative comments. Primarily people were objecting about the way in which we implemented the viral elements. The most notable of which can be followed on the Print CEO blog, written by Eric Vessels from WhatTheyThink.com.  Reading all the comments from those that objected they did so because of the way in which we virally ‘tweeted’ out, although the campaign asked people to essentially ‘opt-in’ and agree to the viral element. This campaign however did not give them a choice of entering without virally tweeting, or editing the tweet that was in-turn sent.

It is interesting – the majority of those who objected were the long-standing Twitter users (Tweeple) who tended to use Twitter as a medium to enhance their personal branding. In this instance, although the viral tweet was informative and not overly assumptive it was not the words of the those that were apparently sending it.

I personally agree with these comments – tweeting virally on behalf of someone needs to be approached with great caution. I appreciate that their are hundreds of third party sites that actually do the same  on a much larger scale), but people probably either expect it with those services, or they are not as concerned about their personal branding. That said, it’s probably the one area that I would change it I did things again, providing more choice about the viral element.

With all said and done – the campaign was a huge success. We secured new prospects from the back of it (and hopefully future business) and we proved once again that XMPie is pushing forward in this industry forging new ideas and pathways within the Cross Media marketplace. This is the start of Cross Media 2.0 in my opinion. The merging of integrated cross-media and social media.

It is possible to use social media as a out-bound communications channel – however this is not what we did. We used Twitter to create a buzz, and asked anyone that was interested to express that interest by following us. Only then did we start immediately engaging them in conversation and drawing them into the campaign. We did not send out 10,000 emails (spray and pray) to try and gain some interest, we used Twitter in way that said, if you are interested then come and express that interest and then we shall engage you in conversation.

Think about the possibilities:

• A University or college could set up Twitter accounts directed at general admissions (UniOfLifeAdmissions for example) and anyone that followed that account automatically received a personalised website (RURL) that allowed them to ‘formally’ express an interest and receive a personalised prospectus pack – with follow-on communication about open-days and events!
• What about a corporate organisation who sent out personalised website (RURLs) to anyone that followed them effectively creating a personalised website for anyone interested in that company? The website could collect more information, suggest subscriptions to other news sources within the organisation – or even direct people in the right direction to other more relevant areas based on their personal interests.
• What about a book publisher, looking to promote a new book. Anyone that followers the author’s or publisher’s twitter account gets pulled into a campaign to engage them in conversation about the book, collecting data and allowing people to share it amongst others? Maybe even offering a personalised copy of the book as an incentive.

To me Twitter is about following the people that you are interest in, or aspire to become – and about promoting yourself and engaging in conversation. Integrated Cross Media is all about engaging people in conversation across different forms of media. The integration of Twitter and XMPie’s Cross Media enables people and organisations to engage in conversation and then to become more personalised (and relevant) in their engagement.

There is a huge responsibility of on those developing these types of campaigns as well. Doing this particular campaign has raised a lot of questions. The one that I had to keep asking myself was, “I know that we could do this – but should we?“. For example we could have continually tweeted out virally, we could have sent all the followers of our follower direct messages promoting the campaign. We could have sent personalised websites to anyone that mentioned ‘XMPie’ or ‘MediaPro’ in their tweets. We could have done a huge amount. We did however choose to keep this campaign exploratory and specific – and even then we generated some negative buzz!

As Gary Vaynerchuck recently said in a presentation, “Technology has no feelings” – make no mistake this will happen and it will become more commonplace. How this evolves from here is where it gets interesting!

To a room full of commercial printers, market and service providers I could see them struggling to understand just how Twitter was important to them in delivering better communication services for their customers. I have to say, I was struggling as well. However I had a rare ‘moment’ in which I could see a way of using both technologies together to achieve an effective goal.

