While attending the Web 2.0 Expo last week, I noticed QR codes gracing business cards, flyers and other promotional materials. What's a QR code, you ask? They're these square, black-and-white, bitmapped-looking barcodes: Though they've been around since 1994, QR codes first came to my attention last year when Entertainment Weekly magazine released its summer movie issue. The articles and advertisements had different QR codes for the films, and you could use your smartphone to tag the codes to see trailers and specific content. It was clever marketing -- and it was new to me. At the Web 2.0 Expo, I chatted with PsPrint customer Isis, whose business card for its TECHSex USA project features a QR code that, when tagged, brings you to a white paper about youth sexuality and reproductive health in this digital age. The QR code does double duty since it's eye catching but also lets you avoid having to type in a long URL printed on the business card. If you're like me, you constantly mistype and eventually give up. That business card got me thinking: Graphic designers and other creative professionals could include a QR code for their online portfolios on their business cards, websites, postcards and other promotional materials. QR code generators are easy to use and are free. Using a QR code in your marketing makes it look like you keep up with technology while also makes it easy for potential customers to access your portfolio, resume or blog. Have you used QR codes? Are they a passing fad in the United States, or will they gain the popularity they already have in other countries? Oh, and did you tag the QR code in this post?
How to Use QR Codes to Generate Business
April 4, 2011
About Jennifer Moline
Jennifer Moline writes for the PsPrint Blog as well as maintains its Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Pinterest presences. She also guest-blogs for such notable graphic design blogs as Fuel Your Creativity and Inspiredology. She’s previously written about technology and small business for news websites, magazines and newspapers. In her off-hours, Jennifer can be found roughing it in the mountains or tucked away in a movie theater.
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What is the PsPrint Blog??
The PsPrint Blog is a resource for graphic designers, freelancers, small business owners and fans of print marketing. You'll find helpful techniques on printing everything there is to print, including business cards, postcards, brochures, stickers, invitations, greeting cards, door hangers, magnets and more. The PsPrint Blog shares creative ways to improve your design and layout skills, and useful tips for marketing your business in any medium. We also like to have a little fun, sharing design inspiration and spotlighting some our favorite customers' printed pieces in our "Hot Off the Press" series.
We've explored them for adding to our advertisements and property flyers to take users to the property web sites.
We are definitely embracing them. Everyone and everything is mobile now, and what better way to give access to content on mobile instantly? Talk about one-click User Interface! One interesting thing is that many QR Codes use proprietary readers, so one reader usually can't read all codes. We've decided to use one particular proprietary code generator, Microsoft Tag. http://tag.microsoft.com Not only can you add your own graphic to the code itself (our graphic designers love this), but they offer a pretty good dashboard, which offers use analytics, including a Heat Map which shows you precisely where a particular code was scanned. I predict we will see a LOT of these in the future. A lot. :D
I had no idea about being unable to scan all codes with one reader -- d'oh! Microsoft Tag sounds awesome -- I love the idea of being able to customize the graphic.
You can be creative and experiment on the designs or you could be on the safe side and stick to traditional-looking business cards. It pretty much depends on the age group or professional field that you intend to hand out your business cards to.
I do agree with all the ideas you have offered on your post. They're very convincing and will certainly work. Nonetheless, the posts are very brief for starters. Could you please extend them a bit from next time? Thank you for the post.
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