In October 2010, Swiss luxury watchmaker Tissot went all out on the QR marketing by capitalizing on its sponsorship of NASCAR sensation Danica Patrick (as awesome behind the wheel as she is pleasing to the eye). Danica reportedly made QR code history by debuting the world’s first race car to be adorned with the familiar black and white pixel matrix.

Fearing that we might miss the QR code, Danica was good enough to point it out for us.

TOP TIP: The QR code led to a mobile-friendly Tissot mini-site with all sorts of lovely online marketing materials, including a video of a photo shoot of Danica sporting the T-Touch Lady Diamond. Make the most of your QR campaign by ensuring that your mini-site or landing page is well-designed and rich in content. Go one step further than Tissot by including some QR call-to-actions e.g. “scan to see an exclusive Danica photo shoot”.

2. Tissot & MotoGP

The Danica/NASCAR campaign wasn’t the first time that year that Tissot sexed-up the QR code, and it wasn’t the last. Throughout the 2010 MotoGP season, running from April until November, “umbrella girls” clad in Tissot-sponsored miniskirts and halter-neck tops could be seen bearing QR codes in a rather awkward place.

How many times must these women have suffered men pointing smartphones at their nether regions? Anyway, we all know sex sells, and during that time it was selling a link to another mini-site for Tissot-sponsored MotoGP rider Nicky Hayden.

TOP TIP: Umbrella girls are a very common sight at MotoGP and in the world of motorsport, and in them Tissot saw some eye-catching advertising real estate. Whether you agree with it or not, the lesson here is to find unusual, creative places to display your QR codes and show to the viewer that you’ve given it some thought and effort.

3. TAG Heuer & Maria Sharapova

Fast-forward to May this year and another Swiss watch giant gets in on the QR act, scoring yet another triumph for Switzerland’s online marketing scene. This time it’s TAG Heuer, which has enjoyed endorsement from tennis star Maria Sharapova for some years now. In this month’s Vogue, TAG Heuer’s ad placement features a QR code that leads to a mobile-friendly website. TAG put out an identical ad in Glamour magazine back in 2010.

TOP TIP: As the nice-but-slightly-awkward lady in the video below quite rightly points out, it’s important that QR codes point to mobile-optimized websites, or at least landing pages that display nicely. QR codes are only for smartphone users with small displays, after all. Thanks for the video, nice lady!

The TAG Heuer and Tissot QR campaigns are yet more examples of how digital marketing is complementing big-budget traditional advertising. To see more, check out “Internet Marketing, the $3.5 million Super Bowl Commercial Way”.

4. Swiss Metals

Admittedly we’re cheating a little with this, but we couldn’t very well pass up the opportunity to feature perhaps one of the most glamorous applications of the QR code we’ve ever seen. No sexy sports stars here, oh no, only sexy metal. Swiss Metals’ 1oz 0.9999 fine gold bars not only bear the obligatory hallmark, but brandish something all together more 21st century – the familiar square matrix of a QR code.

Click to see a bigger version

I tried to get hold of one of these bars on Versio2 expenses, but, alas, no joy. As such we couldn’t actually see where the code goes or whether it even works (please direct complaints to Versio2 management), but according to the reseller’s website, the QR code is some sort of security feature.

TOP TIP: Give away gold bars stamped with QR codes. Not really. While it’s hard to say how well this fits into an overall outbound-to-inbound (direct-to-online) marketing strategy, what we can say is that Swiss Metals is using the QR code’s origins as a security device in cars to give its gold an extra unique selling point. Novelty or not, to the security-conscious gold buyer, it could be just the thing to distinguish one supplier from another.

5. CheesesfromSwitzerland.ca

Yes, alright, we’re cheating again, but cheese is as Swiss as army knives, chocolate and fine time pieces, so how could we not ensure it was properly represented? By, erm, Canadians. CheesesfromSwitzerland.ca, aka SwitzerlandCheeses.ca, is the website of an organization that promotes cheese of Swiss origin within Canada.

