What are QR code and how can they help your business?

Today, the most revolutionary device that we could say have changed our lives is – Mobile Phones, with more and more technical up gradations, innovations coming up, right from camera phones which has got too obvious for all to PDAs, iPhones or latest one iPhone 3G. Among all the camera phones have become nominal part of our daily life along with clothing accessories.

The mobile/ QR codes are 2 dimensional codes different from 1 dimensional Bar-codes that we could see on products we purchase from shops/ malls and billing counter person encode it with their Bar-code reader devices. Though Bar codes can be encoded with its special reader devices, Mobile/ QR codes can be encoded simply with a camera phones by anyone with much hundred times capacity, much faster and most importantly any type of data.

Applications for QR Codes

Sharing – There’s no limit to how, or even how much, you can share with QR codes.  While a video or landing page is easily shared, you could go further and share an entire eBook and even multiple pieces of content that share a common link.

Community – Sharing is how you build community, and one of the favorite arenas for doing this is Facebook.

This greatly simplifies the process of merging your other communities with your Facebook page – and it is all accomplished in one click.

Calls to Action – After building a community, the next logical step is to mobilize them to take action.   What are you trying to accomplish?  You can alternate special offers by simply linking your QR codes to new landing pages, and you can combine then with email opt-ins to build your list.

SEO and SMO – QR codes enhance both your search engine and social media optimization.  Now you can increase traffic to those searchable objects to further optimize them by encouraging more sharing.

Social Proof – To help build a community offline, it can be helpful to use your vibrant online communities as social proof of your influence and expertise.  As one example, you can use QR codes to link to specific blog posts that have earned an abundance of activity.

QR Codes could be used:

The back (or front and back) of your business card.

Your brochures and other marketing materials.

The sides of trucks and trailers.

Product tags and packaging

Convention and event nametags

Restaurant menus

Event ticket stubs

Point-of-sale receipts

The Future of QR Codes and Tags

The potential for QR Codes is limitless.  What’s most exciting is how they take what social media is doing well now, bringing people together with technology, and extending it to enhance the experience.

The next generation of barcodes will hold even more information – so much that an Internet connection will not even be necessary.  The content will be effectively embedded in the code.  Imagine scanning a digital code to manifest physical reality?

It’s amazing to consider where this can go.

How about you?  How can you use QR codes to take advantage of this phenomenon?