You likely are familiar with the story of homebrewer Jim Koch founding what is now the largest craft brewery in the United States, Samuel Adams. If you are a beer lover, you undoubtedly know the tale of Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head.  Or perhaps you know the story of your local brewery, also very likely to be founded by homebrewers like Ken and Nate of our local Bridge Brew Works.

While in San Diego at the Craft Brewers Conference, we talked with many creative, energetic folks with “Brewery in Planning” printed just below their name. According to the Brewers Association, there are approximately 915 of them! Think about that number for a moment. It’s not small.

There are nearly 2,000 operating breweries, more than any other time in post-prohibition history. And that number is about to grow significantly when those 915 in the planning stage come on-line. There is a lot of beer planning happening right now!

Your Beer + Digital Marketing = Buzz

As a brewery-in-planning, you have a lot of hats to wear and problems to solve. Where to set up shop? How big of a brew house to build? Cans or bottles?

In fact, you have so many things to take care of that digital marketing is often overlooked. Why? Brewers work within a process that has a clear beginning and end. You brew. You ferment. You package. You drink. While that is admittedly a ridiculous simplification of the process, the point is that brewing operates on a rather linear path.

For some of you that are used to that type of thinking, you logically need a place to start your digital efforts. And that can be the stumbling point for many when it comes to digital marketing. That’s where we come in.

So here you go, your handy-dandy, beer-ified version of getting started in digital marketing.

Claim Your Real Estate

Deciding on your brewery name may be a long, difficult process; however, once you have settled on your brewery name (or narrowed your choices to the final cuts) be sure to start claiming your real estate.

Claim domain names, Twitter handles, and everything else that you possibly can (even if you have no immediate plans to use the profiles) before someone else does. You can use KnowEm to quickly claim profiles across nearly 600 social media sites. The time tools like this will save you is invaluable.

Share Your Story

What is better than enjoying a quality hand-crafted beer? Feeling a connection with the people that make it.

Share your story from the start and people will begin to feel as if they are a part of your brand. It may sound strange, but it’s true. By documenting the growth process, you give people that elusive behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build a brewery and create hand-crafted beer. People will become invested in you and your story, and they’ll definitely be anxious to try your beer when it’s ready. For an example, take a look at the Facebook page for our brewery-in-planning friends at Ritual Brewing Co., they have some great photos of their brewhouse being delivered.

Using tools like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and a blog (*on your domain*) to upload pictures, and simple updates will go a long way towards creating demand for your product from the get-go.

Build Social Media into Your Brewery DNA

As a brewery-in-planning, you have a unique opportunity. Build social media participation into your company DNA from day one. Many breweries that are struggling with social media and digital never had the opportunity to build it right into the brewery operations. You do.

Social media is going to change in its shapes and forms; however, it will never go away. Make participation as fundamental as checking the gravity of your wort, and sanitizing your fermenters. It is that important to the long term success of your brewery.

What are some other digital marketing issues that breweries-in-planning must deal with? Or, if you have some tips and advice, be sure to share them in the comments.

What’s not to like about craft beer?

The Craft Beer industry thrives upon creativity and the desire to make beer that goes above and beyond the expectations created by experiencing the fizzy, yellow stuff some think of as “beer”.

As more and more discover the flavorful creations being bottled and canned by the more than 1900 craft breweries in the United States, the industry is growing. Fast. And deservedly so. We are too.

Our booth and giant iPhone at #cbc12

While our growth isn’t on par with that of Founder’s or the breweries expanding east such as New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, Oskar Blues, (all of whom are adding a second brewery in North Carolina) and Lagunitas (Expanding to Chicago-land), we have recently expanded our team (with more to follow) and have started working with more and more craft breweries and events including Asheville Beer Week and Portland Beer Week. Yes, you could say we are pretty fired-up!

Drinking craft beer is part of the company culture here at Digital Relativity HQ. We have a well-stocked set of coolers, and are lucky to have a nice little bottle shop next door. As members of the Brewers Association, we thought it was time to reach-out and exhibit at the ‘Olympics of Craft Beer‘. So, you likely understand our excitement as we packed-up the giant iPhone and headed to the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego. The opportunity to talk digital marketing AND craft beer? Sign me up.

Does Craft Beer Really Need Digital Marketing? You Decide.

This was just one section of the 150 taps!

Each evening at the Craft Brewers Conference, a special hospitality tasting area was available which included 150 unique craft beer taps. 150! Can you say Brewmaggedon? Beergasm?

The list of beers available for tasting was an intimidating (in a good way) list of some of the best craft beers available anywhere.

Trying to decide which beers to taste was a difficult decision. There were many on the list I had long looked forward to trying, for others I relied on what those around me were suggesting.

