“Just in the last year and a half, social media has become not just a component of our product marketing plan, but really the core component,” said Hession, currently senior manager of Autodesk’s AutoCAD product marketing.

“Pretty much for everything we do, we’re looking at, ‘How can we make this work for social?’”

Millions of people worldwide use AutoCAD software to design everything from sunglasses to skyscrapers. If there’s any question that a B2B software company can market effectively with Facebook, look no further than the AutoCAD team.

The firm Nikken Sekkei used AutoCAD to design the Tokyo Sky Tree.

The AutoCAD Facebook page has become a new media channel of sorts, with largely live and on-demand video keeping fans very actively engaged.

Every day the AutoCAD group connects directly with its audience on Facebook, bringing them high-value educational video, tech tips, fun quizzes and reality TV–style segments. At the start of 2011, the company had 120,000 fans. Now it has reached 652,000.

But beyond those “Likes,” the company garners an impressive level of engagement. On average, fans spend more than 20 minutes watching AutoCAD “Facecasts.”

“In Internet time, that’s an eternity,” Hession said.

Here’s how the AutoCAD team attracts and keeps fans with interactive, two-way content.

Facebook: The Perfect Medium

For those who design physical structures and objects, AutoCAD is an undisputed leader worldwide. Chances are something you touched today—from your car to the road you drove on—was designed using their software.

Though not every B2B organization is a fit for Facebook, two traits of the software’s target audience make Facebook just the right marketing medium for AutoCAD.

1. 18- to 24-year-olds, in design school or in their first jobs, are overwhelmingly on Facebook.
2. Facebook provides a place to connect directly with this young audience across the globe. AutoCAD is used by designers in hundreds of countries.

Two years ago, the AutoCAD team created a fan page and started populating it with informative and entertaining content designed to encourage two-way interaction.

Fans answered a recent tech quiz for the chance to win sunglasses.

A Sense of Family With Facecasts

The company started what they call Facecasts, live presentations on Facebook by AutoCAD product specialists on different aspects of the software. Using the Livestream plugin, product specialists spend about 15 minutes on a different topic each time and take questions afterward.

Unlike YouTube posting, Facecasts enable valuable back-and-forth with the audience.

“The nice thing about Livestream is you can actually have a discussion,” Hession said. “For our Facebook fans, we’ve found it to be something that helps them feel part of the family.”

Facecasts, streamed live with Livestream, draw big attendance.

Since last spring, the AutoCAD team has run 15-20 Facecasts, drawing around 25,000 viewers so far to the live and then recorded sessions. In their book, that’s hugely successful.

Autodesk University—250 Sessions on Facebook

Every year, about 8,000 designers from around the world descend on Las Vegas for the annual user group conference, called Autodesk University. But not all of the company’s global audience can make it to Vegas.

This year, the company brought 250 sessions—about one-third of all presentations—straight from the event to its Facebook fans. Autodesk used a custom-built app to allow customers to access the sessions on its fan page, while eight sessions were broadcast live.

“Our goal was to bring the energy, excitement and inspirational aspects of Autodesk University to our Facebook friends,” Hession said.

Autodesk also set up a broadcast booth in the middle of the show floor with a backdrop that made guests feel as if they were stepping into Facebook. Over the three days, broadcasts featured customer stories and insight from Autodesk executives.

The broadcast booth at Autodesk University brought video via Facebook to the company's thousands of fans unable to attend the live event.

A Big Step: First Software Launch on Facebook

With Facebook firmly planted as a major marketing staple, the AutoCAD team took a big step this past summer. The group officially launched its new AutoCAD for Mac software right on its Facebook page.

But ahead of the launch, the company spent half a year building the fan base through engaging broadcasts and other content, and with very targeted Facebook advertising. By launch time, the AutoCAD group had added a few hundred thousand new fans, many from developing markets like the Philippines and India.

“Some of the folks in those countries, they’re starved for some good AutoCAD tutorials, training and access to folks on the AutoCAD team,” Hession said. “Facebook marketing gives us a direct connection with these folks.”

Also prior to the launch, the AutoCAD team engaged fans to help crowdsource details of the launch, asking them to co-design the launch announcement and to help decide the when, who and how of the event.

Fans voted on the AutoCAD person they wanted to host the Mac launch.

An event-specific AutoCAD profile image brought awareness of the launch.

On August 16, the actual announcement was broadcast live on Facebook with a Q and A session following. About 850 people attended the live announcement with another 2,200 catching the recording, just on the first day.

Hession, far right, and the production team direct the Mac launch.

The format also allowed customers (for the first time in a launch event) to interact directly with the launch team through Facebook comments. In the past, Autodesk launches were via traditional webinar.

Beyond fan engagement, the software gained widespread exposure from 76 blog posts, with nearly all of those bloggers watching the Livestream.

“We were thrilled at the reaction to this social launch,” Hession said. “We can do this fairly inexpensively. We didn’t have a big budget, so it worked out great.”

Fun questions caught fans' attention and brought in 235 comments.

Technology Makeover—Office Edition

Facebook continues inspiring creative video content. In December, Autodesk and Lenovo aired the first “Technology Makeover,” a series of five short episodes where the firm Alan Mascord Design Associates received a full tech makeover.

The segments took an HGTV-style approach with a show host, “prize van” and surprise visit to the design firm.

Each episode runs 2 to 5 minutes, and is also available on the AutoCAD YouTube page. Facebook fans loved the series, with the first episode drawing 1,944 likes, 94 comments and 326 shares.

The first episode of the Technology Makeovers was a success.

With the success of the first makeover series, Autodesk plans to roll out a Facebook contest to find the next candidate, using a voting app from Votigo.

Engaging Posts, Every Day

Facebook broadcast segments are the anchor content for the software’s fans, but the AutoCAD team peppers in regular text-based tips, quizzes and polls that keep customers involved. The key: be interesting, relevant and regular with content.

Well-crafted customer stories educate and entertain.

While the AutoCAD team does count engagement levels in the form of Likes, comments, shares, views and questions, Hession and the company mainly see their efforts as critical brand-building that’s tough to truly measure. For them, talking directly to customers is gold.

“For me, it’s ‘How can we have a direct communication with our customers?’” Hession said.

“Our little tagline internally is, ‘personal communication on a volume scale.’ People are seeing their updates from AutoCAD between updates from Aunt Jenny and their best friend. It brings a sense of the personal to your communications and marketing.”

What do you think? How has Facebook “broadcasting” affected your marketing? Do you plan to do more in 2012? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Today, she runs her own rapidly growing destination, drawing nearly three million page views every month.

Successful professional bloggers aren’t hard to find, but a few things are remarkable about White’s success:

1. She writes a do-it-yourself carpentry blog. With White’s help, droves of women are discovering they can build beautiful, stylish things.
2. She started with dial-up Internet and does it all from her home in the Alaskan interior (where record-smashing temps recently hit -40° F).
3. White succeeded accidentally. She never expected that simply sharing what she loves could support her entire family.

This self-described “homemaker” has an innate knack not only for woodworking but for business as well.

Turns out, this blog Cinderella tale is all about sharing your personal story. Oh, and relentless blogging.

Do-it-yourselfers find hundreds of easy – and free – building plans on White's site.

Three Months – One Million Page Views

Delta Junction, Alaska, population around 1000, is about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks – and more than 2000 miles from the nearest Pottery Barn.

Delta Junction, Alaska, population ~1000.

But that’s not a problem for Ana White, who grew up in this Alaskan interior making forts and other projects from salvaged wood and nails. After she and her husband painstakingly hand-built their home, she relied on her handy skills to furnish the place and make extra money selling her furniture.

But White really wanted to share her passion for woodworking with others. In October 2009, while reading a friend’s blog, she clicked “Get Your Own Free Blog” on Blogger.

She started by posting her carpentry plans for a farmhouse bed, the same one she made for her own home. Then, every single day, this stay-at-home mom with an infant in tow blogged more designs for items like dining tables, shelves and storage cabinets, adding up to nearly 400 posts that first year.

Without White doing anything else, the blog hit one million page views in just three months, and then reached more than one million page views every month following. She’d struck a chord with an audience eager to furnish their homes at a fraction of retail prices.

Fortunately, those readers proudly told their friends about their handiwork.