TOP TIP: Judging from the website, its creators have fully embraced social media, possessing active Facebook, Twitter and YouTube marketing channels, leading us nicely on to the QR code on the home page. Basically, it takes the user to a super-friendly YouTube video promoting Swiss emmental or emmentaler. It’s pretty low-budget stuff compared to Tissot and TAG Heuer, of course, but it’s very charming and we’re glad to see small businesses embracing online marketing. Where it’s lacking is in the promotion. The video has only had 100 views since it was posted in February – if you’re going to use a QR code, you have to tell people about it.

Practicing what we preach

There’s a QR code on the back of our new Social Media Creative Cheat Sheet, 1st Edition, which takes you to our free marketing resources page. Why not download the guide and see how we’re incorporating QR codes into our own designs?

• Download the Social Media Creative Cheat Sheet, 1st Edition

Google’s Penguin update has made it harder for black hat SEOs to get away with churning out web pages stuffed with keywords and little else.

For the uninitiated, Google’s search ranking algorithms are designed to recognize good content, and it’ll only get more sophisticated. Rather than take a shortcut now, create quality blog posts and web pages and you’ll do well in the long-run.

2. Site architecture

Submitting an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools helps the indexing, or crawling, process. It’s basically like giving Google the URLs to all your web pages.

If you have a very active website, you’ll want to point Google towards a sitemap that’s dynamically generated and hosted on your web server – that is it updates automatically when you add a new blog or web page. A good CMS like WordPress will be able to do this.

Above all, keep your website structure simple and intuitive, and make sure your robots.txt file or CMS settings aren’t telling search engines not to crawl. Try to have links to all your main sections on the home page so Google can find them easily – you should be able to navigate to any page on your website from your top-level URL.

3. HTML titles

Put your keyword(s) in your title, which is anything between the <title>…</title> tags in the HTML. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, this will be whatever you put in the main title box. Make sure it reads well, and don’t be tempted to stuff too many keywords because titles should be limited to no more than 60 characters, as a general rule.

You can check the HTML by viewing its source. In Google Chrome, right-click and choose “View Page Source” – for other browsers refer to their help guides. Bring up the search box and look for the <title> tag, then you’ll know which on-page element to change.

4. Inbound link text

This is very hard to control as it’s the text other websites use to link to yours. Ideally, that text will contain your target keywords. Other than asking nicely there’s not a lot you can do, but at least if you use an analytics application like Google Analytics, you can follow the referrals and see how other sites are linking to you to get a better idea of what to do with future content.

5. Inbound link authority

Rather a fundamental mechanism of the Pagerank algorithm is link authority. Popular websites with many visitors tend to have higher pagerank, and if they link to you, it’s worth a lot more than a link from a website no-one’s heard of. Being linked to from a website like the New York Times can work miracles for your search rankings, though it will take a while for Google to update to such changes.

What not to do

Any of these things may get your website penalized, or effectively blacklisted and removed from Google’s listings. You have been warned:

• Cloaking – showing a different page to search engines than to users
• Getting blocked – users can block you from their search results. This is bad news
• Paying for links – it’s fairly big business and a fast way to build inbound links, but Google’s wise to it so watch out

Other things you’ll be interested in:

• A simple guide to how Google Penguin affects search rankings
• The Biggest Changes to Social Media Marketing in 2012
• How we took our client Unique Hotels from 400 fans to 12,000 in less than a month
• Versio2’s Top 5 Facebook Social Marketing Tips

Penguin is simply the official name of a major anti-spam update to Google’s search algorithm, a set of rules that decides the importance and relevance of websites for particular search terms. On-page SEO such as quality content, HTML titles and site architecture are just a few deciding factors that determine your search rank. Click here to see more SEO ranking factors.

Search rankings are important to anyone that wants to be “found”, which is pretty much everyone on the Internet these days. Traffic from non-paid search results are called “organic”, as they occur naturally by Internet standards. The higher a website ranks for the terms in a search query, the more likely a user is to see it, click on it and so generate an organic search referral.

What exactly happened on April 24?