Yes, real-life word of mouth marketing. These were suggestions from a group of the world’s best and brightest craft brewers and journalists. People with opinions I trust. People with suggestions I would be wise to take.

Decisions, Decisions....

For Example:

• Caitlin Jewell and Jeff Leiter from Slumbrew suggested Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea. This was an incredible Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter, that I returned to sample several times. Jeff was correct in saying, “That keg won’t last much longer”. It was an incredible beer!
• The Team at San Tan Brewing suggested Red Poppy from The Lost Abbey. A beer that I normally would have overlooked, this was an amazing example of a Flanders-style Red.

This same type of marketing takes place every day in digital marketing. What people say on Twitter, Facebook, Beer Advocate and Untappd are the same type of factors that influence the purchasing of craft beers plucked from the crowded shelves of bottle shops all across the land. We provided some examples of this with supporting data on our trade show display, which you can download as a PDF.

It was a great time making new friends, trying new beers and talking digital marketing at Craft Brewers Conference. We are already looking forward to CBC 2013, held a bit closer to home this time, in Washington DC. The announcement of our Digital Marketing Make-Over winner will be coming by the end of the week.

Mobile design tips AND a super hero movie? Just tell me where to sign up.

Looking at The Avengers team members, I started to notice some similarities between their team and our own.

So how does the Digital Relativity team stack up against The Avengers?

Jim (Nick Fury)

Jim Strader AKA Nick Fury

Every team needs a responsible adult to make sure that the rest of the team doesn’t run amuck. In The Avengers, Fury is responsible for organizing and orchestrating The Avengers to ensure that they are able to work together and get the job done, which is pretty similar to what Jim does here for us. Jim is often the lone voice of business and reason in a room full of people with crazy ideas.

Pat (The Hulk)

Pat Strader AKA The Hulk

Bruce Banner is a mild mannered scientist and at first glance, he really doesn’t look any different from the average Joe. But when push comes to shove, Banner is an unstoppable force. This is pretty close to Pat. He will be the first to tell you that he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he is one of (if not the most) determined people I’ve ever met. He doesn’t stop until the job is done, but he still knows how to have fun. Just like gamma radiation gave the Hulk his power, Pat is a beer-and-bike fueled workhorse, hopping from SEO to web development to social, content and even design.

Martin (Captain America)

Martin Bowling AKA Captain America

Steve Rogers was just an every day guy who wanted to fight for his country in World War II. But, the Army didn’t want him. They claimed he was too young and too weak, and just couldn’t do it. Luckily, the Army had other plans for him, and he became part of a top-secret project to create an Army of super soldiers. The result, is a World War II veteran super hero. Like the Captain, Martin is a long-time veteran of the internet marketing and software development game. He’s been writing .NET professionally since the 1990′s. After some work in SEO and digital marketing, Martin moved onto mobile development and even wrote a book on the subject. Martin uses code the way the Captain uses his shield: like a bad ass.

Sarah (Hawkeye)

Sarah Powell-Henning AKA Hawkeye

Clint Barton, or Hawkeye, is a master marksmen and archer, who rarely (if ever) misses his target. He has also been on just about every side of the hero/villain spectrum. Similarly, Sarah has been on just about every side of the client/agency spectrum, so it’s not too difficult for her to see things from multiple perspectives. Because of this extra insight, Sarah is rarely (if ever) off-target with a project. Like Hawkeye’s bow and arrow rarely miss a target, Sarah’s content and strategy rarely miss a target audience.

Rusty (Iron Man)

Rusty Felty AKA Iron Man

Tony Stark may not have founded Stark Industries (his father did), but his genius and innovation certainly kept it alive. While captured by terrorists in the Middle East, Tony made the first prototype for what would eventually become the Iron Man suit. While Tony’s success may not be 100% self-made, it’s easy to see how he has put some strain on his own bootstraps. Just like Tony (and many in our field,) Rusty is almost entirely self taught. Sure, he had help along the way. But, so did Tony. Rusty entered the field of web development and SEO years ago with nothing but a passion and a stack of books on HTML and CSS, and has never looked back. Like Iron Man to the Avengers, Rusty was brought onto the team because of his awesome ability to just blow things up.

