Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Send Customers to Mobile Pages with QR Codes

The Mobile Management Area allows you to create mobile websites for your organization. Each page you create for your mobile site can be linked to directly using a QR code. QR codes allow people to easily and quickly reach your web page by scanning the code with their mobile device.

Utilizing QR Codes to Boost Your Mobile Brand

At the top right corner of the edit screen for each mobile page is a button "Link & QR Code to This Page". Click on this button to get a QR Code for the page you are currently editing. You can easily download the QR Code at that time.

Calendar Pages

Calendar pages are always great to utilize. Add a QR Code to your restaurant menu, in a local publication or on a mail-out. You can quickly send people to your events/promotions page on your mobile site to help draw them in to your location. Calendar pages help you carry people from printed material to mobile-friendly site, from mobile site to real world events and promotions.

Contact Forms

Your printed advertisement, brochure or mail-out can quickly be given an easy call-to-action by utilizing a contact form. Add a QR code on your printed material that links to your contact form. This allows anyone who sees your ad or brochure to instantly contact you via contact form/email. This can help generate leads, generate sales and get registrations.

Photo Galleries

QR Codes are perfect for enhancing printed materials. Local newspapers, magazines and publications can utilize mobile photo galleries and QR Codes to take their printed items to another level.

Start by creating a photo gallery page type. Upload photos related to the article or topic you are covering in the publication. The QR code can then be placed on your printed publication next to relevant information/articles. Now, people reading your publication can easily scan the QR Code and get a touch-friendly photo gallery on their mobile device to enhance their reading experience.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Adding Interactive Polls to Your Mobile Website

Listen&Count Polls

Listen&Count allows to to create interactive polls to ask questions, gather feedback and make your social/mobile marketing more interactive. With Listen&Count you specify keywords that will be tracked on Twitter, SMS and/or a Website Poll Widget. Any responses with one or more of these keywords are counted and tracked in your account.

Adding a Listen&Count Page

Start in the Mobile Content area, click "Add Page", and then "Create New Page". Select the "Listen&Count Poll" page type. You can name the page and change the menu icon, like any other mobile page type. For Listen&Count Poll pages, you have two options: "Use Current/Latest Listen&Count Poll" or "Use a Specific Listen&Count Poll".

The first option uses the current/latest Listen&Count Poll that you have created. This means, the page on your mobile website will automatically update to show new/fresh Listen&Count polls that you create. If you create polls that have an End Date, they will no longer display on your page after reaching the end date. A newer poll with a later end date will then replace it. If you have no dated poll created, it will then display the most recently created poll with no date range.

Selecting this option allows you to create pages like "Weekly Poll" or "Latest Poll' which will automatically update to show new polls you are creating in your account. There is no need to keep coming back to the Mobile Management Area, you can easily create new polls and they will automatically be displayed on your mobile site.

Use a Specific Listen&Count Poll

If you select the second option, a drop down appears allowing you to select any of your existing polls to display. The selected poll will show up from that point on and will continue to display until you change it. This setting is useful for permanent/ongoing polls with no end date, or polls you want to display for a long time without being replace by other polls.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Restaurant Menus on Mobile Websites

The Catalog/Menu page type in the Mobile Management area is perfect for building restaurant menus. This page type allows you to add items and organize them using "spacers".

Add Spacers

A "Spacer" is a simple displayed title that can be used to organize your menu. A common use for this is to organize your menu by food types: "Soups" "Salads" etc. Below each spacer you can add items (the actual menu items).

Add Items

Items are your actual menu items. This would be a specific soup, sandwich or salad that people will order. Items have 3 fields. First you add a name and then a price. The 3rd field is a content area where you can add a description, insert a photo or even add a video.

Menus Are Essential

One of the main reasons web users visit restaurant websites is to view the menu. They want to see what you have and find out how much it will cost them. Many people are unlikely to go to a restaurant with no idea what the food is like. Having some kind of menu, be it a sample or a full menu is essential to bringing in customers.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

School Athletic Calendars

Creating a Custom Event View

Squareberry allows you to create customized Event Views with selected categories. In the Calendars & Widgets section you can create new event views and select the categories you want to show.

