Kirsten Weiss, MBA

Looking for a way to make your posts sparkle?

Yeah, me too.  And since I’m not particularly witty in 140 characters or less (or more), it’s nice when pictures can do the talking.

Blurb Mobile has some real possibilities in that regard for small business owners.  It’s an app for the iPhone (or iWhatever) which allows you to take a string of photos, arrange them as you will, add captions or voice, and then post them from your phone to the Blurb site, Facebook, Twitter, and/or Tumblr.

You can find some very artistic story boards on the Blurb site, but even for the non-creative type, I can see small business uses for the app.  A realtor could snap pics of a home they’re selling and post it via Blurb in minutes, with voice and/or captions.  A business could post its special event – this would work particularly well, I think, with bars and other social venues.  Or (ahem) for a writer creating a teaser for her upcoming work.

The basic app is free.  The upgrade is on sale now for .99, regularly $1.99.  Honestly, I suspect the basic app will do the job for most small business owners, but $1.99 still falls within the do-it-on-the-cheap theme of this blog.

As a side note, if you’re worried about your photographic skills, there are some excellent photo apps out there to give you an artistic boost.  My favorites are Quick Lomo Pro and Camera +.  The latter allows you to edit your pictures while they’re still on your iWhatevers, and has some groovy filters and settings if you’re feeling wild.  I used Quick Lomo Pro for my little ghost “story,” using the Lomo Extreme setting to get that slightly unreal look.

Can realtors successfully use social media to drive leads?  According to this infographic, yes.  I suspect, however, the devil is in the details…  I’ve been coming to think that people are on Facebook for entertainment, and, well, for most of us, things like real estate and insurance are not terribly entertaining.  So while it’s probably not a bad idea for the more “professional” professions to have a Facebook page (hey, another site online can’t hurt if its done well, can it?), I couldn’t see investing a lot of time in it.

Interestingly, this infographic does not list top Facebook realtor sites – only Twitter.  And looking at the top Twitter accounts listed below, I see that they’re not listing heavy.  @Swanepoel is chatty.  @Marcosantarelli is more informational, linking to general real estate articles.  @RealtorRyan is sort of a mix of the two.  What do you think?  Is Twitter more suited to realtors than Facebook?

via Fixr  Click here to enlarge

An interesting infographic on the future of social media and marketing.  What are you doing these days?

Looking at this infographic, I see I can do better…

Great infographic here, courtesy of Marketing Zeus!

I admit to a certain fascination with QR codes, but they’re kind of… ugly.  Yeah.  I said it.

So when I heard about a free web service for customizing QR codes, QRHacker.com, I gave it a try (hat tip, @AskKim).  Even for a luddite like me, it’s pretty simple (just click the ? for step-by-step instructions).

However, whenever I tried to save a QR code with a photo of my book cover embedded in it, I got a message that the code wouldn’t work.  After some trial and error, I discovered that all I had to do was reduce the opacity of the picture to get the error bar in the blue (i.e. workable) zone again.  Easy peasy.

If you’ve got a modicum of artistic talent, you can do more with QRhacker.com than I did.  Then again, I only spent five minutes on it and it’s free, so I have to say I’m pretty happy with my little code.

A couple weeks ago, I took a day and went to Napa.  It’s embarrassing – I grew up in the Bay Area, am a lover of wine, but never quite made it to Napa until last month.  Anyway, I had a fantastic time and when I got home, I tweeted about three companies I visited.  Within a day or two, each of them had responded, thanking me for my visit.  Call me easy, but it made me feel… really good!  Yeah, I know – they don’t know me from Adam and it was probably some poor, back room intern who responded.  But it was a highly effective marketing “touch,” which increased my consumer loyalty to all their brands.

I compare that experience to a certain famous knitting pattern designer.  There was an error in one of her books, so I went to her contact pages  and to that of the publisher to let them know and ask what the correct instruction was.  Neither replied and it still annoys me (yeah – I’m easy and I hold a grudge).  I still love her designs, but I’m far less inclined to buy another one of her books.  If you’ve got a contact form on your website, then dammit, you should answer people when they contact you!

Maybe expectations have changed in this new online world or maybe I’m being unreasonable.  But a webpage that pushes ads or promotions at clients or worse, just sits there looking pretty, isn’t enough.  If you’re online, I don’t think going social is an option any longer – clients expect it.