I peeped in on #MM (Marketer Monday) chat on, well, Monday, and someone said something that caught my eye. They said, “It really makes me frustrated when I go to the trouble of scanning a QR code and I get taken to a regular old website page that I could have just typed in myself.”
Darn right.
There are a lot of really nice and shiny tools out there, but I worry that people are gravitating towards those tools without thinking about how those tools could really make a difference. “If I use this shiny tool, my marketing will be awesome,” I seem to hear. Because people and companies are so desperate to use these new tools, they are using the tools for things the tools are really not meant to do. It’s like being really excited about your new car and then trying to use the new car to make a smoothie. Car is still awesome. Functionality in the smoothie realm – negligible.
Are you:
Using Twitter to coax people onto your “sell” page
Using your blog to publish news releases
Using QR codes to take people to your homepage
Using your company’s Facebook page to post product pictures
I’m just not sure these are the best uses for these tools. If you really want to plan something dynamic for a shiny tool like a QR code or a Twitter account, take a step back and plan it out. The tools will remain shiny while you think about how you can best use them.
Are you using tools in the best way possible? Does the shininess of the tool mean that the action is automatically new and innovative? What do you think?
Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/clix