Once the Event View is created you can grab the embed code for a widget or calendar that uses the settings you just set. Many schools have pages on their website dedicated to athletics. This is a great place to add an Athletics Calendar.

Athletics Page on Website

Select the month calendar embed option and copy the embed code. This can then be added to the website. A dedicated athletics calendar makes it easy for parents and students to see the schedule of games and know what's coming.

This same strategy can be implemented with other areas of a school. You can create a Fine Arts Calendar, Field Trips Schedule, etc. Create customized event views to spread things out and add more relative content to your website.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Utilizing Calendars & Widgets

Calendars and widgets are the best way to tie your Squareberry events and promotions into your website. Your upcoming happenings can be displayed on your home page, on sidebars, in the footer or on their own pages. Each widget or calendar is a different size and ideal for a different part of your website. You can view examples of all of our calendars and widgets here.

Below we take a look at what parts of your website are ideal for each type of calendar and widget.

Calendars

There are three calendar views: Month Calendar, List Calendar, Icon Month Calendar.

  • Month Calendar - Traditional calendar view, Similar to other calendars you see. Ideal for most websites.
  • List Calendar - Lists events line by line in order of date. Ideal for those who want to show more events at a time in a list format.
  • Icon Month Calendar - Condensed month calendar. Ideal for websites that can not fit the full month calendar.

Widgets

There are four widgets to use: List Widget, Day Widget, Landscape Slider Widget, Portrait Slider Widget.

  • List Widget - Simple short list. Ideal for sidebars and footers.
  • Day Widget - Day cells showing events. Ideal for footers or individual pages.
  • Landscape Slider Widget - Event cards sliding either horizontally or vertically. Ideal for home pages or footers.
  • Portrait Slider Widget - Larger slider with cards moving horizontally. Ideal for home pages.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

What is the Subscription Widget?

The Subscription Widget can be found in the Calendars & Widgets section. But, it does not display events like the other widgets. The subscription widget allows you to embed a small form on a webpage to quickly get subscribers to categories. The image below shows what the subscription widget looks like.

What it Does

The subscription widget subscribes those who input their information to the categories for that widget. Meaning, all of the categories you have selected for that event view are subscribed to when using that views subscription widget.

Reminders about upcoming events and promotions are then sent to subscribers based on the settings you have set for each category. Reminders are sent via email and SMS text message.

Use Views with Select Categories

Depending on your organization, getting email and SMS notifications from every category may annoy or overwhelm a subscriber. Instead of using your default event view which contains all of the categories, you can add a new event view with a few select categories and use that subscription widget.

For example, a school may have a large number of events going on each week. Events views can be broken up with different categories. A fine arts calendar, an athletics calendar etc. You can also have different subscription widgets for each of these. This would allow people interested in athletics to only get reminders about athletics.

It is also important to note that subscribers can subscribe to multiple things. If a user subscribed via one widget on your website, they can still subscribe via another widget to add more categories to their subscription.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Put Events in Multiple Categories

Squareberry allows you to select categories for your events and promotions. Categories determine when automated reminders are published about your events, on what calendars/widgets they are displayed on and which subscribers will get an email/SMS reminder.

Multiple Categories

Events do not need to be limited to a single category. Adding categories functions like tags. You can add multiples to any event. This comes in handy as many events apply to more then one category. A restaurant may have a Family Event that falls in the Family Fun category as well as the Food Specials.

Categories - Social Media Calendar

Calendars & Widgets

Multiple categories comes in handy with calendars and widgets. You can have a "Featured Events" category and a widget on your website home page that displays only this single category of events. However, you may not want to only tag events as Feature, you may also one to tag them with "Food Specials", "Family Fun", "Contests" or whatever category best classifies them. Utilizing multiple categories allows you to arrange things for optimal widget and calendar display.

More Subscribers

Adding multiple categories increases the reach of that event with subscribers. If you only use one category, only subscribers to that single category get the notification. More categories means more subscribers getting notified.