I started off this blog with a video that showed some numbers behind the power of social media, so I thought it only fitting to show a newer version that has recently come out (some of you may have heard me talk about it in class).

In my last post I talked about Best Buy's newest social media campaign called "Twelpforce", but while I was doing some research on it, I was given some great info on the company's entire social media strategy. So, for this post I'd like to show you why I think Best Buy is a company that is at the forefront of using the 2,0 web. A special thanks to Kelly Groehler for providing me with the info.

Best Buy knows that in order for them to be a successful company they have to be able to best serve and connect with their customers. They've done so by launching a few different initiatives which allow their publics to interact directly with their company thereby building that ever important relationship with their customers.

For one, the company's CMO, Barry Judge, has a blog where he writes about Best Buy but also looks for advice on how the public thinks they can make Best Buy better (see image bellow). I think that having a major player in a large company online and talking to its people is a big must-do for all companies in the social media game.

Another interesting thing Best Buy has done is set up a site they call Best Buy Remix. The jist of this site is that they give access to their catalogue of almost all the products Best Buy currently or has previously sold for others to use. This means that people can take product pictures, descriptions, specs and other info for their own use. The best part is they make it available to anyone to use with only three minor and understandable limitations:

• Don't claim to be Best Buy
• Acknowledge that the data came from us when you use it
• If you offer commerce, we need to be one of the options

Not only is Best Buy listening to their public through Barry's blog and their numerous Twitter accounts, but they've actually set up a full website where people can make suggestions directly to the company called IdeaXChange. On this site people are invited to make suggestions on how Best Buy can be a better company. They can also vote for other peoples suggestions if they think someone else had a good idea (see image bellow). That way Best Buy will know which ideas customers think are most important by their rankings. If that isn't a creative way to listen to your customers, I don't know what is.

Best Buy has a few more initiatives in place as well (see my last post for Twelpforce as an example of one) but the ones I highlighted here are some of my personal favorites that I think highlight the company's great efforts.

If you still don't believe me that Best Buy knows what they're doing, watch this video:

Twitter is on the lips of every company right now. A lot of companies already have a presence on the micro-blogging site. Of course some have a larger presence than others. This week I want to take a look at a few companies that I think are doing well by integrating Twitter into their overall company communications.

The idea for the post came around because I've recently been hearing a lot on a Twitter campaign being run by Best Buy, a North American electronics company, called "Twelpforce" (more on this in a min). I also knew that the company had a large presence on the site with other Twitter profiles because I've been in contact with and following @KeithBurtis, who used to be a head part of the team that lead Best Buy's social media efforts. Keith no longer works there, but kindly enough, when I asked him for a little more info, he pointed me to @KellyGroehler, who sent me a ton of great info. So I decided to not delve too much into all the Best Buy twitter accounts today, and instead do a whole post on them next week. I will however use their "Twepforce" in this post.

So without further adieu, here's a couple of examples of companies that I think are doing a great job of using this new medium to their advantage:

Of course, I'll start with Best Buy's Twelpforce. This was a great and interesting idea. Best Buy has set up a single account where customers can ask questions to Best Buy ranging from help on making product decisions, tips, to technical support and all sorts of things in-between. This is where it gets interesting. While a lot of companies may have one to a few people monitoring their companies Twitter account who could probiby answer those questions adequatly, Best Buy has inlisted their entire staff. That's right, your question could be answered by any employee at Best Buy that feels they have an answer for you.

Best Buy's Twelpforce is done on an employee volunteer basis. Any employee of Best Buy that wants to help can be part of the Twelpforce. All they need to do is sign up using both their Twitter and Best Buy logins, and from there they can monitor the Twelpforce stream to see questions customers ask. If they think they have an answer, they simply reply from their account and use the hashtag #twelpforce and the Twelpforce page will agrigate their messages and display them on the main page. The best part is that they are told not to be pushy and try to sell things, but to rather just be real, friendly and helpful. Click here to see a short page that briefly explains the program to their employees (I also recommend clicking on the "tips and expectations" link on that page as well).

