Got QR? Better Yet, GOT Q_PR?

What's Does It Say?

How’d you use QR codes in PR? Marketing? Emergency Preparedness? 

Now, I have got to say that this IS cutting edge stuff with regards to exploring how to apply them to various new opportunities.  Disconnect your Desktop, the TV and submit you cool ideas here in the comment section.  In short, QR Codes are a cell phone readable bar code that can store phone numbers, URL’s, email addresses and pretty much any other alphanumeric data. Storing up to 4296 characters they are internationally standardised under ISO 18004. Think “print-based hypertext links” and you’ll start to get the idea.

A QR Code (it stands for “Quick Response”) is a mobile phone readable barcode that’s been big in Japan forever, broke into Eurpoe a while back, and is now getting traction in USA. In it’s simplest sense think “print based hypertext link” – simply encode a URL into the QR Code and then point a mobile phone (or other camera-enabled mobile) at it. If the device has hadQR Code decoding software installed on it, it will fire up its browser and go straight to that URL.

But it doesn’t stop there – a QR Code can also contain a phone number, an SMS message, V-Card data or just plain alphanumeric text, and the scanning device will respond by opening up the correct application to handle the encoded data appropriately courtesy of the FNC1 Application Identifiers that are embedded in the encoded data.

The technical specifications for a QR Code are set down in the ISO-18004 standard so they are the same all over the world, and the only signifcant variations from one QR code to another (apart from the data it contains) is the number of modules required to store the data. A Version 1 QR Code is a 21×21 array of data elements with the array increasing in size by 4 modules for each increase in version number. The largest standard QR Code is a Version 40 symbol that 177×177 modules in size and can hold up 4296 characters of alphanumeric data (theoretically) compared to 25 characters for a Version 1 QR Code.

While there is still a lot of room for improvement, the resolution of average present-day cell phone camera other camera enabled portable devices is such that the size of the data modules (dots) on a QR Code of Version 5 or above (37×37) presents a real risk of incorrect decoding of the symbol by the device. When creating a QR Code intended for use with mobile phones it’s best to stick to Version 4 or lower, and a QR Code symbol of at least 2cm (0.85inches) across.

More Information. For more information about QR Codes, try these sites:

• Create Your own QR Code here to test Drive it
• Denso-Wave – They invented the things in the first place!!
• QRMe – Home base for everything you need to know about QR Codes
• Wikipedia – QR Codes

 And a few videos to explain QR Codes…

Buidling Media Lists

The more your target your press release to a specific reporter or publication, the more likely you will get called back for an interview.  With all the new technology these days, there are so many ways to identify which media outlets cover stories that are related to your community for your press release and public outreach.  There are both tradional sources and newer alternatives.

 If your press release is about a new emergency how-to guide for local cat owners, for example, you do not want to send the PR to a magazine with a readership of lawyers. Similarly, a local Toronto success story would not be of interest to a Michigan community newspaper.

Since new outlets are always opening up, existing ones are shutting down, and reporters are changing roles, a great way to stay on top of the changing landscape is to use Wikipedia. A good way to do it is to target by geography, and then look at the following example for Quincy, Illinois Media Outlets.

There are other sources as well and some are noted below.

Newswire Distribution Sources for Regional News Distribution

Abbreviation	Name	Origin	Headquarters	Type
Reuters	Reuters	UK	London	Public Corporation
AP	Associated Press	USA		Non-profit cooperative
AHN	All Headline News	USA		Private Corporation
UPI	United Press International	USA

For example, the Associated Press Bureau is a newswire distribution source with regional bureaus and contacts that cover major news, feature stories, sports, finance and lifestyle topics.  If you have a story of regional significance, send your idea to a local AP bureau. The AP has a bureau in every state.  To send press releases to specific departments, consult the list of Beats, AP editors and Writers, and your release will be forwarded to the appropriate party.  Visit this URL at www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact_pr.html to locate your local regional AP newswire contact.  If the story has national or international significance, e-mail info@ap.org. They advise not to send attachments in e-mail messages.