The Penguin update went live, including a raft of new measures designed to counter the most common search spam techniques used by what’s known as “black hat SEOs”, or people that use non-sanctioned tactics to get their websites to rank as high as possible. These shady methods include keyword stuffing, link-building schemes, cloaking and duplicate content. More on what these are a little later, but on the whole, if you’re ever unsure whether your SEO practice is black hat or not, ask yourself “is this fair and does it look horrible?”.

For example, Google gives a page a higher rank if a search term appears more frequently – common sense when determining relevance but something that can be exploited by keyword stuffing, or the practice of placing too many keywords too closely together. There’s nothing wrong with optimizing for particular search phrases, a common “white hat” technique, but stuffing is very obviously a shady practice as it looks horrible on the page and results in content that reads badly.

If any of your pages are found to be guilty of any of these offenses, you could be penalized and excluded from Google’s listings. But how can you tell?

Recognizing the Penguin effect

One great tip that’s circulating the Internet is to take a look at your organic search referrals using whatever analytics software you have, such as Google Analytics. If you notice a significant drop after April 24, it’s very likely that you’ve incurred a Penguin penalization. Then it’s time to investigate. You can use Google Webmaster tools to see if you have any indexing (crawl) or spam warnings. If there aren’t any, have a think about what pages could be guilty of being non-Penguin friendly.

I have no idea what Google Analytics is? Help!

Why would you, you’ve contracted out your SEO maintenance to an agency or individual, right? Right. Still, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take the initiative and ask your SEO people whether everything’s alright following the Penguin update. A great way to judge the worth of your SEO team is by the answer given. You should respect an honest answer, as even white hat SEOs can be caught out if they haven’t been involved with a website from the beginning and aren’t 100% on top of things.

It’s important to stress here that Penguin and indeed any Google change can catch even the best SEO off-guard, as it’s hard to know what Google will consider good one day and bad the next. However, a good SEO should stay abreast of all the latest rumours and developments, know more or less what’s coming up and so prepare accordingly. There’s also always a period following an update when rankings jump around and changes move through each Google data center, so it’s best to let things calm down. We’ve seen this in the three weeks since Penguin went live, so now is the time to take stock of any change to your rankings.

Ask your SEO team the following: “What were the figures for our organic search traffic before and after April 24, and how have they been in the weeks until now?” – This will help you to see how Penguin affected your rankings in the immediate aftermath, and whether things stabilized and returned to normal as the dust settled.

If they come back and tell you everything is rosy, great, but if not then don’t panic. Hopefully they’ll be able to say what the problem is, and what steps they’re taking to remedy the situation. It’s worth asking whether they’re using Google Webmaster Tools (they should), and if there have been any spam or indexing (crawl) warnings.

You may not understand their answer, but at least you can keep them on their toes and ask for another review in a month’s time, to see if things have improved. Bear in mind that any changes will take time to be reflected across Google and its data centers.

The four things Penguin doesn’t like; the SEO winners & losers

Penguin does not like the following, with definitions from the mouth of Google itself:

• Keyword stuffing – “The practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking”

• Link schemes – “Some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites”

• Cloaking – “The practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user-agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive”

• Duplicate content – “In some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic… Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information”

It’s long been known that all these practices are not only against Google guidelines, but generally unfair ways to rank high with minimal effort. The only exception is duplicate content, which is a slightly grey area as Google recognizes that some duplication is unavoidable, such as with mobile and printer-friendly versions of web pages.

Winners – white hat SEOs (i.e. the good guys) will focus on generating excellent content through blogs and landing pages, and optimizing for keywords in a way that’s natural and readable. You should hopefully be aware of these activities as part of your approved marketing strategy. If you’re doing your own SEO, perhaps you’re writing a blog and optimizing it yourself, count yourself among the winners. There’s also the double-effect as you benefit indirectly when competing, less scrupulous websites, are penalized.

Losers – black hat SEOs and anyone that engages in said banned activities, inadvertently or otherwise. In the latter camp are likely those people that don’t know what they’re doing, but have a go anyway. We like to call them SEO cowboys.

Somewhere in between – if you’re generating your own content in earnest, be it a blog or standard web pages, without any optimization of any kind, you’re unlikely to get in trouble and may even get the same indirect benefits as the white hat SEOs. You just won’t know about it.