I think this is a great way to use the Twitter platform. It's on a voluntary basis, but if someone has any questions about electronics, they now possibly have the chance to get advice from over 15000 experts. Also, because it's voluntary (as well as linked into the employee's work login) you;d think that the employees wouldn't take advantage and say things they shouldn't. The company has even made commercials that never even mentions their main store website, it only directs them to the Twelpforce. Check them out:

One of the first companies to take a major advantage of Twitter was Zappos.com. Zappos is an online retailer that started off with only shoes, but has since expanded into clothing. The company has always been known as a leader in customer service. They have an upbeat staff that really does love to interact with people and be friendly and helpful. In return, the company treats it's employees equaly well. Check out this profile done on the company:

As you can see from the video, employees seem to like working at Zappos and talking to customers. That's why CEO Tony decided to let them interact with customers even more by getting them on Twitter. Before Twitter even became mainstream the company had a Twitter microsite built which agrigated all of their employees on Twitter as well as anyone mentioning Zappos across Twitter so all could interact at twitter.zappos.com. Here the company could engage their public through it's individual employees about both company and non-company related things. I think this really gave the company a personal warm and welcome feel, which is what the public is looking for these days. The company is so into engaging people through Twitter that they even have a page that ranks which of their employees can get the most followers.

One thing a lot of companies are doing is running basic, but well done Twitter campaigns. One of my favorites to follow is Marvel (yes, the comic book people).

I was a comic book fan when I was kid, and although I don't read them anymore I'm still kind of interested. Marvel's Twitter account regularly updates with cool things going on at the company, updates about their movies and, my favorite, gives exclusive content to people following. I enjoy companies that do thing like this, because I wouldn't really ever surf over to the Marvel website to read about anything, but if something floats down my Twitter stream that sounds interesting, I'll click the link and see something from Marvel.

Like I said, lots of companies are doing things like that, I just chose Marvel as an example because I noticed them while I was checking Twitter while writing this.

Leave a comment and let me know of other companies that are doing well with Twitter, or even what some of your favorite companies are doing on Twitter.

If you want to see what some other companies are doing with Twitter here's a list I found with a lot (but mostly American) companies.

How many viral videos have you seen in your life?

Just this year?

How many have you forwarded to other people?

How many of those were made by a big company?

How many did you know were?

One of the best things about the internet is that we have the ability to share anything we think is cool/interesting/funny/though-provoking/sad/etc. with all of our friends with just the click of a button. One of the things we love to share are videos that we find. These are usually what are referred to as "viral videos".

Viral videos are videos that get spread around the internet at a very rapid rate. They spread like a virus, hence the name viral video. Here's a quick definition from Wikipedia:

"A viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or Instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature and include televised comedy sketches such as Saturday Night Live's Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box; amateur video clips like Star Wars Kid, the Numa Numavideos, The Dancing Cadet, The Evolution of Dance, the "Benny Lava" video; and web-only productions such as I Got a Crush... on Obama. Some "eyewitness" events have also been caught on video and have "gone viral," including the Battle at Kruger."

As the definition states, there are many sources from which viral videos start, but today I want to look at ones that come from companies.

I got the idea when someone in class was talking about a bunch of roller-skating babies and told me to look it up on youtube. Turns out it's an online ad for Evian Water as part as their "Live Young" campaign. This is it:

Which then reminded me of all the other strange viral videos people have sent me. This is one of the latest ones, it's a clever campaign in the US:

These videos made me think of all the videos I've seen over time, and it's interesting to think of how many have come from a company. While the "Think Before You Speak" campaign clearly has a message in it, not all of them do. For instance, the roller-skating babies could have been anything until the Evian logo came up at the end. There are a ton of different ways that companies use the concept of a viral video, and today I want to look at some of them (with fun examples of course).

Some companies make ads for TV that are longer than the average 30 second commercial, so they show a shortened version on the tube and upload the full version to the internet to be passed around.

Here's a popular one from Cabury Chocolate:

This one is from Sprint (a US phone company):

Some companies make videos specifically as advertisements for the internet which could be due to constraints of mainstream media such as time or subject material.

Here's an example from Agent Provocateur:

This is a clever one from Honda that was too long for TV:

Trojan has a line of ads that were not meant for TV called "The Trojan Games". Here's one of them:

Here's one where Pepsi took an already popular internet phenomenon and built on it. Pepsi took the man behind the "Chocolate Rain" video and used him to make a remix for their new Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper:

Some companies make videos that are made to look like amateur videos that were uploaded to the net, but then stick their name at the end. There are a lot of examples of this.