Justin (Thor)

Justin Ferrell AKA Thor

Thor was the son of a god who cast out of the heavens and sent to Earth to live as a human being. While on Earth, Thor was one of the very first Avengers. Similarly, I was the first of the Digital Relativity team (with the exception of Pat, of course) to set up shop in the Digital Relativity offices here in Fayettteville, WV. Just as Thor came to Earth to be one of the first Avengers, I came (back) to Fayetteville to join the Digital Relativity team. Thor’s power comes from his hammer, Mjölnir. With his hammer, Thor can do just about anything. It’s easy to see why his hammer rarely leaves his side. I might not have a hammer, but I do have a Macbook Pro.  Just as Mjölnir give Thor an infinite list of abilities, my laptop enables me to do everything I need to. School work? Got it. Mobile development? Done. Blog writing? Obviously. While my laptop may not let me fly and harness the power of lightning, it gives me all of the power I need to save the world, one app at a time.

What super hero are you most like? Share in the comments!

And Check Out The Avengers Trailer!

Here at Digital Relativity, we always target at least Android and iOS, using tools like Monodroid, Monotouch and Titanium to help us pass code between platforms. Using cross-platform tools like these help developers share code between platforms and ultimately cut down on production time without sacrificing functionality or quality.

But sharing code is less than half the battle. Developing for multiple platforms simultaneously requires planning and strategy to ensure that no version of the app is considered “the other one,” and that every version is able to stand on its own.

Here are some tips to help ensure a consistent and awesome user experience,regardless of platform.

Stick to the Branding

It’s safe to assume that every client has some kind of branding. Some resources of some kind that can be associated with their business. This might be a logo, or a certain font. It might even be a certain color scheme. Since apps for every operating system look different, using company branding can help create some common ground between different versions to ensure that people know they are still the same app.

Some common uses of branding in development include (but are definitely not limited to)

• Use the Logo whenever possible. This is the face of the brand, and users will recognize that.
• Use colors and fonts consistent with the rest of the company’s products and packaging
• Label features in a way that is special to the brand. Core Image photo filters in a beer app? Beer Goggles!

Know When to Share

The whole point of using cross-platform frameworks is to be able to share code and resources across platforms. Get it? CROSS-platform.

But, that doesn’t mean that you should just lump all of your resources into one big pile. You need to know when you should share, and when you should give a particular platform some platform-specific attention.

Useful tips here include:

• Share code. This is the main reason developers consider cross-platform tools. But, sharing code is a tool, not an accomplishment. Don’t be afraid to get platform-specific to provide a good user experience.
• Share resources.  This is another way to not only save time, but to provide a consistent experience. Resources can include sounds, icons, gradients or anything like that. But just like with code, it’s important to make sure that we’re not sharing just to share. For example, buttons look (and often function) different on every platform. There’s no reason to make all of your buttons look identical. Instead, consider sharing the button icons and labels but making platform-specific button elements.
•  Share services. If you happen to have a developer on your team who can write server side code, writing server-side services can be incredibly handy. Instead of writing platform specific code or writing code that might need tweaked on a per platform basis, you can just set up an API to handle all of the heavy lifting “in the cloud.”

Stay True

With all of these awesome tools for mobile development available, we have to be sure that we keep ourselves accountable to someone or something to ensure we stay focused and keep the final product in mind as we build it. When you’re knee deep in code, it’s easy to forget that you’re actually building something that real people will be using.

Here are some ways to help stay user-oriented through out the developer process:

• Stay true to the platform. If iPhone users wanted apps that look like Android apps, they wouldn’t have an iPhone. And vice versa. These users are users of the platform first, and your app second. You should always keep platform-specific UI conventions in mind when designing for multiple platforms.
• Stay true to the brand. There is no real reason to deviate from the branding foundation we talked about earlier. Keep the brand in mind when designing the UI and functionality. After all, the brand is what drove the user to the app in the first place.
•  Stay true to the user. This is perhaps the most important aspect of all. We need to remain cognizant of the fact that the things we build are going to be used by real people, in the real world. The application should function in a way that makes sense to the everyday person.

Don’t let the naysayers tell you that cross-platform development sucks. People think that because they’ve never seen it done right. In the right hands with the right plan, cross-platform development can be your best friend.

Share your own cross-platform experiences in the comments below.

I’d love to dish on all the A-list celebrities that showed up at my AppDev video shoot, except that didn’t happen. There must have been some big awards show or something somewhere else.

Fueled by Coffee and Pizza

Lack of celebrities aside, I want to say what an awesome experience I had on the shoot. The AppDev staff was really great and super-friendly. Speaking in front of groups and doing instructional sessions is nothing new for me. However, speaking on video is a much different experience than I was used to. Here’s why.

The Setup and the Lessons

Showing up to the AppDev offices on a Monday morning, I met the crew and then it was time to get down to business. There was a small booth like you see when people are recording music. Three monitors setup; my computer, the computer that I doing my slides or demos on, and then finally a computer where I can monitor the recording of what I’m doing.