“This is a one-woman show from remote Alaska with no experience, no connections, no network,” White says. “I’ve just got a real passion for what I do and a huge desire to share it.”

What she also has is her story, which she shares on her blog and in many of her posts. Readers – many like her – get to know about her husband, daughter, extended family, home, town and weather.

High-Value Content – Always Free

Today, White’s site, “Ana White Homemaker,” has more than 500 plans. Despite suggestions to charge for plans, she’s insistent on keeping them free.

“I needed to be able to provide plans for free so women could look at it and it would create confidence in them that ‘I can build this’,” she said. “I knew that for me, as a mom with a single income, a really limited income, at home all day, it needed to be free because I myself couldn’t have afforded to pay $10 a plan.”

All 500-plus designs on White's site are free for readers.

But she stresses “free” content doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the business seriously. From the start, she committed to frequent blogging and continues to post new plans a few times a week. With so many audience photos coming in, she started a brag blog dedicated to featuring fans’ work.

White started a second brag blog just for readers to share their work.

Facebook: Fans Helping Fans

Blogging alone was enough to grow the site at a nice clip. The addition of a Facebook page increased traffic, but has largely become a community for her fans to share their work and help each other.

With a base of more than 50,000 fans, those posting questions know they will get an answer from other fans or White herself. The audience – and even White – learns from those responses.

Facebook fans share their handiwork.

Fans enthusiastically help each other with tricky building questions.

White stresses that she’s specifically chosen to allow fan postings to be publicly viewable, while many other fan sites do not.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of the content on my Facebook page is from my readership,” she says. “What you’re seeing is not filtered. I feel like it should be an open and transparent forum where people can ask questions and post.”

The Payoff: Making a Living and a Life

White admits the first year was tough work, with long days of writing and making designs, photographing projects and blogging relentlessly while caring for her daughter.

In year two, the payoff came. The site’s high volume gave White the credentials to secure marquee advertisers like Lowe’s and other retailers appealing to women. Now, the site supports her family, with extra to invest in growing the business.

The momentum continued, with her plans appearing in numerous home magazines (without sending a single pitch letter), the chance to contribute designs for HGTV.com and now a book deal from Random House.

All press has come to White without a single pitch letter.

 Readers Help Design the “Momplex”

White recently added a whole new dimension to her blog and story with the “Momplex” project. Last summer, she and her husband started building a duplex for both of their mothers and now are letting readers decide much of the home’s design.

Sharing progress of the duplex White and her husband are building for her mom and mother-in-law, the "Momplex," adds to White's story and gets readers involved.

Readers might not want to check in daily for furniture plans, but they may want to see updates on the Momplex.

When White asked readers to weigh in on which kitchen design they preferred, more than 1300 readers indicated their preferences by “liking” one of the Momplex kitchen mockups.

More than 1300 fans voted on the Momplex kitchen design.

“My community is full of really smart people, so we’re actually getting a better product with their input,” she says. “It’s helped us make a better Momplex.”

Pinterest: The Game-Changer

Now in its third year, White recently discovered an interesting change in her site’s stats. Just three months after showing up as a referring site, Pinterest has taken over as the number-one source of traffic to her blog.

“Google, Facebook and direct traffic – none of those are the top referrers. Six thousand unique visitors a day are now coming from Pinterest. It’s dominating my traffic,” she says.

Pinterest lets members “pin” images of their favorite things to virtual pinboards. Their followers see those pins and can choose to “Like” or “Repin” those images to their boards. Highly visual, Pinterest works perfectly with the photos on White’s carpentry blog.

Fans of White's designs enthusiastically "pin" images on their Pinterest boards.

She considers Pinterest a potential “game-changer” in her industry, with extremely viral person-to-person sharing. As a membership-only site, that traffic is also likely of higher quality than from other sources, she says.

As for encouraging “pinning,” White added a “Love this? Pin it right now!” button on all pages of her blog. She also gives readers photography tips to enhance the quality of their photos, which in turn helps increase pins.

White encourages "pinning" with a button on every page of her site.

While White has her own pinboards on Pinterest, she rarely pins her own content, preferring to let readers share freely and naturally what they like.

Reader-Inspired Content

White’s content model has also changed since she began. Though initially she blogged all her own ideas, now nearly all new design ideas come from readers. A fan will snap a pic of an antique or something in a catalog and post it to Facebook, asking if White will design plans for it.

“I look at myself as a servant to my readers. What do you want me to design a plan for? And then we go from there,” she says.

Nearly all of White's new designs now come from reader suggestions.

Not content to just sit back and rest on her handcrafted farmhouse bed, White continuously looks ahead to the next thing.

“If you’re on the Internet, your business goals and your business plan can change overnight,” she says. “You always have to be on your toes and be aware of technology emerging and be willing to adapt to your readers.”

What do you think? Is what you provide visual? How are you tapping into new social media avenues like Pinterest? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Adding to the pressure, Sony’s social media team had a relatively small budget for the project.

With a creative mix of social media and in-person events, Sony brought out thousands of people to locations to “Catch the Tablet” and tell their friends about it.

Most notably, the campaign created buzz that inspired 1,000 clicks from Facebook to the Tablet S pre-order page, making it the most successful social media effort yet for the company.

A Sony fan "catches" the company's new Tablet S.

How Do You Create a Viral Campaign?

At Sony Electronics, a team of seven is dedicated to supporting the company’s thousands of products with social media. Understandably, the team focuses on select high-profile products, and the Tablet S was one of the biggest yet.

The Sony Tablet S launched in mid-September.

“We wanted to increase awareness of our Tablet S, generate buzz in advance of the launch and drive in-store visits to Sony stores and dealer stores,” said Marcy Cohen, head of social media at Sony Electronics.

“It was an interesting challenge for us to generate awareness before product availability and the only way to do that is by letting people touch and play with it,” she added.

The goal: get as many people as possible to try the Tablet in person and encourage them to tell their social networks – in short, go viral.

Step 1: Get people to show up

Working with Atomic PR, Sony came up with the “Catch the Tablet” cross-country tour. Starting two weeks before the launch, fans could try the Tablet in one of 32 Sony stores or at specific locations in select cities nationwide: New York, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Fans would decide the sixth city on the tour by voting from among Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta and Boston.

With Facebook as the home base for the campaign, Buddy Media created a unique tab on the company’s fan page. There, fans could find clues about where Sony’s social media team would be in each city, vote on the sixth city and enter to win one of the many Tablets Sony was giving away during that two weeks.

On a campaign-specific tab on the Facebook fan page, fans learned where they could "Catch the Tablet" and voted on the sixth city.

On Facebook, people could also RSVP for events and find interactive maps to city locations.

Sony alerted fans of the team’s whereabouts with Facebook posts, keeping them relevant to fans in specific cities with geotargeting.

Spirited fans in San Francisco showed their support for the Tablet.

To control costs, the core social media team traveled to all locations on the city tour, rather than hiring street teams, giving the team firsthand interaction with fans and the Tablet.

“It was invaluable [taking my core team],” Cohen added. “I became a total expert on the Tablet. I would be able to answer any question anyone posted to me about the Tablet.”

The chance to try the Tablet S, and possibly win one, brought fans to Sony stores.

Step 2: Make it worth their time

Many of those who showed up at events or stores not only got a one-on-one experience with the Tablet but also took away free SWAG like t-shirts, buttons and cotton candy, and depending on the event, food and drinks. Though giveaways were small and inexpensive, Cohen says fans were excited to score free stuff and wear it.

But the real draw was the chance to win one of four Tablets being given away each day. Fans could enter to win two ways: by submitting their emails on the Facebook tab or by taking a photo of themselves “catching” the Tablet and then tweeting it with the hashtag #CatchTheTablet.

More than 600 people entered to win a Sony Tablet S by tweeting photos of the Tablet.

Step 3: Get them talking

By requesting a Twitter post to enter, Sony netted more than 1,700 tweets with the campaign hashtag, many of which included a photo. Out of 8,800 contest entries, 600 were from fans who “caught” the Tablet live.

The U.S. social media campaign generated global awareness of the Tablet.

Step 4: Partner with others

Sony stretched its budget and reach by partnering with other companies in tour cities, drawing up to 600 people at some events.

“If you partner with another company that either has their own social media following or has an event already going on, you get so much more bang for your buck,” Cohen said. “A lot of the logistics have already been worked out by the other company.”