There are also a number of directories that will help you find the right fit including:

• US Newspaper List – Links to newspapers and TV stations in the United States.
• News and Media in the Yahoo! Directory – Browse newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television networks, and other news sources by subject, type, or region.
• Internet Public Library: Newspapers – Searchable newspapers directory, with links organized by continent/country or in a title index.
• News and Newspapers Online – Lists hundreds of news resources from around the world that offer free access to current, general-interest, full-text news.
• Newspapers US and Worldwide – A comprehensive listing of world newspapers.
• NewsLink – Offers links to US and foreign newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV networks.
• Newspaper Association of America

 Alternate Ways To Build Your Media List

 Partner With Others

 Another great way to build your media list is to partner with someone who already has one. You can leverage the work they invested into building their list and put it into immediate action for you. You have to think about what you could offer in return. How will your partner benefit from giving you their list?

One tactic you can use is to do a joint press release with a partner and offer to do the legwork of creating the press release, sending it out to the media, and following up.

In return, to get the maximum amount of targeted exposure, ask for their list so you can combine it with yours and you both benefit from the success of the press.

Use Newswires and Online Directories

There is another source to submit your press releases to: Newswires and online directories. Newswires are typically used by large companies to spread the word about their projects. They cost between $250 and $600 to put out a release and small business owners have had mixed results. The main newswires are:

• BusinessWire - Business Wire is the leading source for full-text breaking news and press releases, multimedia and regulatory filings for companies and groups
• PR Newswire - News and press release distribution services for small business marketing, corporate public relations and investor relations, government and organizations.
• U.S. Newswire - National news release service providing immediate distribution of press releases and related materials to the media and online services.
• CCNMatthews - CCNMatthews. News Wire and Media Directory. Reach stock market, financial community and media. (Canada, United States and worldwide)

 Use Free Distribution Services

 In addition to the paid newswires there are free services that you can use to promote your press release. There are hundreds, if not thousands of websites that will offer to spread the word about your press release. The top most popular are:

• PRWeb - Press Release Distribution for small business. Press Release Marketing Service. Direct to Consumer Press Release Distribution.
• PRLeap - PR Leap is the free press release distribution service that increases the search visibility of press releases.
• PR.com - Comprehensive Directory of Businesses, Jobs, Products, Services, Press Releases, News, & Articles in all Industries.
• Free-Press-Release.com - free press release distribution service, news release.
• 24/7PressRelease - Press Release distribution. Submit your press release with 24-7pressrelease.com.
• openPR.com - Worldwide Open Public Relations – Publish Press Releases
• Internet Press Guild: Supports journalism
• Express Press Release - Express-Press-Release.com is a free, simple, easy, express and very effective way to distribute over the web your company press releases .
• ClickPress - ClickPress is a free press release distribution service.
• Congress.org has a National media contacts list where you can send 5 releases at a time
• Media Guide: Find By Name, Zip code, or click on a Map

 Locating Sources for Broadcast Radio Stations

•  Radio-Locator.com- Links to 10,000 radio stations worldwide.
• RadioStationZone.com – 10.000+ radio stations worldwide with ratings, listen live links
• RadioBeta.com, search for stations around the globe
• Online-Radio-Stations.org – Comprehensive list of 50.000 radio stations
• RadioStations.com has a directory of radio stations and real-time music listings
• ZoZanga.com List of radio stations and real-time music listings
• MyTravelTunes.com Search for radio stations throughout the U.S.
• College Radio Stations in the U.S.
• High School Radio Stations in the U.S.
• Unlicensed High School Radio Stations in the U.S.
• Airwaves-An FCC Database, U.S. and Canadian radio stations

 Locating Sources for Television Stations

• TV Station  Listings in the U.S. By State
• Locate Cable TV Listings
• National Association of Broadcasters

 Web 2.0 Enable Sources for List Building and Dissemination

• Ping.fm allows you to post news and information to all of your lists of media contacts that you have built in one location via Mobile Phone / SMS / MMS/ Instant Message / E-mail / & across more than 100 web and desktop apps from 3rd party developers
• Review a list of who owns the top media companies
• Topix.com: Post live comment to local news by zipcode and topic on this news aggregation site
• List of Government Agency Blogs.
• Current.org: Organized crowd sourcing for networking and media stories. Each news organization invites audience members to volunteer as sources and share their ideas, knowledge and experience with journalists. This single source has cultivated a database of nearly 100,000 volunteers. Other newsrooms have used APM’s infrastructure to assemble their own databases of thousands of volunteer sources. Current is a service to public media published by the School of Communication, American University, Washington, D.C.

