• Google’s new Search by Image
• Tumblr Now Has More Blogs Than WordPress.com
• Young European Women Spent Most Time on Social Networks
• Facebook Loses 6 Million US Users in May
• A Field Guide to Brand Advocates (PDF Study)
• Up Close With Twitter’s New Photo Sharing Feature
• Foursquare community has over 10,000,000 members!
• Mobile Social Media Up Nearly Fifty Percent in Past Year
• Journalists Upset Over Focusing On Keywords In Stories
• YouTube now gets 40% of online video traffic
• Internet users now have more and closer friends than those offline

• The Unlit Social Graph
• 6 Questions With Virgin America’s Porter Gale: Getting Social Media Right
• The Rise of the ‘Second Internet‘
• Will Facebook Ever Become An E-commerce Powerhouse?
• Why the Mobile Web is Not the Traditional Web
• The 10 Most Innovative Web Companies
• 5 New Technologies that Will Change the World of Mobile Advertising
• How HTML5 Will Kill the Native App
• Twitter to Offer Brand Pages (Like Facebook’s)
• Marketers Shift More Dollars Toward Social Media
• Larry Page Just Tied ALL Employees’ Bonuses To The Success Of Google’s Social Strategy
• Twitter Arms Marketers with More Tools to Target Users
• Facebook for iPhone Gets Events Check-Ins, Maps & Unfriending
• How to Create Effective Facebook Wall Posts
• Don’t Think of Foursquare As a Game
• Angry Birds Rio: 10MM Downloads in 10 Days

To stay up to date in real time, follow us on Twitter.

Branded communities is becoming an increasingly important communication strategy – with 1.5 billion social network daily visits and a large percentage of users also joining and recommending branded communities, it would be wise to start examining what your business’s social media and community framework is.

Below is a collection of links to some social media case studies available on the Internet that will hopefully assist in your internal social media discussions and brainstorming.

Best Buy: A social media case study

Old Spice Social Campaign Case Study Video

Social Media and Car Insurance: A Match Made in Heaven?

Nestle’s Facebook Page: How a Company Can Really Screw Up Social Media

Four Social Case Studies from Coca-Cola

Social Media case study: Lego Click

How Cirque Du Soleil Uses Social Media

The Inside Scoop on How Intel Manages Its Facebook Page

British Airways OpenSkies Social Media Case Study

How Does Microsoft Do Social Media Marketing?

Heineken Italy. Case Study – Champions League Match vs Classical Concert

Case Study: How To Blatantly Advertise Through Social Media And Get Away With It

InterContinental Hotels Group bets on Gowalla for major summer promo

Burberry: The Facebook Trench Coat Campaign

3 Things We Can Learn From IKEA’s Facebook Campaign

The NBA’s Social Media Strategy & Tactics

Dove Self-Esteem Campaign — Learn Social Media by Example

Hotel Social Media Case Study: Fairmont Chicago

Twitter ROI Case Study – Dell Generates $3 Million in Sales Utilizing Twitter

How Social Media Helped Cisco Shave $100,000+ Off a Product Launch

Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: a case study

How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation

Being HUGE on Twitter – A Small Business Case Study

Case study: The Home Depot

Molson Canada – A Social Media Case Study

Old Spice – The Man Your Content Could Smell Like

Posted by Gino Cosme

While many luxury brands are using social media in some shape or form – as an example, most of the luxury brands have a presence on Facebook – not all have taken the bold steps to include social media as an integral part of their research, advertising and communication strategies. In fact, only a few have really focused on building a solid, engaged community of fans and leveraging social media and technology to their full advantage.

Listed below are some examples of luxury brands using social media. These examples show how new and emerging digital markets can hold potential for luxury brands on the Internet – and that technology and luxury can go hand-in-hand, especially when you consider that reports continue to indicate that the wealthy are almost all on the Internet.

Bulgari

Bulgari’s web campaign for the launch of their B.zero1 jewels allowed users to engage with 3D to find out more about the new collection and the artist behind the collection. There was an iPhone application and the digital experience included some beautiful screensavers and wallpapers. What really stood out was how Bulgari used Facebook and social media to let fans share with friends their wishes for the future, the result of which can be seen on their website under the experience room. (Unfortunately many luxury brands still think it’s necessary to use Flash for these interactive campaigns. This is far from the truth and in actual fact can prevent greater successes.) That said, the campaign was innovative and creative, touched all the right, relevant social media and digital channels, and allowed the consumer to participate in instead of just consume the campaign.

Jimmy Choo

Relatively new to the social media arena, luxury shoe brand Jimmy Choo launched a FourSquare campaign called “Jimmy Choo Trainer Hunt”. The idea behind the social media campaign, which was supported by a Twitter profile and Facebook Page too, was to engage with users through a treasure hunt for a pair of Jimmy Choo trainers, that would check-in at various locations around London. Consumers who arrived at a check-in venue before the Jimmy Choo trainers left would receive a pair of the trainers for free.