What if I think I’ve been unfairly penalized?

• A Google “reconsideration request” is out of the question, as this is when you ask Google wipe out the penalization, make an exception for a web page of yours and index it as per normal. According to reports, the Penguin update is too fundamental a change to the algorithm to allow this.

• There is still hope. Google has a form that lets you submit the URL of the affected page, a search query that produces “non-ideal results” and any comments you might have.

• You can also try your luck and argue your point on the Google Webmaster Forum. If you’re innocent and cleaner than clean, you should be able to list an example where search results aren’t working for the benefit of the searcher, rather than to the detriment of your website.

Other things you’ll be interested in:

• Google SEO ranking factors in five minutes
• The Biggest Changes to Social Media Marketing in 2012
• How we took our client Unique Hotels from 400 fans to 12,000 in less than a month
• Versio2’s Top 5 Facebook Social Marketing Tips

1. Listen, listen, listen

Social media is less about managing downside risk and more about listening to your key audiences. These will not only tell you their truth, but also “bring emergent thought to the surface, which is key for staying ahead of the market,” Dialog Principal Craig Applepath pointed out. “This is happening for the first time in history.”

2. Be authentic

In the emerging social ecosystem, authenticity is key. Feeding the corporate line either falls flat, or worse, backfires. “Let the content speak for itself,” recommends TreeHugger Business, Politics & Energy Editor Matthew McDermott. Being authentic will also engage your audience deeply enough to “help you understand what questions to answer,” he added.

3. Be humble, self-critical and willing to adapt

Self-promotion is a social death-knell. If your organization can trust your people, you have nothing to worry about. At Microsoft, the company uses social media extensively for customer feedback from business decision makers, policy wonks and green influencers. “We’re on a major push to raise the bar on transparency, and an appropriate tone has served us well,” says Director of Environmental Sustainability Josh Henretig.

Speakers at the GLOBE sustainability conference in Vancouver, Canada

4. Be a real person

In social, companies are not people. Anonymous corporate voice with lingo and the occasional CEO quote neither gets hits nor engagement. “People want to know and feel people,” states Senior Director of Digital Marketing at Weber Shandwick Canada. “Put a picture and a name to your designated social media mavens and let them show their personalities, even if they have a few rough edges.”

5. Engage over time and on multiple platforms

Some firms use Twitter for quick internal ping-backs. TreeHugger now gets one third of its traffic from social media, while Dialog uses YouTube and a wiki for prospective employees. All platforms are seen to serve audience engagement in their own unique way. “It’s an iterative process. Experiment, occasionally fall down, and learn,” Applepath encouraged social media community managers.

6. Be relevant

Audiences want value, especially in the B2B space. They seek expertise and want their problems taken seriously. Company managers wish to be addressed by specialists who know what they’re talking about and can help solve their specific problems. Find out where you can help relieve their pain. By showing them a broader perspective and your examples of best practice deployment over time, you can grow into an industry leader.

7. Be fearless

The recommendation most heard — and not just at this GLOBE panel — is not to fear audience reaction. Easy said, harder to do or convince the internal powers-that-be. Those who dare, however, are rewarded with increasing reach, follows, leads and attention all the way up the credibility chain (and down the sales funnel).

Applying these lessons in social media and sustainability

Following these basic guidelines developed in the trenches will get you on the right social path to credibility and relevance in fulfilling your company’s social and environmental responsibilities. These basic principles can also be applied to other content being shared and spread through social media and online marketing.

Article by Stephan Burckhardt, an inbound marketing professional with Versio2 based in Zurich, Switzerland, who has worked in B2B and technology marketing for many years in Silicon Valley, Canada and Switzerland. He formerly ran one of Switzerland’s top 10 communications agencies.

Other things you’ll be interested in:

• The Biggest Changes to Social Media Marketing in 2012
• How we took our client Unique Hotels from 400 fans to 12,000 in less than a month
• Versio2’s Top 5 Facebook Social Marketing Tips
• Internet Marketing, the $3.5 million Super Bowl Commercial Way