Those partner events included a meetup at Adobe, an exclusive tour of Google’s headquarters for Sony fans and a visit to TechCrunch Disrupt, all in San Francisco. In New York, Sony joined forces with GetGlue, which was already hosting an event. In Miami, it was a breakfast meetup at BGT Partners, a web development company that works with Sony.

Sony fans toured Google's headquarters as part of a joint event.

1,000 Clicks to the Pre-Order Page

The city tour was just one piece of a major national campaign, which included TV and print ads and PR. But the viral impact of the pre-launch social media effort exceeded Sony’s expectations.

The company tracked 41,437 engagements on the CatchTheTablet Facebook tab, including poll votes, clicks, shares and image and video views. In the process, Sony’s Facebook fan base increased by 8% and its Twitter following by 4.5% just during the campaign.

Approximately 2,300 people weighed in on the tour’s sixth city location, with Seattle winning with 40% of the vote.

A Sony fan tries the Tablet in Seattle, which won a Catch the Tablet visit with 40% of the vote.

The 1,000 clicks from Facebook to the pre-order page were the best evidence that the team’s efforts drove real interest in buying the Tablet, giving Sony momentum as it headed into the actual launch.

“We were very pleased with pre-orders,” Cohen said.

The campaign’s success now has Sony teams around the world talking.

“It certainly generated a lot of recognition internally at Sony,” Cohen said. “Colleagues in other countries want to know what we did. Every time we’re meeting with a product group, they say, ‘We want a campaign like Catch the Tablet.’”

“We’re over the moon about it. It’s something we never engaged with before in terms of putting the whole team out on the street. We had limited budgets and big goals so we felt we needed to do something a little bit risky but within our budget.”

What do you think? How have you effectively used social media to drive people to in-person events? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

But LinkedIn? The stodgier cousin of the group? Not so much.

Yet for PostcardMania, a fast-growing, Florida-based postcard marketing company, unlocking LinkedIn has been a bottom-line booster. It’s not just for job searchers anymore.

Every week, the company consistently counts at least two dozen fresh leads coming directly from LinkedIn – more than Facebook and Twitter deliver.

That’s added up to more than $72,000 in revenue just from LinkedIn.

How do they do it? Here, PostcardMania shares its formula.

Hint: It’s about attractive content offered at just the right time.

PostcardMania consistently creates high-value content – such as the CEO's blog – to drive people to its site.

A Content Marketing Pioneer

When Joy Gendusa started PostcardMania in 1998 with just a computer and phone, she combined two powerful ideas:

1. Give away free and valuable marketing advice that was typically only available from pricey ad agencies
2. Offer affordable direct-mail printing for small businesses

Since the beginning, PostcardMania has used free advice from on-staff sales and marketing consultants as a major customer acquisition strategy.

Now with 175 employees and $19 million in annual revenue, it’s a model that continues to serve the company well.

Today, Gendusa’s free-advice strategy extends beautifully into social media channels. In addition to taking its own advice – mailing 140,000 postcards every week promoting its services – the company actively participates on major social media sites.

However, the company’s success with social media was not a direct route. Early attempts with a couple of marketing agencies added fans, followers and LinkedIn connections but only brought in a lead or two every couple of months.

“My boss said, ‘I can’t afford this. I need ROI (return on investment)’,” said Ferris Stith, PR & social media manager at PostcardMania.

This past August, the company brought social media marketing in-house, putting Stith in charge. She and Gendusa realized the potential of LinkedIn to connect with their audience – small businesses like dental offices, repair service companies and insurance brokers.

LinkedIn has become a solid lead generator, topping Facebook and Twitter for the company.

By experimenting, Stith arrived at a winning process for LinkedIn that truly generates leads for this business-to-business company:

#1: Create compelling content

First, you need attractive content to move people from LinkedIn to your site. PostcardMania actively creates articles, blog posts, reports and customer case studies for the different industries it targets.

“Content makes all the difference,” Stith said. “Where I’m sending the person determines how many leads I’m going to get.”

The company packs every piece of content with valuable information. No fluff. Then, Stith finds multiple opportunities to share links back to that content.

About 80 percent of the time – usually with special reports – links go to a landing page requiring the person to fill out a form to access the content, turning that contact into an official lead.

Special reports for each industry are among the top lead generators.

#2: Establish your face and voice

Stith and Gendusa agreed that Gendusa, as CEO, would be the face of PostcardMania on LinkedIn, but Stith would post. Stith spent months learning Gendusa’s voice and absorbing her marketing knowledge in order to contribute as Gendusa would.

Stith posts and responds as Gendusa for all inquiries that are not personal messages to the CEO.

Stith posts as CEO Gendusa when answering questions.

#3: Build contacts and message them

When Gendusa receives connection requests, Stith reviews the person’s information and usually accepts the invite. After that, she connects one-on-one with the individual with a friendly message.

“I’ll say, ‘I see that you work at this company. Are you the owner? How’s business going?’” Stith said. She keeps conversations going by often ending with a question.

Stith stresses that she stays very conversational, and never salesy. She also keeps the messages about the other company and their needs, rather than talking about Gendusa or PostcardMania.

“Hard selling is not going to work,” Stith said. “I see so much of it… The post has to be super-helpful. Give real information.”

In the course of conversation, she might point a dentist to a gallery of visual examples of other postcards or to a video and/or written case study showing how another dentist brought in new business with postcard marketing.

“Case studies and sample galleries are really successful depending on the conversation,” Stith said.

PostcardMania shares links to written and video case studies in the specific industries of those they connect with on LinkedIn.

When contacts aren't sure what to put on a postcard, Stith shares links from LinkedIn back to a gallery of samples.

Or, Stith might also point the contact to a special report just for that industry, such as the “8 Ways to Build a Dental Empire” piece.

“Usually when people read that report, dentists call and usually buy pretty fast,” she said.

Special reports, tailored to industries, are particularly big traffic generators.

#4: Join groups and contribute

Next, Stith joins LinkedIn groups for the various types of small businesses the company targets, and judiciously contributes to discussions and questions about marketing.

Within groups, Stith uses the LinkedIn “Discussions” feature about once per week to share valuable content that links to PostcardMania.com. Fellow group members can comment or ask questions right on those discussions.

Just recently, the company generated the most leads yet (53) from a piece of content – with the blog post, “8 Ways to Grow Your Local Business for FREE!” Each of the eight ways was a “snippet” with links to get more information, each of which collected the person’s contact information.

Stith posted a link to "8 Ways to Grow Your Local Business for FREE!" in all the groups she's part of.

Traffic coming from LinkedIn to the blog post ended up generating 53 new leads.

If someone seems like a good prospect based on his or her profile and comments, Stith will click the “Reply Privately” link to take the conversation offline and connect with that person.

“I introduce myself in a way that’s not off-topic,” she said. “‘Joy I agree with you on ABC.’ Then I ask questions.”

Additionally, PostcardMania answers marketing questions posted on various forums.

By answering questions and including links to relevant content, PostcardMania connects with prospects in target industries.

#5: Cold-message contacts

Also part of her regular LinkedIn group activity, Stith “cold messages” contacts who might be promising prospects.

Again, given the nature of LinkedIn, she’s careful to be conversational, not promotional.

“I’ll introduce myself and say, ‘I see you’re in this industry’ and ask a question like, ‘how’s your business these days?’ It’s a very light touch introduction.”

600 Leads – Just From LinkedIn

PostcardMania meticulously tracks all leads. In roughly the past year, the company generated approximately 600 leads, which Stith said amounts to approximately $72,000 in actual business – all just from LinkedIn.

She notes that their close ratios for social media match those of traditional media activities such as postcards, indicating that social media does deliver quality leads.

However, not all social media pulls the same weight. While Stith uses Facebook and Twitter, her B2B audience responds best to LinkedIn.

“Twitter generates traffic to our site but doesn’t necessarily convert,” she said. “Facebook is the more social aspect. Conversion on them visiting isn’t nearly as high as LinkedIn.”

What do you think? Is your social media marketing generating real leads beyond just fans and followers? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Upon closer inspection of the tweet and link, Jacobs discovered that Creative Memories was going head-to-head with one of America’s biggest retailers, Target, in a “Minnesota Brand Madness” challenge put on by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal.

Creative Memories learned first on Twitter that it was included in the Minnesota Brand Madness competition.

