I chanced upon this while browsing 9gag, a popular social media website yesterday. This was a appeal made by a 9gag user to fellow 9gag followers to help his personal appeal for a blood donation for his mother.

The user, Budianda made clever use of social media to appeal to fellow 9gag users all around the world to come forward and make a blood donation to his mother who was suffering from liver failure.This post was touching and certainly struck a note with me.

This clever use of social media is an example of how powerful it is in reaching mass audiences and perhaps other Non-Profit Organisations can be inspired to use social media as a tool to promote their social causes.

I recently discovered Pinterest, a new social media website that functions like an online bulletin board that allows users to organize images into boards for specific categories. Basically, when you “pin” something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Like Facebook content, your Pinterest pins can go viral. The site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December, up from 1.6 million in September.

Such a drastic increase in its popularity should be enough for small businesses to pay attention to this new social media platform and seriously consider creating a business profile on Pinterest to draw potential customers.

By posting images of the company’s products or services and linking them back to the company website, the social media platform serves as a virtual store catalog that allows consumers convenient and easy access. An example of a company that has started to use Pinterest as a platform to connect with customers is Whole Foods Market that pins pictures of food art and images of recycled or reused products to promote responsibility to the environment among its customers.

While this new social media platform provides an easy and convenient way for companies to market their goods, it might not be suitable for businesses that provide products or services that are not visual. However, I feel that Pinterest is certainly a tool that appeals to the Generation Y consumers who are more likely to become members of social media websites and use them on a regular basis. In addition, this tool would be advantageous to fashion retailers who would like to keep consumers up to date with their latest fashion collections and trends.

If you are a fellow Generation Y, why don’t you give Pinterest a try? You’ll be surprised at what you might find!

Have you been in the situation where you missed a deal on Groupon? Or have you bought coupons from Groupon only to realize that you might not be able to use them after all? Fret not! Being an avid deal finder, these are the situations I often find myself caught in after making a purchase on Dealfind or Groupon. However, I recently found a solution to my problems with CouponTrade!

Founded last winter by George Bousis and Brad Wasz, CouponTrade is an online marketplace where consumers sell unused gift cards and daily deals, and businesses peddle couponcodes, digital coupons and discount gift certificates.

Pullen talks here about how CouponTrade can help attract customers to your company though unused deals. I found this article relevant because while browsing through this website, I managed to find discount coupons from companies that I had not heard of before or bought deals from but don’t remember. This website helped refresh my memory of those companies and even prompted me to Google them to find out more.

In 2010, Rice University conducted a Facebook study on Dessert Gallery (DG), a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain to assess the effectiveness of Facebook marketing on customer loyalty.

Researchers in the Rice study claim that Facebook changed customer behavior for the better.

According to the study, Facebook fans of Dessert Gallery made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month; spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG; spent 33 percent more at DG’s stores. In addition, they were more likely to recommend DG to friends and had greater emotional attachment to the company.

However, it does make one wonder whether the findings of this study can be applied to other companies as well? Does having a Facebook fanpage with a high number of followings correlate to more effective marketing?

In my opinion, I do not think that a high Facebook following necessarily indicates an effective marketing strategy. I believe that there should be more concrete tools in measuring the success of a company’s online marketing efforts and in my research I came across some recommended links that would help a manager measure more accurately the effectiveness of the company’s social media effectiveness.

An example is klout.com that measures a company’s ability to drive action in social networks. The website processes this data on a daily basis to give an updated Klout Score each morning.

Here are a few of the website uses to measure influence:

• Twitter: Retweets and Mentions
• Facebook: Comments, Wall-Posts, Likes
• LinkedIn: Comments, Likes
• Foursquare: Tips, To-Do’s, Done
• Google+: Comments, Reshares, +1

I think this website serves as a better tool in measuring the effectiveness of a company’s online marketing efforts as it takes into account the online presence of the company’s website from many different social media platforms While it is not perfect, I believe that the company will still be able to obtain useful information from the results from this tool.

Harvard Business Review article on Rice University Facebook study

One of the most potent viral marketing tools is the video medium through popular video hosting websites such as Youtube and Vimeo. With the merging of popular social media websites such as Facebook and Youtube, a video posted on Youtube can generate over thousands of views in a matter of hours. This is done through the “share” button found at the bottom of the Youtube video, allowing viewers to share interesting videos with their friends on Facebook conveniently with just a simple click of the mouse.

Such a powerful marketing tool is known as the Viral Video Phenomenon. There are many examples of companies and brands gaining recognition and popularity among consumers through the use of a viral advertisement that is uploaded on Youtube. One that struck me was the promotional trailer of the movie “Contagion” in 2011, which involved the making of a promotional stunt carried out in Toronto which involved the collaboration of the makers of the film and microbiologists and immunologists from around the world to create a one-of-a-kind bacteria billboard. The billboard was eventually mounted on a storefront window in Toronto over a five-day period and was part of a pre-launch publicity for “Contagion”.

The video (shown below) shows the making of the promotional event was uploaded on Youtube and eventually turned viral as many started re-posting the video link on their Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds, contributing to the movie’s gross earnings to $23.1 million in the first week of the movie’s launch.

The success of this publicity stunt is a good example of how companies can use the Viral Video Phenomenon to their advantage by creating a one-of-a-kind advertisement that catches the attention of viewers. Of course, one must still remember that content is king. While a video on Youtube has the power to go viral on various social media websites in a matter of hours, one must still ensure that the content of the video closely relates to the company brand or product. One should still keep in mind when using a Youtube video as a marketing tool that one should not make the mistake of making a video only to have the audience remember the aesthetics of the video but not the company’s name or brand.

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