 Finding Journalists, Media and Public Outreach Sources on Social Media Sites

 Twitter

 Journalists, media, and related public information outlets have flocked to Twitter. It’s the perfect environment for individual journalists to build a personal following with their readers. The trick to leveraging Twitter for media relations is knowing where to look. There are now several excellent resources for finding journalists on Twitter.

•   MuckRack.com. What if you could get tomorrow’s newspaper today, connect journalists live and distribute online in one Web 2.0 enabled location? Now you can, by tracking the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets. And, you can respond.
• Resources for Finding Journalist on Twitter
• Links to News Services on Twitter
• Links to Local Government and Municipalities on Twitter
• Directory of Universities on Twitter
• Congresspedia for detailed information on members of Congress.
• Congressional140 provides a dynamically updating tweetstream of all of the Congress members twitter updates. Follow @congress140.
• GovTwit has a web directory and a Twitter account @GovTwit that encompasses U.S. federal, state, and local as well as International accounts.
• TweetCongress has a web directory and Twitter account @TweetCongress for a listing of members. Anyone can add new names there, too.

How many bookmarking & sharing sites?

Current List of Bookmarking/Sharing Sites

I am wondering how many bookmarking and sharing sites there are these days?  Do they work in the work place in some way that would be ueful?  There seems to be an explosion of these social tagging bookmarking sites, and they are growing daily.

More importantly, I’d like to know just how many do you actually need to use? How many???  Really, many can one logically use and keep up with?  below is a list to scan through to broaden your reach, and broaden your horizons.

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.  Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favour of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy.   Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”.

One that has my attention is Knowledge Plaza which launched in 2009.  Knowledge Plaza, also referred to as KP, is an Enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management tool which provides a balance between social bookmarking, document management, wikis and an internal social network. It was initially designed as an information management tool for knowledge workers and is often used for collaborative research projects, market intelligence, information brokerage, etc.  Knowledge Plaza is used as the reference tool for the “Social KM” as part of their Enterprise Social Software landscape in USEO’s analysis of the market. Their analysis concludes that Knowledge Plaza strikes a balance between a traditional Document management system and more community-orientated environments such as Jive SBS. This sort of thing would be great, if it was used for non-profits who wanted to collaborate together in pulling best practices, materials, and resources.

 Below is a list of the social bookmarking and sharing sites that I know about. Do you know of others? Let me know and I will add it to the list.

netShoutout

100zakladok

2 Tag

2linkme

7Live7.com

A1‑Webmarks

A97abi

Add.io

Adfty

Adifni

Aero

All My Faves

Amazon

Amen Me!