Twitter as we all know and love is great for micro-blogging and real-time social communication. Twitter exists for people/companies to act as content providers and for others to decide if they want to listen to them. They do this by ‘following’ those accounts that they have an interest in. Cross-media campaigns on the other hand exist to allow marketers to develop a conversation with a customer about a service, product, event or process. However in traditional campaigns marketers are normally forced to select customers that they would like to target the campaign at. Sometimes at random and sometimes selectively.

So, what if Twitter could be used to drive ‘interested’ people into a cross-media campaign about a product, service, event or process that they are actually interested about?

To test this principle we used the UK event, MediaPro Expo 09 as the topic of a campaign.

The process goes something like this:

• A Twitter.com user openly decides to follow @xmpiemediapro09 as the account set up to promote XMPie’s activities at the show
• A bespoke application written using XMPie’s APIs then recognises that a new account is ‘interested’ and enters their Twitter details into a database
• The application then sends a direct message (DM) back to the original user containing their personalised website or Response URL (RURL)
• Once the user has received their RURL – they can directly access their personalised site, which already contains personalised information (taken from their Twitter account)
• We then ask the user to simply ‘authorise’ themselves. By authenticating through Twitter they are effectively allowing us access to their profile information
• If the user accepts we then ‘tweet’ back out on the user’s account to all their followers – indicating what the user has just done
• The user is taken back to their personalised website, where we ask them to update their details and allow them to produce and download a fully personalised ‘all-access’ badge to the show at MediaPro 09
• The badge is personalised in various ways – including the use of their Twitter profile image, their updated details, their unique barcode, and even a personalised QR Code to take them back to their personalised site

All through the process XMPie is tracking (through the use of XMPie Marketing Console) who is accessing their personalised websites and what actions they are taking.

I have to take my hat off to Tim Perrett for the implementation of this campaign using XMPie’s APIs and open source platforms – as well as the folks at MediaPro for their help in getting this going.

The beautiful thing to this campaign is that it starts with no user data – their are no recipients in the database. Every single person that comes into the campaign has chosen to do so on their own initiative. Primarily because they have seen someone they are following on Twitter (and thus interested in) already go through the process.

Whether you call this conversation marketing, social media marketing or simply cross-media marketing – the opportunities are immense. This is going beyond what others may refer to as Cross Media. This is an example of an integrated cross-media campaign that is being driven by social media. This is a campaign that uses social media as a real customer acquisition platform. This campaign does not need to ask who the customer is. This campaign automatically knows who the customer is. That is the power of twitter and what happens when social media meets cross-media.

For more information and to experience the campaign – head over to http://mediapro09.xmpie.com

What is interesting though is the shear amount of information that people display about themselves on their Facebook pages. Names, locations, birthdates, religious beliefs, who your married to or currently dating. We share photos, stories and information with hundreds of people every day – and in many cases we actually know very little about the people that we are sharing this private information with.

It’s like a stranger arriving at your door, and asking you for your name, date of birth, photos of your kids, and a few other personal details! I’m not sure about you but if a stranger knocked on my door, they get approximately 2 seconds to give me good reason to keep the door open before I slam it! So what’s different with Facebook?

In an age of identity theft we have never been so open with our information – that is one of the disadvantages of the Internet!

So if you are a facebook user, then stop, and look at what you are sharing – and more importantly who you are sharing it with!

Here are my top tips to start protecting yourself within Facebook.

1. Hide your year of birth.

Displaying your year of birth to all is pretty dangerous in my opinion – not just because to tells everyone exactly how old you are; but it’s also a good security question that you would normally be asked, and sometimes incorporated into people passwords. Not showing it also helps to protect yourself against identity fraud – and let’s face it Facebook is the identify thieves’ greatest tool if they want to know anything about you!

How: On your facebook profile, click on the ‘Info’ tab and then select ‘Edit Information’ and then under ‘Basic Information’ change the option to either, “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” or “Show only day and month in my Profile”.