Dolce & Gabbana

While not a social media campaign exactly, Dolce & Gabbana menswear introduced “technology as fashion” when for their 20th anniversary they hung LCD monitors and iPads showing images of their 20 years of menwear – a great way of showcasing history with modernity. Of course, D&G aren’t new to the technology arena – they’ve already used the iPhone and Android mobile devices for streaming their fashion shows. What would be great is similar executions that also tap into the likes of their Facebook and Twitter profiles, not only taking the D&G experience to their consumers but also bringing the consumer experience into the runway environment, much like Burberry did (see below).

Burberry

Burberry, a luxury fashion house in Britain, used rich media and live streaming at their Spring Summer show in Milan earlier this year. Fans could live comment and share images via Twitter and Facebook on the event website, live.Burberry.com, as well as download the on-demand version of the stream post event. Naturally the brand leverages its very active and engaging Facebook and Twitter profiles (and YouTube too), and always creates content in a very cohesive manner. However, what stands out from Burberry’s other campaigns is their Art of the Trench website, a site that pays tribute to the trench coat – something Burberry is renowned for – by inviting fans to publish and share pictures of themselves wearing one.

Mercedes-Benz

Luxury brands using social media aren’t isolated to just the fashion industry. Luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz has its own YouTube channel, Facebook Page, an application for the iPhone and the iPad, and has dabbled somewhat successfully with viral video. However what really stood out was their use of an invitation-only online community in which Gen Y customers could share their thoughts about the brand through virtual focus groups, forums, questionnaires, and live chat sessions. Most recent is BMW’s viral-meets-social-media campaign that indirectly generates buzz for a somewhat mysterious car reveal.

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton is no stranger to the world of social media. With a very successful social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the luxury brand from France knows how to leverage their social media community to create hype and foster brand loyalty. Most recently Louis Vuitton used FourSquare for its new store opening on New Bond Street Street in London; if you followed Louis Vuitton on FourSquare and checked in or nearby a participating venue you’d see tips on LV staff members’ favorite locations in and around London. Users could also unlock the Louis Vuitton badge on FourSquare by checking into the new Louis Vuitton store three times. They also made it possible for their social media fans to become one of the first to know about the new store’s exclusive opening by releasing  information about the event on their Facebook Page, creating an event on Facebook, and tweeting about it on Twitter. Through the use of a Facebook application, fans could the London store’s opening live, update their status about the event, comment on the opening ceremony, and share pictures with other people.

Other luxury brands using social media successfully and to their advantage include:

Tiffany & Co on Facebook
American Express Open Forum
Armani’s Facebook Page
Gucci’s Facebook Page, Gucci Connect and Gucci Eyeweb

Post by Gino Cosme

The latest news on everyone’s lips is Google Instant Search. This video by Google introduces Instant Search and aims to help users understand what all the hype is about and how it works.

Aside from the usability factor, Instant Search offers marketers one indicator of the strength of a brand on the Internet. As a simple example, hit the letter F and Facebook comes up first. Hit the letter V and Verizon comes up.For more information on this, check out this Huffington Post article (Who owns the other 25 letters in the alphabet?).

However, predictive search results to a large degree have been around for a while now. What’s really new with Google Instant Search is the dynamic page loads, which Google says saves users precious time. “The user benefits of Google Instant are many — but the primary one is time saved. Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search.”

Steve Rubel posted that Google Instant Search makes SEO irrelevant. We say it’s evolving the discipline to a higher level and think it’s a great improvement to the whole Search experience. Now, more than ever, it’s important to pay attention to those all important SEO factors. As a starting point, look at the titles of your pages and start from there.

Listed below is a slightly tweaked list of the shortcomings that apply to some brands using social media – especially those companies who are less open to self-criticism.

What are they?

• Believing that the brand alone has the answers to problems or issues.
• Thinking that their brand is infallible.
• Forgetting to understand that one of their main purposes is to inform and engage with consumers for their own business objectives and not necessarily to just beat the competition.
• Building strategies on trends alone. Social media strategy should stand the duration of the company’s existence, and should be in some shape or form applicable in many years to come.
• Disguising the truth.
• Not listening to the local and global conversations related to their brands, competitors, and industry verticals – and then learning from this observation.
• Having no real interest or passion for the social media medium, and doing it purely because they feel they ‘have to’.
• Having too much ego – and having this come across in the social media efforts.
• Failing to think about their readers or audience, and not recognising that social media is a service to same.
• Conforming to the ordinary – the norm – instead of looking for new ways to stand out.
• Limiting the building of internal skill sets.
• Resisting any proposed change.
• Lacking any form of solidarity with their target market.
• Lacking any creativity and initiative.
• Unwilling to investigate or to confuse tactic with ‘strategy’ and ‘research’.

What do you think?

by Gino Cosme