AnonTalk

AOL Mail

Armenix

Arto

Aviary Capture

Baang

Baidu

Bebo

Bentio

BiggerPockets

Bit.ly

BizSugar

Bleetbox

Blinklist

Blip

Blogger

Bloggy

Blogmarks

Blogtrottr

Blurpalicious

Boardlite

Bobrdobr

BonzoBox

Bookmarked

BookmarkingNet

Bookmarky.cz

Bookmerken

Bordom

Box.net

Brainify

Bryderi.se

BuddyMarks

Buzzzy

Camyoo

Care2

Chiq

Cirip

CiteULike

ClassicalPlace

Clickazoo

clp.ly

Cndig

Colivia.de

Communicate

Connotea

cOOtopia

COSMiQ

Delicious

DesignBump

Designmoo

DigaCultura

Digg

Diggita

Diglog

Digo

DigThisHost

Digzign

Diigo

Dipdive

DoMelhor

Dosti

DotNetKicks

DotShare

Douban

Draugiem.lv

Drimio

Dropjack

Dwellicious

Dzone

Edelight

EFactor

eKudos

elefanta.pl

Email

Email App

Embarkons

euCliquei

Evernote

extraplay

EzySpot

Fabulously40

Facebook

Fark

Farkinda

Fashiolista

Fashion BURNER

FAVable

Faves

favlog

Favoriten

Favorites

Favoritus

Flaker

Floss.pro

Folkd

FollowTags

forceindya

Formspring.me

FreeDictionary

Fresqui

FriendFeed

Friendster

funP

fwisp

Gabbr

Gacetilla

Gamekicker

GiveALink

GlobalGrind

Gmail

Good Noows

Google

Google Buzz

Google Reader

Gravee

GreaterDebater

Grono.net

Grumper

Haber.gen.tr

Hacker News

Hadash Hot

Hatena

Hazarkor

Healthimize

Hedgehogs

HelloTxt

Hipstr

historious

Hitmarks

Hot Bookmark

Hotklix

Hotmail

HTML Validator

Hyves

ideaREF!

Identi.ca

ihavegot

Index4

Indexor

Informazione

Instapaper

InvestorLinks

iOrbix

iSociety

iWiW

Jamespot

Jisko

JoliPrint

Jumptags

Kaboodle

Kaevur

Kipup

KiRTSY

Kledy

Kommenting

La tafanera

Laaikit

Ladenzeile

Librerio

Lifestream

Link Ninja

Link-a-Gogo

LinkedIn

Links Gutter

LinkShares

Linkuj.cz

Livefavoris

LiveJournal

LockerBlogger

Logger24

Lynki

Mail.ru

Markme

Mashbord

Mawindo

Meccho

meinVZ

Mekusharim

Memori.ru

Menéame

Messenger

Mindbodygreen

Mister Wong

Mixx

Moemesto.ru

mototagz

mRcNEtwORK

Multiply

myAOL

Mylinkvault

Myspace

N4G

NetLog

Netvibes

Netvouz

NewsMeBack

NewsTrust

Newsvine

Nujij

OKNOtizie

Oneview

OnGoBee

Orkut

Osmosus

Oyyla

Packg

Pafnet

PDF Online

PDFmyURL

PhoneFavs

PimpThisBlog

Ping.fm

Planypus

Plaxo

Plurk

Pochval

PopEdition

Posteezy

Posterous

Prati.ba

Print

PrintFriendly

Pusha

QRF.in

Quantcast

Qzone

Read It Later

Reddit

Rediff MyPage

RedKum

RideFix

Scoop.at

Segnalo

Sekoman

Select2Gether

Shaveh

She Told Me

ShirIntarIn

Simpy

Sina Weibo

Slashdot

SMI

SodaHead

Sonico

Speedtile

Sphinn

SpinSnap

Spoken To You

sportpost

springpad

Spruzer

Squidoo

Startaid

Startlap

StoryFollower

studiVZ

Stuffpit

StumbleUpon

Stumpedia

Stylehive

Surfpeople

Svejo

Symbaloo

TaazaShare

TagMarks.de

Tagvn

Tagza

Tarpipe

TellMyPolitician

The Web Blend

Thinkfinity

ThisNext

Throwpile

Tip’d

TopSiteler

Transferr

Translate

Tulinq

Tumblr

Tusul

Tvinx

TweetMeme

Twitter

TwitThis

Typepad

Upnews.it

Urlaubswerk

Viadeo

Virb

VisitezMonSite

VKontakte

VybraliSME

Vyoom

Webnews

Whois Lookup

Windy Citizen

WireFan

WordPress

Worio

Wykop

Xanga

XING

Y! Bookmarks

Y! Buzz

Y! Mail

Yammer

Yardbarker

Yemle

Yigg

Yiid

Yoolink

Yorumcuyum

Youblr

Youbookmarks

YouMob

Yuuby

Zakladok.net

Zanatic

ZicZac

ZooLoo