Successful Social Media Marketing: Case Studies

Social Media Success Stories

It's often difficult to figure out just what to do with this thing called social media, at least from a marketing perspective. Sometimes the easiest way to understand the application of a completely new marketing approach is to learn by example. That's why we've compiled a few case studies of companies that are doing social media right.

We’re starting the conversation. Give advice on social media success stories. What works to get something to "go viral"? Read what others say by using the tabs on this page. The MarketingZone editors will continuously update and improve this article based on our research and input from the community.

What qualifies as "viral"?

Visible Measures, the leading independent third-party measurement firm for Internet video publishers, consider a video with 1 million views stalled (!), 4 million views as “embraced” and 10 million views as VIRAL. Videos that go viral are very rare.
How to Measure Brand Buzz outlines free and paid services and tools to measure online conversations and social media.

From our experience: 10,000 views of a video is amazing for a small company. Even 2,000 viewers can translate in more sales and leads for a small business. If you paid a low CPM (cost per thousand) of just $2, those 10,000 views of your video would cost $2,000. With video marketing you are getting the "air time" for free and your cost is producing the video and your time to place it online. Learn more about Video Marketing, one type of social media marketing.

The legends of social media success stories

Blend Tec's Will It Blend? videos that demonstrated an industrial-strength blender destroying cell phones, whole fish, shoes and more.
The Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercials have managed to go viral to the tune of 23 million viewers plus all the word of mouth offline and the press coverage.
Word-of-mouth led to Pulitzer fiction win for Paul Hardings novel Tinkers. Read the story in the Boston Globe about what happened.
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center employees created a video to support breast cancer that went viral on YouTube and got coverage by ABC News.
The video of The Digital Story of the Nativity that was created and posted on YouTube and attracted millions of viewers.
Give advice to share what you think are great examples of social media that's gone viral. The MarketingZone Editors will continuously update this article to add the best ideas shared by the community.

The ClippingZone
The best marketing articles, blog posts and reports from around the web

eMarketer article that shows despite widespread adoption of social media, measurement still lags. Only 16% of those polled said they currently measured ROI for their social media programs. More than four in 10 respondents did not even know whether the social tools they were using had ROI measurement capabilities.
Here's a Mashable article on How to calculate ROI of social media.
Take a look at this cool tool from Dragon Search Marketing to help measure ROI of social media marketing.
Mashable article 8 Brands that Have Found Success on Facebook

What do you have to say? Join the conversation!

Give advice about social media - what makes a success story?
Read what others have to say by using the tabs on this article.
The MarketingZone Editors will continuously update and improve this article based on our research and feedback from the community.

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