On the other side of the glass is the sound guy (while I was there it was either Zach or Scott) and the technical producer (John). Doing my slide deck with really no audience was a strange experience. However, I did notice that it helped me slow down a bit. I was able to think through my thoughts a little more clearly. It also helps that you can easily fix any mistakes you might make. What I wouldn’t pay to hear some of the outtakes from this session.

Another thing that surprised me was how long it takes to get six hours of content recorded. You might think you’ll just run through six slide decks (which are an hour each) while you hit record, getting done in a day. Well, that’s not the case.

You have to make sure that you don’t pop your p’s or let your voice trail off. There are lots of little things that you have to be mindful of so that the finished product is something that is usable, enjoyable, and informative.

One of my favorite parts of the shoot was being able to do demos of code and the concepts that I talked about. Usually at a conference or other speaking engagement, you are somewhat limited with what you can do because of time constraints or other uncontrollable factors. With this medium, it’s really like a one-on-one with the person who’s going to watch your video. You end up treating it like a private session and can really walk them through the code.

There were a few demos that, thanks to content in the Twitter public timeline, made them unusable. We didn’t realize while shooting, but several inappropriate tweets were visible from the public stream. That’s part of the problem with incorporating social media into any type of demo. We eventually went back and cut out the actual browsing of the public timeline and instead showed me looking through some very “safe” hashtag searches.

We also ran into some limitations with the simulator. Some of the code I wanted to run just wouldn’t work with it. Since we had no way of really showing them running on the phone clearly, we just had to talk through the code and leave the actual running to an exercise for the end user to complete themselves.

I got to cover some of my favorite things about developing with MonoTouch:

• Using MonoTouch.Dialog to quickly build iOS User Interfaces
• iOS5 Twitter integration
• Using SQLite-net for handling databases
• iOS5 CoreImage – Especially the part about creating Retro camera effects
• Creating a mutlitasking app
• Using Objective-C Libraries in your MonoTouch code

The videos are in post production now and should be out in May. You can get a sneak peek on what all is included in the finished product.

Have any other helpful tips when it comes to shooting demo videos? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

You’re in luck. There’s no reason why you can’t (and shouldn’t) start taking part in the digital shift today. Communicating digitally in business is happening now, and it’s inevitable that you’re going to have to jump on board.

9 Ways to Get Started

1. Do you have a smartphone? Well then start being smart with it! Efficiency apps such as Evernote and Remember the Milk let you take your work with you wherever you go. And if part of your job is to update your company’s social media outlets, you can do this easily from your phone, anywhere, anytime.
2. Start using Google Docs (and show/encourage others to use them too!). It’s so much easier than emailing numerous versions of Word Docs, since Google Docs live solely online and can be accessed from any computer, any time, and can be viewed and edited by multiple collaborators at the same time.
3. Collaborate on projects using Basecamp or some other project management software to keep all communications and files in one shared space. Use online mindmaps to brainstorm and share ideas.
4. Do you still use a fax machine? Stop. Now. Less paper and more accountability.
5. Does your company have a website? No? Make it a priority to get one.
6. Subscribe to a blog that shares digital business tips (like ours). Or any of these.
7. Are there other processes you can digitize in your office or work? Think especially about daily tasks that require paper.
8. Encourage your team to use electronic calendars instead of a paper ones. Every smartphone has a calendar, and your email client does too. They are easy to use, helpful and in the palm of your hand.
9. Sign up for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest if you don’t already have a personal account. The best way to start to learn how you can use these outlets for business is to have a basic understanding of how people use them personally.

Don’t be overwhelmed in your move towards becoming more digital. Just take it one step and one day at a time and shed that Luddite name tag. You’ll get there.

Hello, once again ladies and gents, and welcome to the second installment in our series…

QR Codes That Suck and How to Fix Them.

The last time we met, we examined the lackluster shortcomings of Wired magazine. In keeping with this theme, we will be examining issues of The New Brewer (Jan/Feb 2012), DRAFT magazine (Jan/Feb 2012) and Vegetarian Times (Oct 2011) as well as a tip-top secret surprise participant at the end.

For those who missed our first installment, this purpose of this series is to find poorly implemented QR code campaigns and illustrate how they could be improved to better serve the companies using them.

Without further adieu…

The Brewer’s Ball

What’s better than a QR code floating in water? A QR code floating in beer, of course! That being said, maybe my hopes for this code are a little high. Let’s see what we get.

Brewer's Ball QR Code

Maybe our expectations were too high. Maybe seeing a QR code floating in beer skewed our judgement. We had high hopes, but this landing page is pure disappointment. Not only is it not mobile-optimized, but it is the opposite. Difficult to read, even more difficult to navigate. It is not immediately evident what the website is, and it is even less evident what the user is supposed to do.