This was news to Jacobs (the company’s web content community manager), as well as the rest of the scrapbooking company. But Jacobs knew where to turn first.

“Before I even really did more digging, I posted it on our Facebook page just saying, ‘Hey guys, go vote for us!’”

Creative Memories turned to Facebook first to get out the vote.

What happened next is a testament to the importance of a loyal fan base. Creative Memories fans didn’t just respond, they voted for the company again and again, through six rounds of the brand competition, against much more well-known names such as Wheaties, Mall of America, Dairy Queen and Mayo Clinic.

In the end, Creative Memories emerged as Minnesota’s Best Brand.

The lesson: It’s not the quantity of fans that matters but the quality.

Hiring a Dedicated ‘Voice’ for the Home Office

If you haven’t heard of Creative Memories, then you’re probably not into scrapbooking. The St. Cloud, Minnesota–based company, started in 1987, sells scrapbooking supplies and services through more than 40,000 home-based consultants around the world. The company’s Minnesota headquarters employs 500 people.

Creative Memories helps people preserve memories in attractive scrapbooks and enables their independent consultants to make money.

Until recently, Creative Memories took a casual approach to social media, with a marketing person posting only occasionally on the Facebook and Twitter accounts in addition to her other job responsibilities.

This past March, Jacobs joined the company with a primary focus on building the social media network.

“When we brought Kristen on board, she was able to give the job the attention it deserved,” said Bob McClintick, channel marketing director. “We were really able to cultivate that audience and grow it. They were just really waiting for somebody to be that voice from the home office to engage them.”

Creative Memories uses Facebook to share news about new offerings and get feedback from the customer base.

Jacobs posts engaging content about products and offers, tracks responses and answers questions on the wall. The number of “likes” and comments gives the company unprecedented insight into customer preferences, as do Facebook surveys about potential new products. That insight then shapes actual product offerings.

Surveys help Creative Memories shape product offerings.

Not only does the fan page help build relationships among the home office and customers and consultants, it also serves as a community for all fans. Fans answer each other’s questions, making the site a valuable source of information and education.

Jacobs is tasked with not just engaging Creative Memories fans and followers, but also with providing content that independent consultants can share on their own Facebook pages. To date, about 40 percent of their consultants have Facebook fan pages.

Social’s the Edge in Six-Week Competition

Just a few months after Jacobs took over as the company’s social media voice, the Minnesota Brand Madness competition put Creative Memories’ social network to the test. To win, Creative Memories had to go up against a different Minnesota brand for six consecutive weeks this past summer.

In total, 64 brands competed before Creative Memories was crowned Minnesota's Best Brand.

And all were arguably recognizable national and international brands based in Minnesota, with millions of fans and followers.

First was Target, with its 4.7 million Facebook fans to Creative Memories’ 60,000. After Jacobs’ fast post about the Target face-off, the fans came through with votes and enthusiastic comments. In the end, more than 4500 votes were cast and Creative Memories beat Target with an impressive 81 percent of the vote, which Jacobs attributes to her get-out-the-vote post.

Notably, Target didn’t tap its Facebook network to help with voting. “Target could have killed us if they would have even tweeted about it one time. There’s no doubt about it,” Jacobs said.

From that first round, Jacobs also turned to key partners for their support in getting the word out. Provo Craft & Novelty, maker of the Cricut machine for scrapbooking, tweeted and posted to its fan base of 30,000. Nancy O’Dell, a celebrity spokesperson for Creative Memories, also tweeted each time to her 142,000 followers about the competition.

Celebrity spokesperson Nancy O'Dell helped get the word out.

Specifically, Creative Memories called on its partners for extra posting when competitors would start surging, such as Arctic Cat for round two.

In round three, Wheaties was the easiest win, Jacobs feels, because the company also didn’t engage in social media to spread the word.

Wheaties didn't engage in social media to spread the word.

The competition toughened in round four with Mall of America. “We knew that one would be more challenging, and it was,” Jacobs said.

Again, the company benefited from posts by Provo Craft, Nancy O’Dell and also charity partner Make-A-Wish Foundation. This time, Creative Memories edged out the mall with 63 percent of the vote.

Creative Memories beat the popular Mall of America with 63 percent of the votes.

Next came not just a Minnesota favorite but a national one, Dairy Queen, proving it’s not easy to beat ice cream. In the final moments of the competition, Dairy Queen started surging unexpectedly, picking up thousands of votes after leading all day.

While out shopping with her family, Jacobs saw the spike and took action—a testament to the immediacy of social media.

“I threw in a quick post and said, ‘Dairy Queen is surging. We need your votes.’ And we ended up taking it 52 to 48 percent.”

Beating Out 64 Brands

From 64 companies, in the end it came down to Creative Memories and the prestigious Mayo Clinic—the toughest competition yet. A total of 75,000 votes were cast before voting ended.

Again, Jacobs called in the fans, followers and partners who had stuck by the company from the beginning.

“It’s just amazing that we were able to just keep people going for that long and not drive them nuts after six weeks, and that they were still so excited to support us,” she said.

Interestingly, the Mayo–Creative Memories matchup drew hundreds of comments on Facebook and the voting page, and even sparked debate. What’s more valuable, saving lives or scrapbooking? But Creative Memories fans didn’t see it that way.

One commenter put the challenge into perspective that memories are worth preserving:

“Both companies are beacons of light in their own way—one helps save lives, the other helps share lives.”

“It was the fans who said, ‘It’s not about scrapbooking,’” Jacobs said. “It’s not just the company itself but really what we stand for. And that was amazing to see how much they believed in who we are as a brand.”

After six weeks, Creative Memories won Minnesota’s Best Brand against Mayo with 59 percent of the vote.

Creative Memories won Minnesota's Best Brand.

“A Passionate Fan Base”

Jacobs and McClintick are certain that Facebook made the difference, especially considering that approximately 89 percent of consultants are on the social network.

“There’s absolutely no doubt. If we didn’t have Facebook, there’s no way that we could have gotten this far,” Jacobs said.

But those fans and partners had to be in place first.

“They were ready to go, ready to respond when we asked a question or posted something. So, ours is not a static site at all. There’s a high level of engagement,” Jacobs added.

“We learned that we may not be as recognized, have as many customers or make as much money as the brands we were up against, but we do have something none of them had. And that’s the ability to use social media to mobilize a passionate fan base to action when needed.”

What do you think? What are you doing to build the quality of your fan base, not just adding numbers? Leave your comments in the box below.

This article highlights nine companies (big and small) that have transformed their Facebook presence by implementing innovative Facebook marketing practices.

You’re guaranteed to find inspiration for your Facebook marketing efforts here.

These tactics will work for just about any business—large or small, B2B or B2C. So let’s dig in!

#1: Cheese & Burger Society

The Cheese & Burger Society is sponsored by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. This page is an innovative way to promote Wisconsin cheese by talking about something many people love—burgers and grilling.

One savvy practice introduced here is fan gating. Fan gating, also known as “like gating,” is where you require visitors to become a fan of your page to gain access to special content, discounts or contests.

If you use a contest for fan gating, make sure you abide by Facebook’s terms of service. These articles can help: Mari Smith (compliance) and Sara Hawkins (legal promotions).

This contest brought 1000s of new fans for The Cheese & Burger Society

To increase engagement, Cheese & Burger Society created a Send to a Friend app, allowing fans to send a cheeseburger to their friends. This is fun, easy and promotes viral visibility.

The Send to a Friend app makes it easy to connect with a friend in a fun way

The Cheese & Burger Society also encourages fans to post pictures. Photos and videos get a better EdgeRank (Facebook’s algorithm for determining what shows up on your fans’ news feeds) and people love to share photos.

In fact, approximately 6 billion photos are shared on Facebook each month according to Pixable. For some tips on how to take full advantage of photos on your page, see this article by Debbie Hemley.

Fans love posting pictures of themselves

#2: IdeaPaint

IdeaPaint is a B2B company that sells a specialty paint that converts walls and other spaces into a dry-erase writing surface, eliminating the need for hanging white boards and opening up creative space.

In keeping with their creative purpose and mission, IdeaPaint makes innovative use of their welcome tab by creating hot spots with links to their social sites. This promotes interactivity. The exploratory user will also find a link for a coupon.

