Christian Hershberger

As most know, I am a little bit of a mobile nerd. So with that being said I am sitting here on a Saturday morning looking though a coupon pack that came in the mail (you know.. the kind with postage) and noticed that some of the individual offers had QR Codes.

Thinking that QR Codes have been around for a little while, I decided to do a small test and this is what I found;

• There were a total of 26 individual pieces in the pack
• Out of the 26 peices, 9 of them had QR Codes on them (about 35%) which ain’t too bad. This shows me that more advertisers are looking on how they can carry their brand beyond the printed ad. However, my findings go downhill from there…
• Out of the 9 QR Codes, 6 of them directed to those companies website (that has not been optimized for mobile).  People, THIS IS NOT GOOD!  Please realize that your potential customers are interacting with your QR Codes on their mobile devices and therefor your website needs to work for that screen size and user experience.  It is not difficult to make this happen.  Most website platforms have a mobile plugin, or templates, so please get with the person or company that built your site and ask them to start creating mobile versions.  Your mobile site will work great with your QR Code marketing and it will also server as a great user experience for the 20-30% of people that visit your website from their mobile phone on a daily basis. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
• 2 of the 9 QR Codes went directly to a YouTube video. Now, this is not a bad strategy but you can do better.  Like the 6 I just mentioned, you want to drive your QR Code traffic to a mobile optimized web page and here are a few reasons why… you can request info from your prospect (like signing up for a monthly email), promote additional offers, and you can still add that video you like so much.  On top of all this, you will have the ability to gain more data (analytics) on your vistors which will allow you to better target your marketing efforts in the future.
• And for you, the one ad that did send the user to a mobile landing page, congratulations.  Maybe next time you will help educate your clients on how to maximize their ads, due to it is your business they are buying the ads from (See image).

Remember people, mobile is here and gaining serious traction day by day.  Soon more of your customer will be engaging with you via a mobile phone (or tablet) rather than on their desktop/laptop so please be prepared.

In an infographic that’s bound to cause arguments and perhaps fistfights, researchers at Hunch placed data from about 700,000 of its website visitors onto a deep illustration that shows just how different users of Macs and PCs are.

They came up with interesting correlations between users’ chosen computing platforms and their demographics and personalities, as well as tastes in food, fashion and media.

Did it sort out like a comparison between Tea Party members and liberals? Are PC users geeks and Mac users hipsters, in keeping with common stereotypes? Almost. Mac users are more educated, eat more hummus, prefer modern art over impressionist art, and are 21% more likely than PC users to say that two random people are more alike than different.

Dive into the infographic below (feel free to click the graphic for an enlargement), full of insights and data, drawn from a huge sample. Of course, there are exceptions to every trend. Please let us know in the comments if you think its data is accurate or not. (check out the INFOGRAPHIC)

Mobile applications have boomed. Above, an attendee at the International CTIA Wireless conference last month tested a Galaxy Tab.

This year, magazine publisher Hearst Corp. intends to add five software engineers to its mobile development staff. Social-networking company Ning Inc. plans to nearly double its mobile development team. And Web start-up Where Inc. is on track to double its mobile staff this year after quadrupling it in 2010.

The problem: The talent pool isn’t growing nearly that fast.

“The demand is constant,” said Dan Gilmartin, Where’s vice president of marketing. “Every company is looking for these people.”

The intense competition for mobile engineers, which affects large companies and fast-growing start-ups alike, is emerging as a key bottleneck as companies scramble to capitalize on the fast growth of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Major media, tech, and social networking companies are looking to bulk up on mobile phone development staffers. The problem? The mobile app talent pool isnt very deep.

Mobile applications have boomed, working their way deeply into fields like retail, media, videogames and marketing. Market research firm Gartner Inc. expects revenue from Apple Inc.’s App Store, Google Inc.’s Android Market and other stores where mobile applications are sold to nearly triple to $15 billion this year.

The technologies are so new— Apple’s app store launched in 2008 —that few software engineers have mobile development experience, which requires new coding skills compared to a desktop computer.

That’s forcing companies to increase wages, retrain software engineers, outsource work to third-party developers and set up offshore development labs to meet demand.

In the last year, the number of online job listings with the keyword “iPhone” in the text has nearly tripled, while the number with “Android” has more than quadrupled, according to listings search engine Indeed Inc.

Read more from WSJ:

U.S. Media Universe

Nielson Wires Factsheet: The U.S. Media Universe