Brewer's Ball QR Code Landing Page

How They Can Fix It

• A shortened URL would have not only improved scanability, but also would have helped provide some more robust tracking information.
• There is no call to action in the ad. How is anyone supposed to know that they should scan the code? You have to give them a reason!

Green Festival

Switching gears, let’s check out a non-beer QR code. This one is from the Vegetarian Times, and the ad is for the Green Festival. The first thing we notice is the lack of a call to action. Just a QR code floating there, suspended in the middle of the page, with no label or title or anything. And the landing page is just as bad.

When the gargantuan beast that is this web pages finally loads, the user will be immediately blown away by the sheer vastness of the completely undesirable information. Tiny text, more links than I can count on my fingers and toes, and some pictures that don’t really tell me much about what I’m doing there.

How They Can Fix It

• Just like our first contestant, the Green Festival QR code lacks any kind of URL shortening. Could be used to improve not only scanability, but analytics as well.
• In what appears to be a recurring pattern, this QR code also lacked any kind of call to action. What am I supposed to do?!
• Clearly not mobile optimized. Barely desktop optimized. Just generally bad.

Simply Organic

This one got me excited. I mean, I love me some pizza, and this QR code has a call to action that tells me flat out: scan for a pizza recipe. I don’t personally like to cook, but it’s hard to tell what I’ll do when pizza is a possible result.

No pizza. No nothing. A page with literally nothing on it. Just a 404. The only more empty and hollow than this page is my stomach after being teased with delicious pizza. Shame on you, Simply Organic.

How They Can Fix It

• Do I really even need to tell you? Yeah. No URL shortening. Again.
• Make it go to a page that is…you know…a page. With stuff on it… that I can read.
• I guess it’s safe to say that this page isn’t mobile optimized. Or optimized at all. For any device.

Hop Union

Maybe we’re becoming spoiled after that last one but damn it, there’s a call to action right there. We’re being given instructions with a clear indication of what the reward will be. Is this too good to be true?

Yes. This landing page is not only a desktop site, but it isn’t even their news page. It’s just their homepage, in all of it’s hoppy and indiscernible glory.

How They Can Fix It

• You guessed it. No shortening.
• The call to action is a lie. Don’t defend them. It’s a lie. A bold-faced lie. There are no events to be seen on this page.
• It wouldn’t have matter much if this WAS the events page, because you can’t read it anyway. Is making a mobile landing page THAT hard?

Wild Goose Canning

In the far off corner of this full-page ad, we see it. Pearly white against the black landscape, it stands. Alone. Solitary. Defiant. Confusing. Unlabeled. Stupid. Let’s follow this black hole and see where we end up.

Wow. The only thing with more vast amounts of black than that ad is the landing page. Luckily, there is a spinner in the middle to let us know that someday, there will be something there. Maybe a picture. Maybe a cat video. Maybe the cure for some terrible disease. Doesn’t matter. We’ll never see it.

How They Can Fix It

• I feel like I’m just saying this to hear my own voice. Shorten. Your. URLs.
• In case you didn’t notice, that QR code was a third of a page away from any words. It was even further away from a call to action. Because there wasn’t one.
• That landing page? That big, black, steaming pile? It sucks. It’s wrong. It’s bad and they should feel bad.

Photodegradable Rings

It’s better to be safe than sorry, and that’s the stance the designer of this QR code took. He (or she) wrapped this is entire QR code in a good half inch of just white. Like a warm blanket, to protect it from the harsh elements of nature that inhabit the rest of the ad.

The suckage level here is pretty standard, run-of-the-mill suckatude. Nothing special. Just an unshortened URL that takes you to a shitty landing page. Nothing to see here. Move along.

How They Can Fix It

• Short. The opposite of long. Make your URL that.
• Your phone is not the size of your computer (unless you have one of those hideous, stupidly massive Samsung Notes, but that’s your own fault) and your landing page should allow for that.

Beer Brand

Beer? And branding? Like, combined? As a service? You have my attention. Oh, and you have a QR Code too. This must be awesome.

The only thing more terrifying than that creepy cartoon man’s beard is the fact that someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea.

How They Can Fix It

• I’m not even going to tell you. You should know.
• You might not know it, but some people don’t know what QR codes are (*GASP*). You need to tell those people what to do.
• This landing page is just…awful. Like, so awful it’s cool how awful it is. No, it’s not. That’s a lie. It’s just awful. Not mobile-optimized. Not immediate use or information. Just a scary-ass beard man.

PakTech

This QR code almost snuck past us. They’ve pushed it as far into the corner as they can, but we found it. When you’re that far from anything, no one can expect you to have a label or anything. That would kill the mystery.