Idea Paint's welcome page is loaded with discreet hotspots

Find the "Download" button and find this clever coupon.

A key to building long-term customer loyalty is to give your customers a good first experience with your product or service. IdeaPaint does this by providing detailed videos on their Facebook page on how to install and use their product.

Idea Paint provides a variety of instructional and inspirational videos.

IdeaPaint integrates several social components in their Facebook videos. In addition to the Like button, they use the Send button, which enables you to directly send the link to your friends. The Facebook comment section allows people to make comments that will show up on their wall.

Look at the smart social integration on this video.

Another smart tactic employed by IdeaPaint is their use of NetworkedBlogs to automatically pull their blog posts to a dedicated tab. Additionally, they manually add their posts to their wall. As explained by Mari Smith, this will enhance your news feed. (Get a free class here from Mari on Facebook News Feed Optimization. See the yellow box.)

#3: American Express Open Forum

American Express has created a forum just for small business owners and leaders. Through a strategic partnership with Facebook, they created a massive contest for small businesses that generated lots of interest and increased their fan base. Note the importance of having a valuable prize ($20,000).

This contest brought lots of new small business fans to Amex.

A key to creating ongoing engagement on your wall is to use variety in your posts. Notice how Amex uses questions, quotes and articles to engage their fans. It’s also important to use shorter posts. Buddy Media found that posts with 80 characters or fewer get 27% greater engagement than longer posts.

Notice the variety in these 3 posts.

American Express also cleverly integrated their rewards program so people can redeem points for Facebook ads. Maybe you can’t leverage a deal with Facebook, but perhaps this kind of rewards incentive might get you thinking about partnership opportunities you’ve been overlooking.

This partnership with Facebook helps small business owners.

Amex features their authors and articles through some savvy Facebook integration. This requires special programming, but gives contributors the notoriety they deserve.

Amex features their experts and ads variety with polls and video clips.

#4: Banez Insurance Agency

Banez Insurance Agency is a local Farmers Insurance agency in Stockton, California. This small business is doing a number of things smart marketers should study.

Ron Banez is the owner of this insurance agency. He makes an immediate impression on his welcome page by doing two things: 1) Making a charitable donation for every Like and 2) using a video.

Notice Ron's disclaimer.

A few things to notice on his wall: First, observe how Ron has taken advantage of the photo strip by creating 5 interchangeable photos that reinforce his core messaging. Here’s a helpful article on optimizing your photo strip.

Banez insurance makes good use of their photo strip.

Next, observe how Ron incorporated his photo in his profile image, enabling him to use his headshot as his avatar when interacting on his Facebook wall. In a relationship-based business like insurance, it’s important for people to see you’re a person.

Additionally, see how the profile image points you toward the links below it. This subtle guidance will keep visitors on your page longer, increasing the likelihood they will engage with you as a fan.

Finally, this page makes a great use of the tabs. Through the tabs you can get a quote, learn about insurance products and enter a contest.

#5: PETCO

PETCO is a national pet supply store. They have masterfully integrated their store on Facebook, allowing greater social engagement. See how it allows fans to tell their friends which products they like, even as they shop.

NOTE: Mari Smith recommends TabJuice as a great service for small businesses wanting to set up a store on Facebook.

PETCO makes it easy to share your favorite products with your Facebook friends.

Everyone wants fan engagement, but few companies tell their audience the rules of engagement. PETCO does it in a friendly, but direct, manner.

PETCO's engagement guidelines are clear and lighthearted.

As an example of fan gating, PETCO shows you the benefits of becoming a fan: access to coupons, news and Facebook-only contests.

PETCO makes it easy to see the benefits of liking their page.

#6: Red Bull

Red Bull is a popular energy drink that has built a very strong fan base. Let’s study some of their smart practices.

Upon your first visit to their page, you can’t avoid their strong, but fun, call to action. If their power of suggestion isn’t enough, they also provide a subtle hint as to what’s waiting for you when you become a fan (notice the grayed-out videos). This is a powerful alternative to PETCO’s approach of listing the benefits. Determine which approach makes more sense for your business.

The grayed out area shows you what you're missing until you like Red Bull.

The more you can get fans returning to your page and lingering, the greater the likelihood they’ll tell their friends about you and eventually choose your products and services.

Red Bull developed a series of games and a TV channel for this very reason. While you may not have the budget to hire game developers or start your own TV channel, this might inspire some creative thinking on how to keep fans returning to your page.

Red Bull has created games to keep fans returning to their page.

Red Bull also has their own TV channel.

Depending on your brand, it might be valuable to find ways to meet your fans in person. The Events tab can be a powerful way to let your fans know where to find you. Red Bull makes a great use of this.

Some of the places Red Bull fans can gather.

Look at a couple of things about Red Bull’s tabs. They have creatively integrated their logo on their iFrame tabs. However, the Events tab gets lost due to the number of tabs they have. This highlights an important lesson: think carefully about the order of your tabs.

#7: Toll Booth Saddle Shop

Toll Booth Saddle Shop is a local horse supply shop in Mt. Holly, NJ (suburb of Philadelphia). This small business has built a loyal following by utilizing several smart Facebook strategies.

On their welcome page, they provide a clear overview of why a fan would want to Like their page and keep returning. Make sure to put your URL in the About section. As a physical business, you can create a Facebook Places page by merely including your address in your profile, thus allowing for check-ins.

The design of Toll Booth's welcome page is fitting for horse lovers.

Toll Booth’s store experience is highly social, allowing customers to tell their friends about their favorite items. Additionally, they provide an added benefit for following their page: a 10% discount automatically deducted when you shop in their Facebook store. That’s some easy money!

See how they've made their shopping social.

On Toll Booth’s welcome page they also encourage you to sign up for their mailing list, telling you why you might want to do that. They have made it easy by using an iFrame app that links their list with Constant Contact.

Integration with your mailing list can be easy with an app.

Toll Booth Saddle Shop keeps their page fun by incorporating a humorous series of horse videos each week. This is a great strategy to keep the interest of young and old customers alike. Many parents prefer shopping in places where their children enjoy themselves.

Fun videos increase engagement.

Toll Booth announces the fun video.

#8: Threadless

Threadless is a community-based online t-shirt company. They invite artists to create t-shirt designs and then sell the ones selected by fans. As you can imagine, their fans are very engaged (as noted by every post having comments).

A design-based company should utilize their graphic capabilities to keep their site interesting. Threadless does this by regularly changing their photo strip images and rotating various profile images.

Great graphics make your page stand out.

Threadless has found ways to segment their audience by interest and location. To differentiate interest groupings, they have developed separate pages for things like Kids and Design. Threadless has done an amazing job of taking their community off the Internet to communities around the globe through meetups.

Targeting different interests.

Targeting fans by location.

Threadless sells most of their products online, so it’s vital to have compelling photos. But they establish their brand as “by the people for the people” by using real people as their models and having fun.

Threadless uses everyday people to sell their products.

More examples of how Threadless uses everyday people.

One of Threadless’ trademarks is their customer involvement in the design and selection process of their business.

Many businesses could benefit from these principles by running contests or challenges where you invite your customers to develop a new product, process or concept. Then have your fans vote on their favorites.

T-shirt challenges provide ways to engage the creative powers of the Threadless community.

The leaderboard encourages community participation.

#9: Skittles

Skittles is a colorful candy company that uses Facebook to reinforce their fun-loving, wacky culture.

On their welcome page they provide several opportunities to further engage their brand. They offer social buttons, links to memorable ads and the chance to “Experience the Rainbow” (a link back to their website). Additionally, they have a rotating “fan of the week,” who happens to be a comedian showing up in a variety of fun settings.

Skittles provides integration with their other media on their welcome page.

Skittles also has a set of guidelines that are short, clear and fun.

The Skittles rules of engagement are fun, but clear.

Finally, Skittles has developed a unique voice for their wall posts. They always speak in the first person. The posts are personal, playful and creative. Fans are encouraged to engage with each other directly.

Want to Learn More About Facebook Marketing?

If you’re not taking full advantage of Facebook’s marketing power, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Many businesses are still just getting started with Facebook marketing.

There’s one simple way to take your Facebook marketing efforts to the next level. By attending the web’s largest online Facebook marketing conference, Facebook Success Summit 2011, you’ll become empowered to use Facebook to increase your fan base, better engage your customers and improve your sales.

