In Focus

Lisa Wehr
Social Media Posted on November 12, 2007

Generating buzz

There are a lot of products and brands generating buzz for the holiday season. But this year, it's the way the buzz is being generated that's attracting considerable media and consumer scrutiny. Many of the year's hottest products and websites are employing new and creative social media tactics to reach and engage the buying public.

In September 2007, my company, Oneupweb, took a look at 12 of the most talked about products and/or retailers for the upcoming holiday shopping season to see how each was, or was not, using social media to improve holiday sales. Besides identifying effective social media tactics, the study will serve as a benchmark for future examination of evolving trends and strategies. 

Findings
Each of the "hot" products we profiled had creatively and extensively used social media, while not all of their competitors had followed suit. From blogs, podcasts, interactive video tours and consumer-generated content of all kinds to entire social networks and virtual worlds, these companies have been strategically generating and marketing their holiday buzz in creative new ways. Take a look at some examples (the complete study can be downloaded at Oneupweb.com).

Author notes: Lisa Wehr is CEO and founder of Oneupweb, an integrated online marketing firm. Read full bio. 

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Comments

Lisa Wehr
Lisa Wehr November 14, 2007 at 1:49 PM

Alokedeep – Thanks for reading. I think social media marketing strategies can and should be applied, even in emerging markets. Early adopters of social media will quickly become sophisticated users, so marketers are best to get in the game early. One great way to get ahead is by developing social media tools such as podcasts, blogs, RSS feeds and video content. This can be done fairly simply for individual sites, and these tactics don't rely on outside social networking sites. You can also include blog posts in multiple languages. On his website, author Khaled Hosseini's blog has readers' posts in at least four languages. Though much more ambitious, Apple maintains multiple language websites. Another thought is using mobile technology for social interaction. Mobile networks seem better established in emerging markets than some other technologies. In our study, Sephora maintains an opt-in mobile blog that works quite well for them. And, especially in markets where social media marketing is just beginning to gain momentum, integration of online and offline marketing strategies is vital. You can find our study, The Secrets of Social Media Success: How 2007 Hot Holiday Products Are Being Marketed Online, at OneUpWeb.com.

Alokedeep Singh
Alokedeep Singh November 12, 2007 at 11:44 PM

Hi Lisa, Excellent article. Just wanted to ask you that how much of this can be applied to markets such as India & China where social media marketing is in a pretty nascent stage with the no. of web users being only a small fraction of the total population.