But, look closely. They have their logo in the QR code. What does that tell us? Someone put some time into this. Sure, it was probably about 10 minutes and they were probably watching House or something while they did it, but they did it. They actually opened Illustrator and touch the QR code.

The designer goodness stops there. After learning that this strange symbol is actually a scannable barcode, we scan it and we are greeted with…redirects. All over the place. I actually felt myself getting jet lag from all the redirects. Not like it matters. Sent us straight to a desktop site anyway. Glad to see those 15 URLs were put to good use.

How They Can Fix It

• In the typical fashion, this code is lacking anything that could be considered a call-to-action. Not even a label.
• Those redirects were kind of off-putting. Maybe that’s the way analytics worked in the mid 1990’s. I wouldn’t know. I was too busy being Darth Vader in my grandma’s yard. But, the fact remains: these are a waste of time and resources.
• Tiny text. Huge images. Smells like a desktop site to me.

McDantim

Not only does this code have a call to action, but it looks like it actually goes to a web app. This could be big…

Disappointment. This site looks older than me, and I’m 20. That’s almost older than the internet, and that’s sad. But…what’s that. A link…THEY HAVE A MOBILE SITE! A NICE ONE! With custom web apps and everything. They just chose to send us to the desktop site instead…What the…I don’t even…

How They Can Fix It

• This URL is straight up massive. Like, it could be measured in lines. Mobile or desktop doesn’t matter. This is just way too long.
• Them sending the user to a desktop site is bad. But, sending them to this awful desktop site when you have a pretty awesome mobile site is just stupid.

Gamestop

I love video games. I have a GameStop Pro Reward account. I get an issue of Game Informer in the mail every month. This code spoke to me. It told me about all of the awesome things it could show me. It even came out and said ‘You have to see it to believe it, scan this code.’ It was so awesome that they couldn’t even summarize it in a way that was believable.

And they were right. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that any human being could possibly think this campaign was executed properly. Not only did I get sent to the GameStop desktop site, but I got sent to a desktop page with nothing but a massive picture. Totally useless, totally disappointing.

How They Can Fix It

• I bet you can’t guess what was wrong with this URL.
• I’m on a mobile device. Show me something optimized for it. Like your mobile site.
• There was nothing unbelievable about this. That call to action lied to me, and now I’m disappointed.

Well folks, that’s it for this installment of QR Codes That Suck. As you can see, we have no shortage of terrible QR codes and agencies around the country are fueling the fire every day.

When was the last time you saw a QR code that sucked?

But the reasons for entering the space is the where the conversation should start.  From there, you can work backwards into a strategy.  There are many ways that you could potentially participate in social media, but not every outlet and network should be part of your social strategy.

Here are 5 steps you can follow to set goals for your social media and strategy.

Step 1 - Do Your Homework

Is your audience participating in social media?  Do some research and find out if your customers (or potential customers) are taking part in conversations online.  Don’t assume that you already know where they are, especially based on your personal use of these tools.  Get out there and dig in.  Talk to your customers about how they’re finding you and what they’re saying.  In most cases, your customers are there, online and talking.

Also, what are your competitors doing?  Where are they participating?  Are they doing a good job?  Research what you see the competition doing so you can determine what might work for you.  You can also see where competitors are falling short. Whatever you do, do not simply mimic your competition. Differentiate.

But don’t stop with the competition.  Think of some companies you admire that are not in your industry.  Take a look at what they’re doing right.  Are there ways you can adapt similar strategies to your organization?

What can you do in social media that is different and will set you apart from others?  What is it that your customers need to see?

Think about all of the services or products that you offer, and brainstorm on how you can improve the delivery of those products, customer service, and the customer experience by using social media.  Those are the actions you should take.

Step 2 – What Defines Success in Your Organization?

Is it growth in visits to your website?  It is certain interactions on a social media network?

Believe it or not, a lot of times it’s hard for companies to pinpoint this.  But you can do do it.  Think, what would constitute the success of a social media or content initiative?  Some possibilities:

• Increase in visitation to your site (which in turn could drive revenue, sales, units sold)
• Increase in the number of shares
• Increase in the number of comments
• Increase in the number of entries into a contest
• Decrease in the number of times a certain question is asked
• Etc.

There are lots of possibilities here, but only you know what measures equal success for your company.  Make a list of these success factors.

Step 3 – Establish Goals for Your Participation

Using those success definitions, create goals for your organization.  They might be quantifiable, such as:

• Increase traffic to site from Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ by X%
• Increase in online sales and purchases by $X
• X number of shares of our Blog Post

Or they might be qualitative goals, such as:

• Increase in awareness of a new service.
• Change in perception for your product.
• Begin conversation around your brand or your products.