You’ll be learning from 19 Facebook marketing experts. Join Guy Kawasaki, Mari Smith, Dave Kerpen, Robert Scoble, Michael Stelzner and experts from Intel, Applebee’s, PETCO and Intuit as they reveal proven Facebook marketing tactics at Facebook Success Summit 2011.

It’s the web’s largest online Facebook marketing conference. Go here for a sample class and to learn more.

What do you think about these Facebook pages? Have you tried any of these techniques? How did it go? Let us know! Please leave your comments in the box below.

But for Alex Morrissey of JamaicansMusic.com, that moment came when a party in Indonesia ran out of goats.

“We invited 200 people to the launch party, but because we’re on Facebook, 1,000 people came,” he said. “We had enough rice and peas, but we had to get more goats.”

A JamaicansMusic.com launch party in Indonesia, where the most Facebook fans reside, drew 1000 people.

But don’t let the goats fool you. Morrissey is as business-savvy as they come—even at 22. With a fast-growing music site started when he was in college, Morrissey is well on his way to becoming the Jamaican Mark Zuckerberg.

Today, Morrissey is proof that doing what you love can lead to success. And he says he wouldn’t be where he is today without Facebook.

The JamaicansMusic.com Facebook page now has more than 470,000 global fans—adding nearly 1,000 every day—making it what is thought to be the largest Facebook fan page of any in the Caribbean.

More importantly, the business is bringing in an income and has grown Morrissey’s business to five employees.

JamaicansMusic.com has used Facebook from early on to grow its fan base and revenue.

He Built It, They Came

Morrissey started the website a couple of years ago as a college student at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. He simply couldn’t find a good site dedicated to the reggae and dancehall music he enjoyed, so he created his own.

Alex Morrissey, now 22, started JamaicansMusic.com while still in college.

But likeminded fans of those styles of music soon discovered JamaicansMusic.com. There, they can listen to relevant Internet radio stations, watch videos and learn about artists.

“It was a personal thing where I could find all my favorite music,” he said. “When I noticed how many people were actually visiting, I started asking them questions about what they wanted.”

As traffic has grown, Morrissey has improved the content and started promoting it heavily through Facebook. He moved back to Kingston, Jamaica and opened an office. Now a multimedia company, Jamaicansmusic.com hosts live events and recently started its own Internet radio station and magazine.

Fans can access the company's Internet radio right from a Facebook tab.

He owes the site’s momentum largely to the growing Facebook traffic. But Morrissey doesn’t just post on the site’s wall. He’s taken a few strategic steps that have made all the difference: rich content on Facebook, attractive giveaways and geographic targeting of promotions.

Idea #1: Make your fan page interesting

JamaicansMusic.com brings people to the Facebook page with engaging and fresh content. First, the team posts several new items on the wall each day, usually music videos. The engaging posts typically generate hundreds of likes and multiple comments.

Additionally, the site offers interest beyond the main wall with multiple content tabs for information such as a top 10 chart, new videos, the world’s biggest reggaefest and access to the company’s own Internet radio station, JADIO.

Fans can always find out what's hot on the Top 10 tab on JamaicansMusic.com's Facebook page.

Fans can also play the popular game created by Jamaicansmusic.com, Song Writa, where they can mix their own music.

Created by JamaicansMusic.com, the Song Writa game lets fans make their own music.

Idea #2: Give away free stuff!

Like a savvy music industry pro, Morrissey teams with radio stations, record labels and companies at least once a week to run hot promotions that draw fans in flocks. Often that includes a relevant giveaway like concert tickets or free phones.

As a result of those sponsorships, along with display advertising and commissions from iTunes.com, Morrissey has monetized both JamaicansMusic.com and the Facebook page.

For the Song Writa game, JamaicansMusic.com launched the new offering with an event that took place December 15 on the Facebook fan page. To increase attendance, the company offered BlackBerry Curve smartphones and a $5,000 (Jamaican) credit from mobile phone company Digicel.

JamaicansMusic.com gave away Blackberry Curve phones to promote its new Song Writa game.

Those incentives helped draw 218 attendees. But more importantly, the launch helped drive early Facebook traffic up by 7,000 new fans over the course of four weeks. At its peak, about 15,000 users were playing the new game.

With Facebook, the growing startup saved major marketing dollars for its game launch.

“We were able to reach a large number of people interested in this game without spending any additional money on traditional means like newspaper ads,” Morrissey said.

Giveaways for the launch of the Song Writa game helped drive up the fan count by 7,000 and increase the number of gamers to 15,000.

Anything related to legendary musician Bob Marley always draws the greatest number of fans. When Marley’s son Damian released an album last year, JamaicansMusic.com teamed up with him.

A promotion with Damian Marley's new album brought in 15,000 new fans in two weeks.

The site ran competitions and gave away autographed CDs, posters and tickets to the live shows. Fans simply had to like the page to be entered. JamaicansMusic.com also hosted a live chat on Facebook with the artist, letting fans ask questions.

In just two weeks, the number of Facebook fans had jumped in response from 25,000 to 40,000.

The most impressive increase in fans came from the release of Vybz Kartel’s new and highly anticipated album. JamaicansMusic.com was given an exclusive track that was made available to fans for free if they entered their names and email addresses. Remarkably, the promotion brought in 5,000 new fans in just a few hours.

Idea #3: Target the audience geographically

Morrissey credits his success in attracting sponsors and advertisers largely to the page’s ability to provide specific demographic data. With tools such as Facebook Insights, he knows the breakdown of fans by country, gender and age, and shares that with sponsors. In fact, JamaicansMusic.com fans come from more than 230 different countries.

For example, Facebook Insights shows that, surprisingly, the greatest number of JamaicansMusic.com Facebook fans reside in Indonesia (more than 65,000).

Facebook Insights shows the exact global breakdown of the company's Facebook fans.

When meeting with advertisers, Morrissey shows them stats from Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

“Since we have such a large fan base in each country, we feel we can get a lot more awareness [for sponsors],” Morrissey said. “It’s better than traditional media or even advertising. We can target countries so advertisers get better results.”

For advertisers like Samsung, Johnnie Walker and Digicel, Morrissey directs messages, wall posts and promotions only for certain segments of the Facebook audience. When he posts on the wall, he uses the pull-down tab underneath the status box and chooses “Customize.”  There, he chooses to share with those only in specific countries. With geo-specific targeting, he can be relevant to a segment of fans without alienating others.

The company keeps content relevant with wall posts targeted to fans in specific countries.

For the Damian Marley promotion, JamaicansMusic.com used Facebook geographic targeting to reach fans specifically in South America.

“That’s been very attractive to advertisers,” Morrissey said. “Sponsors get really specific by geographic location and type of music.”

As JamaicansMusic.com expands its offerings to a global audience, Morrissey anticipates that the site will get even more strategic in pursuing advertisers for country-specific promotions.

“Our plan for the fan page is to find top companies in countries where there are lots of fans, and provide a proposal, saying, we have these fans, we can, if you become a sponsor, promote products and artists in your country, to get you exposure and help us as well,” he said.

What do you think? Have you tailored your content to your audience by geography or interest? Did it improve fan engagement? Leave your comments in the box below.

“We spent a lot of time cold calling or direct emailing,” said Craig Robertson, co-founder and CEO of ecycler.com. “We would catch people when they were busy and they didn’t want to talk to us.”

ecycler.com, founded in 2009, is an Internet-age twist on the cash-for-cans concept. Rooted in the belief that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the site connects recycling discarders with collectors for mutual benefit.

Green startup ecycler.com connects recycling discarders and collectors for mutual benefit.

As a start-up, ecycler.com needed to build its signups of both discarders and collectors quickly. Founders took to social media to grow awareness among businesses and individuals.

Well beyond posting on Twitter and Facebook, their proactive tactics made a real difference. From securing in-person meetings to landing media and blog coverage, the scrappy partners’ use of social tools has rapidly grown signups and earned the company a sweet grand prize in a small business challenge.

From Trash to Treasure

If you’re of a certain age, you may remember the days when people collected and recycled aluminum cans not because they were green, but because they wanted to earn some green – cash from recycling stations.

With so many curbside programs now, those recycling spots have largely disappeared. But there’s still money to be made.

ecycler.com co-founders Timothy Laurent and Craig Robertson were children of the can recycling era. As a Cub Scout, Laurent raised funds for his troop with aluminum cans, while Robertson took the same route to buy his first computer.