2. Maintain a ‘’Private Life’!

Just remember that anything that you or your kids/family put up onto facebook is potentially public – to others. For example if you upload an embarrassing photo and I am not your friend, I wouldn’t normal know about it – however if one of MY friends make a comment on one of your photos (because they are your friends) then I can see that action; and then also see the photo. Be warned!

3. Use your friends list

Friends lists in facebook is not only useful but also important – it essentially allows you to ‘Group’ your friends into different lists. Once you’ve done that you can start to manage them better. To access your Friends  list – hover over the ‘Friends’ menu at the top, and then select ‘All Friends’.

Now you will see all your friends, and to the left side of the screen, you will see you have one list. called ‘Friends’ – which means that everyone is treated the same as your friend.

What you need to do now is start create different lists and places your friends in one or more of those lists. So for example you might have a ‘Friend List’ called, ‘Family’ and another called, ‘Close Friends’ and potentially some like ‘Friends, but never met!’

To create a new list simply click on ‘Create new list’, give it a name and then start selecting which of your friends should be in that list.

For me I have lists such as Family, Close Friends, Friends of Friends, School Friends, and Business Contacts to name a few.

3. Adjust your privacy settings to control who see what

By default in facebook you share all your information, photos, wall posts to all of your friends (and their friends in many cases). This is something that you need to think about carefully. Whilst my family members are indeed my friends (most of the time!) and I am happy to share my embarrassing photos with them – ‘Bob’ who I have never met, nor actually know but is in my friends list – do I really want him to see those photos as well?

So the best way is to change your privacy settings. To do this simply select ‘Privacy Settings’ from under the ‘Settings’ menu on your facebook page.

Then you will want to click on ‘Profile’ to change the privacy settings of who can see various elements of your profile.

Firstly select ‘Profile’ and you will see that you can define who can see your profile. Personally, I would select ‘Friends’ Only’ here.

Now continue down the list selecting different settings for different areas of your profile.

4. Avoid the embarrassing tagged photos

It only takes an embarrassing situation, a camera, Facebook and a ‘tagged image’ and all your friends, family, colleagues and half the world suddenly can laugh at you. Not great at the best at times, but what if the photo that you were tagged in was not actually you? That’s both embarrassing and potentially hurtful.

The best way to protect against this is to restrict which of your ‘friends list’ can see the photos that you have been tagged in. Under ‘Photos Tagged of You’ in your privacy settings, select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

I would suggest that you did the same for ‘Video Tagged of You’ to remove the video nastys as well.

5. Protect your photo albums

The previous section only protects photos for which you are tagged in – however what about all the photos that you upload and store in your own albums? Do you really want all those photos shared amongst everyone?

“If anyone called Jason Micheal White, Jason White, James Ryan White, Phil Gibson, Shelly White, Daniel White, Hayley Omalley or Hayley White try to add u, dont accept!! They copy pics of ur kids & sell them to perverts, they’re fake! Please copy paste & inform all ur friends, we need to put a stop to them, police R informed, plz take it seriously .. I’ve been told to pass the message, Please do the same too!” – Taken from a Facebook posting today.

Well, there is a way to protect your photo albums as well. Firstly click on your ‘Profile’ and then  click on ‘See All’. You will then see an option for ‘Album Privacy’;

From here you will be able to select who can and who cannot see each one of your albums.

6. Don’t be afraid to remove friends

Every once in a while take a look at who your friends are – and ask yourself, “Am I still OK with this person seeing what I am doing?”. If not then remove then – or place them in a group that only sees a small amount of your information. It could be an ex-boyfriend or a complete stranger. Nothing feels better than culling a few people off your friends list!

7. Be careful when mixing work and play

If you are like a lot of people you will have both friends, family and work colleagues in your friends list. If you do, then think carefully in what you share. Is your boss, or one of your work colleagues privy to what you are saying? People have been sacked for posting a defamatory comment about their employer on Facebook – or updating their status saying that they are pulling a ‘sicky’!

