Social media has huge potential for marketers, as consumers help make most of the value themselves. The Army is a perfect example, both allowing soldiers to maintain their own sites, and by having a site called Army Strong Stories with over 150 bloggers that provide anecdotes about what it’s like to be in the service.
“The site has garnered a highly positive response since its launch and showed consistent growth by increasing its total blogger count each month,” writes Larry Weintraub. “Proving how personal many of the entries are, the word cloud that pulls terms from all of the blogs shows ‘family’ as the most popular term. Others like ‘deployment’ and ‘active-duty’ are also mentioned by bloggers as topics at the forefront of their minds. A corresponding Twitter feed (@armystories) extends the Army Strong Stories message and pushes out new blog entries as they are posted.”
Another example is Vitamin Water, which has actually made their Facbook page their new homepage. To complement this, they also launched a contest where fans were able to vote on flavor, ingredients, packaging, and naming for the new drink, with the winner receiving $5,000.
“The flavor creator app was a huge success, as it grew the vitaminwater Facebook fan base from 400,000 to 981,000 in just one month — and now stands at more than 1.3 million fans,” notes Weintraub. “Participation was tremendous, with nearly 10 percent (116,000) of its fans taking part and showcasing the enormous power of crowd-sourcing actual customer market research. To cap off the flavor’s launch in March, vitaminwater gave away 100,000 free bottles of Connect to the first 100,000 fans who signed up for the coupon.”
“The opportunities created by social media and the size of the online audience are increasing every day,” concludes Weintraub. “Brands that have acknowledged this are immediately realizing the customer engagement benefits that a social campaign delivers. They are reaching out directly to the consumer and asking them exactly what they want. They are forgoing traditional websites and banner ads in favor of fan pages and exclusive content. They are using social media to improve their marketing, PR, market research, and customer service efforts simultaneously. In the ongoing battle for attention, social media gives any brand the tools to stand out.”
Source: iMediaConnection