Years later, the college friends, now both with prestigious Big Four consulting backgrounds, hatched their business idea over coffee.

Founders Tim Laurent and Craig Robertson, who both raised money with cans as kids, debuted ecycler.com at TechCrunch50 in 2009.

The concept is simple. Someone wanting to discard (“discarders”) recyclable items posts them on the site, where a “collector” can then arrange to pick them up locally. For smaller, lighter items like eyeglasses, discarders can now ship to collectors.

In many places in the U.S. today, there’s still real money in recycling: 10 cents for a glass bottle in Michigan, 5 cents for cans and bottles in California, and 67 cents for a pound of cans in Northern Illinois.

Currently, 10 states have “bottle bills” that legislate the value of these recyclables. But even in non-bottle–bill states, cans, bottles, paper and cardboard can be exchanged for cash.

Aluminum cans commend 68 cents per pound in Northern Illinois, or about $4.50 per bag!

Those now cashing in through ecycler.com run the gamut from business owners of recycling centers to church groups to teachers wanting cash to fund an in-classroom pet.

But Laurent and Robertson have found the market for reusable goods extends well beyond the typical items. Collectors can even be artists looking for specific items for their work, like corks, compact discs or keys.

While the service is currently free to both collectors and discarders, ecycler.com foresees that collectors will be willing to pay for the opportunity to connect with discarders.

Finding Targets With Twitter Search

From the start, the founders have used social media to spread the word about the business and drive traffic to the website. They began with Twitter and still find the tool a top powerhouse for their business.

“Twitter is our main communications channel out,” Laurent said.

With posts that interest discarders, collectors and other recycling enthusiasts, ecycler.com has grown its followers to more than 8200. The partners frequently post items such as welcomes to new collectors, twitpics and YouTube videos, updates on bottle-bill legislation, or answers to questions about recycling in general.

ecycler.com engages fans with recycling-related content and answers to general questions.

The small team at ecycler.com uses tools to make it simple to update the Twitter stream. When a new collector signs up on ecycler.com, the site uses the Twitter API to tweet automatically each new collector’s location and types of items collected. That alerts potential discarders who might be in that geographic area with those items.

A Twitter API automatically updates Twitter when a new collector signs up.

Additionally, the partners proactively use search tools to identify those talking about recycling and find organizations to partner with. Beyond basic Twitter.com searches, they use TweetDeck, IceRocket and notify.me to find relevant activity. With the latter, Robertson sets up automatic email notifications to himself for certain keywords and phrases such as “I just recycled” or “I recycle cans.”

From there, they follow collectors and potential partners; hoping following is the first step in expanding business relationships.

Twitter for In-Person and Phone Meetings

Most notably, the two tap Twitter to make connections that open doors for meetings. The partners found that using a traditional approach didn’t take them very far in connecting with businesses that might become discarders.

When Laurent and Robertson switched their outreach from traditional measures to social media, they noticed a difference.

“We were reaching people when they wanted to be reached, when they want to have a conversation – not when we wanted to have a conversation,” Robertson said.

First, they got to know targets by watching tweets. Then, they started conversations on Twitter with retweets or @ messages directed to the business. “The next thing you know, we’d have a meeting planned,” Robertson said.

Now, the partners estimate they establish at least one new meeting every week through social media.

Fostering Blog Relationships

The duo largely uses the same approach for forging relationships with bloggers and media contacts, leading to significant coverage. First, they search for prominent bloggers in the green space and begin following them.

After retweeting, introductions and exchanging information, bloggers or media outlets often write about the company.

ecycler.com met Amanda Abella on Twitter, leading to a blog post. Abella has since become a discarder on the site.

In turn, those posts drive legitimate traffic back to the ecycler.com website, helping grow the base of collectors and discarders.

Engaging Fans With Visual Posts

While Twitter has generated one-on-one connections, Facebook and YouTube pull traffic to the ecycler.com site with a more visual, interactive component.

Facebook allows the company to start discussions and share information that’s more than 140 characters. Nearly every Facebook post includes a photo or link to a video, helping increase engagement. Such engaging Facebook content succeeds in generating about 10% of the total traffic to the ecycler.com website.

Nearly every Facebook post includes a photo or video, increasing engagement.

The company might share how its collectors use recyclables to make art, updates on bottle-bill legislation or one of its “Crush that Can” videos.

For the latter, YouTube serves as the home for the more than 70 videos ecycler.com has created, most of which show funny and creative ways to crush aluminum cans – by pumpkin, suitcase or truck, for example.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBrxEm49KD8

Award-Winning Results

In February, ecycler.com’s social media efforts paid off in more than site traffic and new site registrants. The company participated as a finalist in a 3-month Small Business Road-to-Success Challenge from Fairfield Inn & Suites.

During that time, the company could stay free at the hotels while traveling. In exchange, finalists had to meet specific business goals they set for themselves.

In that time, ecycler.com exceeded its goals by registering 151 new collectors and 623 new discarders – largely through proactive social media tactics – leading the company to win the $20,000 grand prize.

At the same time, the company won one of the smaller challenges by landing coverage on five related blogs.

With its winnings, ecycler.com now turns its attention to adding new features for discarders and collectors, such as an iPhone application. As it grows, it will continue to apply the scrappy, proactive social media tactics that have built the company’s momentum to date.

What’s your best example of how social media helped you forge a valuable business relationship? Leave your comments in the box below.

How can a little spare change possibly help fund the organization’s global network of hundreds of houses, family rooms and care mobiles (mobile care centers)?

A little change adds up – to nearly $25 million in donations last year with the help of social media. Donation boxes are the single largest ongoing fundraiser for RMHC, helping the charity serve 4.5 million children and families every year. 

In 2010, RMHC launched a “Day of Change” campaign to drive people to donate spare change at their local McDonald’s restaurants. Using social media to spread the word virally, RMHC generated 180,000 interactions on the global Facebook and chapter pages, ultimately increasing online donations in August 130% compared to August 2009 and significantly generating more to their donation boxes.

Your spare change may seem like a small amount, but when added with others', it can make a HUGE difference.

Moreover, social media provides RMHC families a new venue to share their personal stories online, giving potential supporters insight into the RMHC experience.

“Social media allows us to engage with supporters and families in a very direct, authentic and immediate way,” said Clara Carrier, PR and Marketing Manager Communications and Special Programs, RMHC. “From an awareness standpoint, from an educational standpoint and by positioning the charity in the marketplace as one that engages and shares in an authentic way what our story is… social media allows us to do that in very effective way.”

Story-Based Content

If you know about RMHC, you’ve likely heard of its Ronald McDonald Houses, which now number more than 304 Houses around the world. Because many families must travel far from home for medical treatment for their children, the Houses are a home away from home near hospitals, allowing families at little or no cost to stay close to children recovering from illness and injury.

RMHC also runs 168 “Ronald McDonald Family Rooms” at hospitals, where family members can rest comfortably right at the hospital near a sick child. Rounding out its programs, 43 Ronald McDonald Care Mobiles bring medical attention to approximately 150,000 children each year around the world, providing care such as pediatric cancer treatment in Poland and immunizations in New Orleans.

At RMHC, based outside Chicago, Lauren Fischer serves as the organization’s primary voice of the charity on Facebook and Twitter. In addition to her other communications duties, she spends about an hour or two a day posting content on the social media sites and responding to comments.

Once she posts, those conversations tend to take off on their own. The key? Content that engages people. Often, that’s a story about a family, a volunteer or a corporate donor.

For example, this month the charity launched a big push for volunteers. Each day, Fisher asks a question of volunteers or posts a link to a story about a volunteer or corporate donor, which resides back on the RMHC site.

"At RMHC, age is relative. It's about the whole family – getting everyone involved, young and old, in the health and well-being of a child."

In honor of volunteer month, RMHC shares stories of volunteers like Mary, who at age 92 has baked more than 900 cakes for families in the Austin area. It drew 166 “Likes” and 13 comments.

Despite the often sad stories of those whom RMHC serves – families facing difficulty – the social media sites remain overwhelmingly positive and inspirational.

“I would say 80% of the content we share is about inspiring our followers – the other 20% is about what we want them to do for us,” Fischer said. Sharing stories on Facebook in turn encourages fans to post their own stories more freely.