If you do have work colleagues on your friends list then consider placing them all in a separate friends list (as mentioned above) and restricting what they can and cannot see.

If in any doubt – check it out!

There is a great way to ACTUALLY see what another person can see from your profile on Facebook. Use it to check up on yourself through another’s eye – and use it to check your security settings. To access this gold nugget go back to your Privacy settings page – and at the top there is an option to, “See how a friend sees your profile”.

Enter in one of your friends names and spend a few minutes in their shoes looking at your profile!

Well it seems that Google has just announced Google Chrome OS and it’s there attempt at designing and delivering a lightweight OS aimed at the net-community. In their own words:

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve”

As exciting as this may be – I do not get the impression that this will be revolutionary – after all in Google’s words, “The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.”. They are taking a mature base, Linux and then building on top a new framework and UI that is suited to the person that lives on the web. This is akin to a new windowing system for Linux – not a new OS.

You can just imagine that the Chrome OS will boot straight onto the net, with integration for GMail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Wave and all other things Google.

It’s obvious that Google will attack the netbook market first – and I can see these small, lightweight devices becoming more powerful and common-place.

Does Google pose a real threat to Microsoft OS and other OS platforms – I think not. Microsoft with Windows 7 and beyond will remain and more than likely still dominate; as it continues to roll out almost by default. However, a new bread of OS will emerge to compete against Microsoft; fronted by the net-socialite. What I see in Google Chrome is a lightweight OS where CPU intensive applications are not the order of the day, where business users have the power to do what they want; when they want. Google Chrome OS will be the lightweight alternative – booting quickly and connected online  in an instance. Great for the bread of socialite internet users. But it’s Open Source, free – as the take-up and spread will be quick and swift!

So whilst Google does not pose a threat to Microsoft in terms of technology – they may seem to be giving the public a tool that is desperately needed. Which may prove to cut both Windows (and Macintoshes’) share in the market. I for one would love a device that booted quickly, had me on the net in seconds and then was able to retrieve email and present that PowerPoint slide deck; with no fuss and no messing about!

(http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html)

Twitter is anything but ‘dumb’ and it would seem that the Times are basing the ‘dumber than dumb’ on just how much money they have generated. Which again is very short-sighted in my opinion. Since when has the amount of money something generated been a measure of ‘dumbness’?

Current darling of the faddish world of technology, Twitter is a free social networking service, that allows users to send and read each other’s updates, such as “I’m now in the shower”, “I’m now at my local Barclays bank withdrawing all the money from my account” or “I’m leaving my house for the next ten days”… Making it a must read for burglars. It has about 55 million visits every month, although only 40 per cent of users are retained, and receives an inordinate amount of media attention. But despite this, the company has yet to make a single penny.

Mind you there are some particularly dumb ideas that have made a lot of money. Let us not forget ‘The Million Dollar Home Page’. There’s one dumb-arse idea right there that made; erm, $1 million!

Twitter on the other hand is not a dumb idea. It is a simple and straightforward idea that has yet to decide how to generate revenue. The net is scattered with sites like these that will first establish themselves in the market and then go on to make a revenue. Just look at Facebook. I am sure that when Google first started out there goal was to attract people to use their services and almost to become dependant; before pulling profits in.

I am confident that Twitter will create a revenue stream in the next 12 months and the net is awash with people suggesting how that can happen – but only time will tell.

However with over 11.5 million users Twitter has a user-base upon which a business can be built and made successful.

Some of the stuff that you will find in this report are:

• The top social media marketing questions marketers want answered
• How much time marketers are investing in social media
• The benefits of social media
• How time invested impacts results
• The top social media tools
• And much more!

What surprised me was just how many marketers were seeing a benefit from Social media and probably more interesting was the amount of time that seasoned marketers were spending using social media sites and tools.

Giving this away can almost be considered a crime! There is some gold nuggets of information in there, so if your interested in how to make use of Social Media within your marketing strategy  this is a must read!