Set those goals.  Write them down.  Communicate them to others who are part of these initiatives, and make sure they understand what their role is in helping the company reach them.

Step 4 – Adopt the Mindset of a Publisher.  

Mitch Joel and Adam Singer do a great job of describing what it means to have a publisher’s mindset.  Now that your company is actively participating in social media, you too are now a publisher of unique, useful content.

In order to meet the goals that you’ve set, you need to get into this mindset.  Publishing, on a regular basis, is the only way that you’ll have any chance of getting where you want to be with social media and content.

And what you share needs to be relevant and useful, not the social equivalent of you standing on a streetcorner with a megaphone hawking your wares.

So make your status updates interesting and engaging.  Blog on topics that will give readers something valuable to takeaway.  Make them feel more educated, involved, important, and interested in your company after each and every interaction.  Create an editorial calendar that organizes your post topics and content ideas.

Remember, you’re a publisher now, so start thinking like one.

Step 5 – Measure.  And Keep Measuring!

The only way to know if you’ve met the goals you’ve set is to track results.  Now that you know which metrics and KPIs relate to your goals, determine how you need to review those measures.  Should you look at results once a day or once a month?  What are the baseline numbers associated with all of your metrics?

It will require a few months of tracking to be able to see patterns in some of the results, but they will begin to emerge.  There are plenty of great tracking tools out there, and of course, Google Analytics is free.  Here at Digital Relativity we use Raven, which allows us to pipe in results from several different publishing platforms.

These simple steps will help you get started; once you begin to dig in, you’ll really create a unique framework that works for you.  There is no ‘one-and-only’ set of goals and measurements that works for everyone.

Have other goal-setting tips to share?  Tell us in the comments.

But, what does that mean for Digital Relativity? What does my vast knowledge of Star Wars anthropology have to do with mobile marketing or app development?

Here are three things that mobile marketers can learn from nerd culture.

While the destination is important, it’s the journey that counts. 

Frodo, the bearer of The One Ring.

In case you’ve never seen or read Lord of the Rings, the core plot revolves around a young hobbit’s journey to destroy an evil ring in the volcano where it was created (the only place it can be destroyed.) Granted this is a very drastic oversimplification, that is the core.

Once the ring is destroyed, the hobbit realizes that he has no way back out of the wasteland around him. Suddenly, a giant eagle swoops down and picks him up and carries him to safety. This seems like a stretch, and it makes one ask “Why did it take three books to tell the story of this creature’s journey when he could have just ridden the giant eagle straight there and straight back?”

It’s because that would have nullified the journey. In this scenario, the destination was incredibly important, but the journey was equally important.

In mobile marketing, results matter. If a mobile campaign is not working toward some goal or destination, then there is no point in it existing. But you can’t just demand “results” with no plan. There has to be a journey. There has to be a trip across Middle Earth, or your campaign, to get to the final reward. Be it an app, a qr code, a mobile site or any combination of those, there has to be a journey of some kind.

Revenge Won’t Make You Feel Better

Christian Bale as Batman

The Batman story centers around one man, Bruce Wayne. The Waynes were a very wealthy family, with a lot more money than they knew what to do with. When Bruce was very young (eight years old, by most counts), his parents were murdered in front of him while the three were on their way home. This incredible tragedy shifted young Bruce’s worldview so that he devoted the rest of his life to doing whatever he could stop criminality. He wanted to hurt the people that hurt him. He wanted revenge.

In mobile marketing, revenge can be very easily compared to “feature-chasing”. For example, let’s look at two imaginary companies: company A and company B.

Company A releases device A, with feature A.

When device A is released, company B has no comparable feature. So what does company B do? They chase feature A so that they can offer it as well, even if it is a blatant rip-off.

While adding new and exciting features is the best thing any mobile company can do, no one likes a thief. Think of the innovation that could take place if instead of copying features, companies devoted that time and energy to developing new and exciting alternatives.

Fear Leads to Anger 

Jedi Master Yoda in Star Wars

In Star Wars, the omnipotent spiritual power in the Universe is referred to as “The Force.” By definition, it is “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

But, the Force is not an absolute good. It has two sides, one good and one bad. The path to the dark side is described as fear leading to anger, anger leading to hatred, and hatred leading to suffering.

Believe it or not, this translates very clearly to the mobile world. Mobile is new, and to some people so ingrained in the “desktop” way of thinking, mobile is scary. But what did Star Wars tell us about fear? It leads to anger. Most of the same people who are terrified of change and terrified of mobile will also be the first to become angry and offended when faced with new, mobile-centric ideas like the idea of designing for mobile first, and desktop second. Mobile marketing can be a very powerful ally if we are willing to embrace it.

