Top Social Media Promotions

By Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, The 60 Second Marketer

If you're visiting this page, it's either because you receive the 60 Second Marketer e-newsletter (which, by the way, is packed with great free tips on how to supercharge your marketing) or because you bought "How to Make Money with Social Media" and have clicked through on the additional content from the book.

In either case, we're glad you're here. The 60 Second Marketer is a terrific resource for marketers and businesspeople from around the globe.

We're adding to this list of social media promotions all the time, so please feel free to email us with your favorite uses os social media. Also, you'll find that some of these are specific social media promotions and others are simply the best uses of social media. No matter what, we think you'll find plenty to study here.

With that said, here goes:

Next to Normal, a Broadway show, began publishing an adapted version of the show over Twitter. Over 35 days, the serialized version of the show was published in the form of tweets, short messages utilized by Twitter, a single line from a character at a time.

The Free Hugs camapign on YouTube has been viewed by more than 62 million people. The video is inspirational and hugely viral. Check it out when you need a lift.

Burger King created a Whopper Sacrifice Network on Facebook. The promotion? Delete 10 of your friends from Facebook and receive a free Whopper in the process.

Harley-Davidson does an absolutely stellar job with their Facebook page. If you're expecting to land on their "Wall" then you're out of luck. Check out their lively and engaging lading page on Facebook.

Starbucks decided the best way to engage customers and prospects was to create a website that creates a dialogue with consumers. The result was MyStarbucksIdea.com which allows people to suggest new ideas, vote on their favorite ideas and watch which ones get accepted by Starbucks.

Coca-Cola did something very smart on their Coca-Cola Facebook Fan Page. Rather than create a corporate Fan page run by people in suits, they embraced a page created by two real fans. The result? 12 million fans.

CNN's Twitter page is considered one of the best places for news junkies to get a quick update on the latest-breaking news from around the world.

Toyota decided to create a mini-series of short, funny YouTube videos on their Sienna YouTube campaign. The result? More than 7 million views. If they'd spent media dollars to get that many impressions on primte time TV it would have cost them more than $1.4 million. The media cost to get them on YouTube? $0.

Playstation has done a terrific job with their Playstation Blog. People who are into gaming claim this is one of the best blogs around. Stop on by and check out how they engage people with their lively, approachable blog posts.

Fish Wrangler has created a Facebook application that's getting rave reviews on the internet. If you're interested in an innovative use of Facebook applications, this is a page you'll want to visit.

Run Keeper is a mobile app that allows users to keep track of their health and fitness program. It's much more than that, though. Check out the clean, crisp navigation on the home page. Then download the app and get running!

Dell is the Grand Mac Daddy of Twitter promotions. Nothing too complex here -- just offer a special discount to your Twitter followers. But when you're Dell and you have 1.5 million Twitter followers, every time you offer a promotion, you're generating $50,000 to $100,000 in revenue (by my back-of-the-napkin estimates).

Wildfire is a company that provides easy-to-use templates for Facebook promotions. I've used them before and they're terrific. They're very easy to incorporate into your Facebook page to give it a little more sizzle.

Comcast has done a fabulous job using Twitter to help them with customer service and customer retention. They get the key to social media -- it's about having a dialogue, whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or any other social media tool.

Author Bio: Jamie Turner is the Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. He co-authored "How to Make Money with Social Media" with Dr. Reshma Shah of Emory University and Inflexion Point Marketing.