“Even with privacy concerns, people feel so secure about sharing their stories,” Carrier said. “They feel that, in sharing, they’re healing. They’re supporting other families going through the same situation.”

2010 Day of Change

During 28 days across August and September 2010, RMHC made a major push for spare change donations at its many McDonald’s locations. Posts leading up to the primary day, September 9, increasingly built awareness and excitement through social media and traditional channels such as direct mail and email.

The team created a Facebook event for that day, encouraging people to sign up to attend. In effect, they were pledging to visit a McDonald’s that day to drop off change. In total, 5500 people registered for the event, which showed up on each of their Facebook streams, encouraging a viral effect.

RMHC created a Day of Change event on Facebook, which drew 5500 attendees pledging to drop change at restaurants.

Following an ongoing effort, Carrier spearheaded outreach to “mommy” and other parenting bloggers regarding the event. A year before, she had started building relationships with bloggers, encouraging them to learn more about RMHC and attend a local event to experience a Ronald McDonald House firsthand.

“We learned that when mommy bloggers or anyone experiences what the House program does, they’re hooked,” Carrier said. “When someone has the opportunity to exchange stories with a family and understand what the program does, they’re immediately  supporters of the charity.”

In turn, more than 30 bloggers wrote about Day of Change, helping drive people to donation boxes and the RMHC website.

More than 30 parenting bloggers featured Day of Change on their blogs.

Empowering Chapters

Adding to the efforts of the global office, more than 100 RMHC chapters around the world used their own websites, newsletters, media relationships and social media to spread the word about Day of Change. The global office equipped them with a guide with key messages and assets specifically for the campaign.

For social media, that included suggestions such as encouraging RSVPs for the Facebook event and using the event’s Twitter handle, #RMHCDayofChange. Markets that actively communicated the event saw local increases to the donation boxes.

In Chattanooga, RMHC attributes a 32% net increase in box donations year over year to the campaign, while Austin saw a 17% increase.

Across all locations, online donations during the campaign grew by 130%. Plus, RMHC added valuable fans, followers and email newsletter subscribers – a jump of 748% for the latter – so the charity keeps in touch with new contacts.

Making the Case to the Board

Every nonprofit faces tough choices about how to spend resources that largely come through donations. RMHC must regularly report to the board on the impact of its marketing efforts, with social media results now included.

Happily, they can report that relationships with more than 100 bloggers, and a 1400% increase in Facebook interactions contributed to a 13% jump in website traffic in 2010. In response, online donations increased 9% for the year.

But Carrier and the team are careful to demonstrate – and place value on – more than just the numbers. A newly added analysis tool, Heartbeat software by Marketwire, measures the sentiment of the conversations on Twitter and Facebook.

Heartbeat is a cost-effective, real-time social media monitoring and measurement tool.

“The software puts a number on sentiment, which has helped tremendously with our board,” Carrier said. “We’ve spent time making them understand why Facebook conversations and Facebook sharing are important and giving solid examples.”

Ultimately, those conversations contribute to the bottom line by building the brand capital of RMHC.

“In the end the community supports our programs if we educate and share and have a call to action – and social media is allowing us to do that,” Carrier said.

How do you or can you engage your social media audience more with stories? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Practically every other online retailer – and Logos is 100% online – blasted customers with their post-Thanksgiving email promotions.

But this software company solely relied on social media, from testing its ideas to launching the promotion to letting the resulting word of mouth do the work for them.

In response, Logos generated $300,000 in sales in those few days – three times what it brought in during the same period the year before. Not only did it add to the bottom line, but also Logos significantly expanded its fans, followers and customer connections to support future efforts.

“Without social marketing, it [the promotion] would have gone nowhere because we didn’t spread the word ourselves,” explained Dan Pritchett, VP marketing and business development at Logos. “We wanted to give a reward to people who are socially connected in our community.”

Testing the Waters

Since opening in 1992, Logos Research Systems, Inc. has grown from a couple of programmers in a basement into the largest developer of Bible software and a worldwide leader in multilingual electronic publishing.

With 220 employees, the Bellingham, WA company partners with approximately 130 publishers to make over 12,000 electronic Bible study resources available to customers in more than 160 countries in a dozen languages. Typical customers are pastors and anyone with an interest in Bible study.

In recent years, Logos has run Black Friday promotions, but as of four days before Thanksgiving 2010, the company had not planned anything. With some of his marketing team already off for the holiday, Pritchett tested the beginnings of an idea using Facebook.

His simple post asked what customers wanted to see on sale for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Customers responded enthusiastically, with 116 weighing in about what they wanted.

What do customers want to buy on sale? Just ask.

“I don’t think I had figured out what we were doing at the time. That first post was to help me get some ideas,” Pritchett said.

With that, the idea came. Pritchett didn’t want to publish low prices on the web that might live online forever, leaving customers to wonder when they might dip that low again. Instead, the promotion he conceived was designed to give customers deals on what they really wanted, rather than on what Logos wanted them to buy.

Here’s how the deals worked:

1. Logos asked customers to email in the three titles they most wished were on sale.
2. Sales reps then looked up the special prices for those items and replied personally to each customer.
3. Customers had just 48 hours to decide to buy any or all of the products.

“You tell me what you want to buy and I’ll give you great deal on it,” Pritchett said. “Let’s have some excitement on Black Friday, a virtual door buster.”

One Hour – From Concept to Launch

While the sale was unique in itself, the promotion was equally impressive. From concept to launch, Pritchett spent just one hour on the promotion.

He simply blogged about the sale, and followed with a post each on Facebook, Twitter and the company’s own forum. That was it. No emailing the customer base.

A single blog post, and one post each on Facebook, Twitter and the company's forum, launched the promotion.

From there, social media’s snowball effect took over.

“Originally we were considering emailing our entire customer list, but soon realized that the word of mouth had already spread far enough on our deal that we couldn’t handle any more business!” he said.

Fans began spreading the word to friends on Facebook and retweeting the link to the blog post. Some of those same customers posted and tweeted again after they purchased their sale items. Two bloggers created spinoff posts about the sale.

Logos further encouraged word of mouth by including hyperlinked Twitter and Facebook icons on the electronic receipt emailed to customers. Through Twitter and Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs), customers could click those icons to populate tweets and posts automatically with news that the customer had just purchased from Logos.

However, the biggest traffic took place on the software company’s own social site – its forum – home of 42,000 registered customers. The thread generated 241 comments and 13,182 views.

“Our users picked up the message and created their own thread on the forums. We didn’t even start it – they did,” Pritchett said.

Customers started their own thread about the sale, generating more than 13,000 views.

Staffing Up

The response well exceeded the company’s expectations.

“Immediately after posting the offer we began to receive email requests, and by the time our staff came into work around 6 am, we had hundreds of requests for pricing already in the inbox,” Pritchett said.

Logos beefed up the sales team to respond to emails as quickly as possible. Easing the launch of the sale, lower price points were already in the sales database, ready for reps to extend to customers when asked. Nearly all products had some discount associated with them, though at varying percentage reductions.

Yet, Logos didn’t see any direct costs for the promotion. Those scheduled to work later in the week simply changed shifts to that weekend. And of course, getting the word out required no investment.

“It was pretty magical,” Pritchett said. “There really were no other costs associated with it. No printing, no postage, no mailing.”

2,000 Products Sold

In total, the team handled about 2,000 emails, generating sales of 2,000 Logos Bible Software titles.

“Sales for the same period last year were $200,000 lower and we had a better economy last year – and our Christmas special was already available during a portion of last years’ period,” Pritchett said.

But the benefits go beyond the weekend’s sales. Through the promotion, Logos added hundreds of new fans and followers to its social media community. Plus, the company now has a record of what specific customers want but didn’t yet buy, and their most current contact information, which will empower future direct sales efforts. The company also plans to leverage the feedback from Facebook about what products customers wanted most.

“In one weekend the sales staff was able to generate a list of the top three favorite titles of 2,000 of our best customers!” Pritchett said. “For all the people who weren’t able to buy, we now have a great prospecting list, and we also have a better idea of the preferences of some of our most engaged consumers.”

What do you think? How have you used social media to learn what your customers want? Can you cut out traditional outbound channels like email marketing and rely solely on interactive means such as social media? Leave your comments in the box below.