What similarities have you found between nerd culture and mobile marketing?

Using Pinterest as a social sharing space is obvious for some brands; retailers, travel destinations, or any business that has a visually interesting products to share.  For other companies, such as services or information providers, how to use Pinterest might not be as clear.

Wedding 'Cheese' Cake

The beauty of Pinterest is that it allows brands, retail or service, the chance to show customers that it ‘gets’ them.  It understands their lifestyle, wants to share images that are important to them, and can help them, even if the picture that they’re pinning isn’t for one of their products.

Remember in ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ when Kris Kringle sent a Macy’s customer to Gimbels to find the right roller skates?  Try to think about creating boards and pinning items that will be most valuable to your customer, not simply crafting a ‘straight up’ sales pitch.

I decided to take a look at some brands that I assumed would be on Pinterest, and see what they were doing.  Then I thought I’d take a look at some companies on Pinterest who would probably have to get more creative with boards, since they were services or non-profits.

The Obvious Pinterest Users:

The Cooking Channel  The possibilities are endless here really, and The Cooking Channel has plenty of boards dedicated to a all kinds of different recipes, holidays, and food types.  There are some fun and creative boards here too, including one called “Play With Your Food List” and “A World of Hot Wings”.  They’ve taken time to get specific with boards, which makes a lot of sense in their world.  Drilling down and categorizing boards by food or event type will make the browsing experience much more pleasant.

Whole Foods Market  Of course, there’s the obvious – recipes, food items, holiday cooking.  The not-so-obvious and really interesting boards here are: food art, kitchen gadgets, and a whole board dedicated to reused/recycled DIY projects.  And who am I to argue with a whole board dedicated to cheese?  And not just cheese you can buy at Whole Foods, mind you, but ideas for displaying cheese, cheese art, and yes, a goat-cheese wedding cake.

Whole Foods understands that the products they sell are just part of the lifestyle that is important to many of their customers.  They acknowledge that by sharing content that is beyond their products.

Pottery Barn Kids – Boards are broken out in a variety of ways, including the obvious nursery and kids’ room decorations.  But beyond that, you can view boards with pins for kids’ parties, recipes, arts and crafts projects, and baby shower ideas.  Again, I really appreciate their willingness to pin images that are truly helpful to followers, not just pins of the Pottery Barn catalog.

(Side Note: Anthropologie, why aren’t you more present on Pinterest?  I assumed you’d have some amazing boards, but there’s just one, with a few pins curated by followers right now.  Coming soon, perhaps? Update 5/15/12 – looks like they’re on-board now!)

And the not-so-obvious brands on Pinterest:

Space Weather from The Weather Channel

National Guard  I was expecting to see pins of military equipment and gear.  Instead, the National Guard boards focus on families and the work that the National Guard is doing here and around the world.  These boards expose the National Guard to some groups of people that would normally have no idea what they do, where they are working, etc.  A great reminder of the work that our military is doing and how it impacts us and their families.

Humane Society of New York  I love seeing how this non-profit is leveraging Pinterest to further it’s mission.  Naturally, there are boards featuring the pets that need to be adopted.  What’s even more compelling are the boards of happily adopted pets, a board dedicated to the needs of the organization (think items like cat litter and dog food), and fun boards featuring pet photography and cool pet abodes.

These boards first came to my attention because instead of the usual “pet-in-cage” blurry adoption snapshots, many of the pictures of these adoptable animals are professionally captured, each animal posed and wearing a bow-tie, necklace, or some other little accessory.  Since I’m a sucker for cute animals (and especially cute animals in costume), what this group was doing caught my eye.

The Weather Channel

Okay, I have to admit that I was kind of skeptical about how much interest I would actually have in following Weather Channel boards.  But honestly, they’ve gotten creative.  Besides boards called ‘Winter” and “Spring”, there is a board dedicated to Cold Weather Gear, Weather Gadgets, Teaching the Weather, and Funny Weather Channelisms.  Because the weather can be funny, really!  And my favorite is of course Space Weather.  Fascinating!

The key here is that they’re letting some personality show through.  The weather can be a pretty stale and boring topic, but these boards make The Weather Channel human.

Kelly Lieberman has been compiling a list of the brands on Pinterest (using a Pinterest board, naturally).

So, the takeaway here is: brands should use Pinterest not just to showcase their products, but to share images and videos that are important to their customer’s lifestyle.  That means that pins should be curated from all kinds of places, not just the brand’s own website.  Even if it means you’re pinning from Gimbel’s.

What other compelling ways do you see brands using Pinterest?  Let’s discuss in the comments.