Check out this one from Quicksilver:

Nike has a whole line of the amateur looking commercials that feature famous athletes putting on Nike apparel before doing something amazing:

There is also a series of videos called "Will It Blend" where it looks like home made videos of a guy throwing stuff in a blender, but really the man is the owner of the company that makes the blender and if you pay attention you see the name of that company all over the video:

Other companies will pay to have their products featured in other peoples online videos. One of the most talked about examples of this was with a vlogger named Lonely Girl 15 who was supposedly keeping a video diary of her life, which turned out to be completely scripted. The episode that wound up revealing this was because of the product placement. Watch for it in this video around the 3:30 time mark:

After she eats the gum, you can even hear her say, "Whoa! That's sour!" which was the slogan of the Ice Breakers Sour Gum.

Of course, companies favorites are the ones they don't even make themselves. The best example of this was done by two video makers who go by the name of Eepy Bird. This duo makes videos of cool and fun science experiments. They started doing some videos of them dropping Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke, which quickly became viral over the net. Copy cats started springing up everywhere. Both Coke and Mentos, whom had nothing to do with Eepy Bird at the time, caught the video and sent the guys a large quantity of their candy hoping they'd use them for more videos, because the more videos Eepy Bird made, the more copycats they'd having using the same product.

Here's the original video they made:

And, here's one they made once they had a little free product to play with:

These are just a few examples of how companies are using viral videos to get their products onto your computer. Surely there will be more to come, since this form of online advertising seems to work a lot better than giant flashy banners.

Leave some comments and tell me:

What do you think of big company made viral videos??

Do you think there should be any ethics behind it?

Or even, what's your favorite company made viral video? (leave a link too if you can)

A few days ago I had an idea for a post where I was going to comment negatively on a web 2.0 tactic being used by American broadcaster NBC. Thankfully I didn't write that post right away. After having a couple of days to think about it, I'm not as against the tactic as I once thought. I'm also not sure that I am for it. Let me tell you the story and you can tell me what you think...

I was reading an article on Ain't It Cool News about a new show for NBC's fall lineup called "Community". You can read the article here. The article was saying that this new show is going to be a hit and that NBC is giving audiences a chance to watch the premiere episode on their facebook fan page.

- A quick note on what a facebook fan page is for those that don't know. A facebook fan page is a page within the social community where users can join to show they like something such as a band, tv show, company, product, etc. On the fan page users can talk and interact with other fans of the same thing. The owners of the page can also share content with all their fans to create more interaction between the "whatever" and it's fans. -

In order to view the pilot episode of the show you would first have to become a "fan" of the show. Now here's my problem: How could anyone say they are a fan of the show if they've never seen it before???

I wanted to go on a whole rant about how a communication professional should use their skills to persuade someone to become a fan of something, not use a quick promise of something to get someone to sign on. I was going to relate it to the credit card companies that offer you a cheap shirt at a sporting event in exchange for you signing up for a card.

The more I stewed over it though, the more I started to think that if they offered the show to just anyone to view, the chance of someone become a fan after watching greatly dropped. Not because the show is bad, but just because you don't have to be a facebook fan of something to still like it. If people weren't going to become a fan of the show it would have defeated the purpose of NBC putting resources into creating the page.

Then, earlier today I came across an article entitled "10 Practical Tips for Facebook Fan Pages". If you read the article you will notice that tip #3 is "Give Your Audience A Reason To Become A Fan" which says, "A Facebook fan page is the perfect place to reward fans because they have specifically chosen to associate themselves with your brand in front of all their friends." It goes on to give an example of how companies can reward their fans. Rewards like exclusive content.

This again made me think that NBC did a proper job with their fan page. Although they were coercing people into becoming a fan of something they knew nothing about, they were offering something exclusive to the people that did.

In the end, I'm happy I didn't make this post right away, because I now have a completely different feeling towards the subject.

What do you think though about the whole situation? Should people become fans of things on facebook just to receive exclusives? Is it right for companies to make people sign up for something to receive something special? Do facebook fan pages even mean anything in the grand scheme of things?? Please comment and let me know.