Can Social Media be used as a marketing tool?
Judging by the number of companies who have embarked on it, the answer seems to be a clear yes. In this post, we shall discover how 5 great companies have successfully leveraged on various Social Media tools to generate awareness.
They have provided many great pointers that you can learn and apply in your own business.
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1. New York Times
News broadcasting is no longer restricted to Newspapers and TV programs. With the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, Social Media has increasingly become a great channel to reach a greater mass of people. For news providers, they have to compete to be the fastest in reaching people. The idea is simple. When people hear from you first, they credit you for it when they write about things surrounding the news in their blogs, articles and network platforms. The best thing? They’d probably come to you for news the next time. Hence, Viral Marketing has proven to be even more vital in the news industry.
With continual effort, the use of Social Media has kept New York Times at the top of people’s mind; being a reliable source of breaking news.
YouTube
2. Starbucks
Venturing into Social Media Marketing has helped Starbucks establish better communication with its consumers. Announcing news, introducing promotions and answering enquiries are now much easier via Social Media. Starbucks also updates what CEO Howard Schultz has been up to. Thanks to Facebook, we all know that he has been to Rwanda. It also sent a subtle message that Starbucks is providing the best coffee without sacrificing the welfare of the coffee farmers. The pictures gave real life proof that the partnership between Starbucks and Rwanda is real and definitely for the greater good.
3. Dell
Remember Dell Hell? You would never have imagined that Dell could turn the tables around through the use of Social Media.
Alright, maybe it is not totally because of Social Media. We should also give credit to its good customer service and willingness to improve through customer feedback.
Dell announced just last month that they made a whopping USD 3 million revenue purely through Twitter. This shows that its Social Media campaign has indeed helped it bounce back stronger. Dell is now one of the first few case studies illustrating that making millions through Twitter is possible.
4. iCanHasCheezburger?
Besides using Twitter and Facebook, iCanHasCheezbuger uses Plurk to generate high traffic to its site. It proved that businesses can go further by not restricting themselves to using solely the more popular social media tools.
Plurk
5. Zappos
Zappos has employed a pretty interesting Twitter Strategy. Besides @Zappos, which features its CEO, Tony Hsieh, all its 400+ employees have their own Twitter account as well. There was only one purpose for this – to get all Zappos staff to communicate and engage its customers via Twitter. Not only that, they also have a leaderboard that lists all Zappos’ Tweeple, ranking them according to the number of followers they have. Staff are encouraged to work up the leaderboard and actively promote Zappos at the same time.
Unlike others, Zappos successfully put a face and personality into its Twitter profile. @Zappos tweets are mostly personal and not work related. This made it easier for Zappos to connect with more people. There is a reason why it is called SOCIAL Media.
