QR codes and readers have had a rough time, no one seems to be too sure if they’ve ‘taken off’ or not, and while many companies seem to be adopting them in their print advertising, this might be down to the relative lack of extra effort required to include them rather than a testament to their success.
I like QR codes, simply because I don’t want to see print media die, and QR codes are the natural link between print and digital. We’ve seen some absolute disastrous uses of them in the past, including this badly thought out example.
It’s not all bad though, here are two recent examples of companies doing amazing things with those fuzzy little squares.
1. The Shadow QR Code – Korea
Recognising that there was a lag in customer numbers in the middle of the day, e-mart, the Korean answer to walmart, came up with this brilliant sundial-esque style QR code.
Between 12pm and 1pm the statue casts the shadow of a QR code which can be scanned by smart phones to unlock a discount to be used in store. They gave away 12,000 coupons, saw their membership rise by 58% and they saw a 25% increase in sales over the dreaded lunch time period. Result!
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest dished out condoms which included QR codes, allowing users to ‘check in’ to a website anonymously and let me the world know they practiced safe sex. It’s also possible to check-in via the website, which plots the countries sexcapades on a map.
Not only does this open up a taboo topic, but it’s also a great example of social media and technology promoting a worthwhile cause.
When you’re running a social media marketing campaign, it’s likely that you’ll want to measure the result of all your hard work. If you’re dedicated to pinning, tweeting, posting and liking—which can be rather time consuming—you won’t want to be spending hours looking at the analytics for each individual profile and assessing which areas need improvement.
When you log in to Twitter, in the ‘connect’ area you can see your retweets, favourites and replies; which is great, but maybe you want some more succinct and easy to measure. Likewise, in the Facebook admin panel you’ll see a whole array of interesting data; but again, this doesn’t show you the whole picture.
Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are used in such different ways that the data provided by each isn’t comparable; a Retweet by someone with 20 Twitter followers may be less valuable to you than a Like by someone with 350 Facebook friends, but if those 20 Twitter followers each have high social impact it could sway the other way.
So, what you need is a way to compile your social media performance for one quick glance per week to stop you from obsessing over your various stats. Here’s a round up of some of the top social media measuring tools to give your ego a boost.
Klout: combining your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, FourSquare, Instagram, Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, Last FM and FlickR analytics. You’ll get one score, out of a hundred, which reflects your online ‘klout’. It also gives you access to valuable information like: your reach, the most influential people in your network, who you influence, and your Style. Your style will help you to understand if you’re creating, sharing, observing, or getting involved.
Pinreach: Like Klout, but specifically for Pinterest (although, it probably won’t be long before Pinterest is included in Klout statistics.) This is great for assessing the monetary value of your pins, particularly if you’re trying to direct traffic to your online store. It will also tell you the reach of your pins, so you’ll know how far they’re going once they’ve been re-pinned outside of your circle of followers.
Friend or Follow: A great way of monitoring who is following you on Twitter, and who isn’t. If you’re overly concerned with your number of followers and the number you’re following staying relatively close, then this is a great way to find out who you’re following that isn’t returning the favour.
Crowdbooster: Similar to Klout, but with more in-depth analytics, and also, personalised recommendations for extending your reach. Although, be warned, this website is fairly new and there are still some kinks to work out. Your information may not be immediately available. When it is available, it will be worth the wait, as it can tell you anything from your most influential follower, to how many impressions your last tweet got. Great stuff!
So there you have it, a complete guide to getting obsessed with statistics. I should point out that there is a possibility that these sites will tweet or post updates on your behalf, if you don’t want your network to see you’re obsessed with stats, just read before you click, it’s usually in the small print.
What do you do to stay ahead of the curve with your social media analytics?
