How One Man Used Social Media to Raise $91,000 for Charity
The Big 4-0. For most, turning 40 inspires something big.
For Danny Brown, it wasn’t a sports car, Vegas trip or marathon run. He was inspired to set a different challenge for himself—to bring people together and raise money for worthy causes. And the response was very unexpected…
To celebrate his 40th, Brown and his wife spent a few days at Niagara Falls. Taking a break at a local café, they noticed an elderly woman come in by herself and order ice cream.
Brown wondered about her story.
After he and his wife headed home, Brown couldn’t stop thinking about the lonely-looking woman in the café—and regretted not talking with her.
How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation
“Be yourself.” It’s one of the rules of social media. If you’re blogging, tweeting or Facebooking for business, be real—or you won’t be followed.
Yet, how do you pull off “authentic” while maintaining the company brand message?
It’s tough enough for a small business. What if you’re #2 on Business Week’s best global brands list, with nearly 400,000 employees across 170 countries?
At IBM, it’s about losing control.
“We don’t have a corporate blog or a corporate Twitter ID because we want the ‘IBMers’ in aggregate to be the corporate blog and the corporate Twitter ID,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation.
Chicago Pizza Guy Creates Social Media ‘Domino’ Effect
When it comes to social media, it takes a lot to impress Amy Korin.
Her resume includes digital strategy for global companies like Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Sun Microsystems and Zappos.
But her local Domino’s Pizza joint left her “completely shocked.”
On a rainy Sunday night, her Domino’s Pizza order took an hour to arrive and then was the wrong pizza. She turned to Twitter to vent: “hardly any room for human error, but still a mistake.”
What followed went way beyond the mea culpa tweet increasingly more common in business today.
Fun Social Media Promos Feed Souplantation Customer Frenzy
Imagine marveling at Peru’s Machu Picchu ruins, and a guy nearby asks if you’ll take his picture. But it’s not just him; he’s proudly holding a paper cutout of a smiling tomato.
What, exactly, inspired this traveler to carry a cartoon tomato to one of the wonders of the world?
In a word, fun.
He’s just one of nearly 140 people who vacationed with the tomato, named “Sweetie.” These fans of the restaurant Souplantation, or Sweet Tomatoes in some markets, were enthusiastically participating in the chain’s latest social media promotion, “Where’s Sweetie?”
Social Media Marketing Lowers Acquisition Costs 39 Percent for TakeLessons.com
It was a classic business beginning. Two friends, some margaritas, and maybe a little cocktail napkin scribbling.
In 2004, Steven Cox sat down with a fellow musician after a gig. Cox’s friend and his wife were expecting their first baby and hoping to buy a house. But as a musician and private instructor, he struggled with making ends meet.
“Playing music doesn’t necessarily pay all the bills, unless you have a really big contract or gig,” Cox says. “My friend was hanging flyers in drugstores and music stores but still not finding enough students.”
Cox, once a full-time musician, worked a day job in IT and management consulting at the time. When he suggested his friend go online to connect with aspiring musicians, the friend confessed, “I’m a musician. I don’t know anything about that.”
With that, Cox began orchestrating TakeLessons.com.
Today, TakeLessons is America’s leading music and voice lessons company—a position reached largely through social media marketing.
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