Having had a small amount of experience utilizing social media in a business setting, I am always curious to see how various companies manipulate social media networks to their advantage. Be it Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, etc. etc., companies have a huge opportunity to reach vast amounts of people at the click of a button. 
Social media marketing blog Convince and Convert recently posted about JetBlue and how they utilized Facebook on April Fool’s Day. The idea was highly unique:
Proclaiming that, “April’s No Fool,” JetBlue gave back to those most impacted by the day – people named April. JetBlue offered people with the first name April who were flying the airline on April 1 a JetBlue credit equal to the value of their flight.
An interesting promotional move — a very directed sales promotion, and a funny public relations stunt. And it seems to have paid off: close to 500 people interacted with the post, it was shared over 3,600 times, and moderately made its way around the internet as the antithesis to most online April Fool’s pranks (see: G-Mail Blue).
Fellow COMM 296er Cody Malloy also discussed social media marketing in a recent post on his own blog:
Convince & Convert reports that posts to users’ “fan pages” can reach anywhere between 2% and 47% of the fans subscribed to the page. That is quite the difference. It really just goes to show you that you really don’t know how effective or worthwhile a fan page Facebook post will be.
Cody then goes on to state:
Social media posting are all about posting at the right time, so you have to take into account various factors (age, geographic location) of your fans/followers.
I couldn’t agree more. Social media can also be a huge burden for companies: a free forum for consumers to post their thoughts both negative and positive (as Nestle once found out). Additionally, some companies make the mistake of neglecting their social media, using them as avenues for automated updates rather than communication, or for constant spam. However, sometimes companies come along like JetBlue and use it in an innovative way — and it works.
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