Social Media Case Studies HandpickedEach month there are some 8.100 searches in Google on the term ‘social media case studies’.

A pretty popular search term!

I think these searches come partly from people who are looking for ‘proof’, but also from people who want to learn from the efforts of other companies.

But good social media case studies are hard to find. And besides that, most case studies talk about big brands such as Pepsi, Dell or Zappos.

Over the last year I have been bookmarking links to high quality social media case studies. Most of them are from smaller companies in B2B, B2C, nonprofit and more.

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Below is one of the most inspiring case studies I have seen on music & the principles of anything that ends on ‘2.0’.

It’s a presentation Mike Masnick gave on Midem last year. The presentation is about ‘Serving your Fans’, and his subject is the way that Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) has built his business using not only the tools of social media, but also the principles of 2.0.

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A selection of case studies that all mention clear results…

Everyone likes a good social media case study: marketers or communications people trying to get internal buy-in or business leaders looking for ideas, entry points or examples of where the industry is. But they can be hard to come by.

It’s even harder to find case studies that mention clear and tangible results. Over time I’ve managed to find quite a few of those, so I thought it was now time to share them with you.

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A social media case study…

“Most products are like tampons”. Nice quote. Unfortunately it’s not mine. It’s Josh Bernoff’s, author of the bestselling book “Groundswell – Winning in a world transformed by social technologies”. Josh is also Sr. VP Idea Development at Forrester.

In July of this year Josh gave the keynote speech at IAB Marketplace (see video above), where he talked about a social media strategy deployed by Proctor & Gamble, which significantly increased tampon sales.

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Twitter 101 Guide offers insightful case studies

Twitter is one of today’s most successful social media channels. Having said that, many marketers and companies are skeptical of Twitter. They find it hard to understand how people use Twitter, how active people are and why people use it.

Some useful data on Twitter usage and stats can be found in this report [PDF] from Hubspot.

Still, however skeptical you might be, it is a fact that some companies have successfully used Twitter for their business. Recently the micro blogging platform itself launched Twitter 101, which is a special guide created to explain how companies can use Twitter for their business.

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A successful case study on ‘Crisis Management’ SEO…

My last blog post talking about the benefits of an independent blogging platform and url as opposed to putting your blog on the root corporate web domain. My advice was catered towards small business blogs with a desire to establish thought leadership, build links, gain advocates and encourage conversations.

As a matter of habit I always submit my blog posts to the News and Discussion sections in relevant Linkedin Groups. The topic kicked off a lively debate between PR professionals with many valuable contributions. One of the contributors, Jonathan Bernstein – President at Bernstein Crisis Management Inc – brought some deeper and very practical insights to the table.

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Social media and direct revenue…

Hmmm. Still talking about Dell. And this time it sounds like a Harry Potter title. The only difference is that this actually happened!

The company that initially got engaged in social media to repair the Dell Hell reputation damage, has now produced $1 million in revenue directly through Twitter! Dell’s Twitter followers receive messages when discounted products become available in the company’s Home Outlet Store.

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PR should always be driven by business objectives…

The ‘Best job in the world’ story broke on January 12, 2009. As a result, more than 30.000 people posted their one-minute job application video in a bid to become caretaker of Hamilton Island, a tropical Island off the coast of Queensland, Australia.

But how many people will remember ‘Hamilton Island’ in a few months from now?

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Or why brand building beats crisis communications…

Now here’s a company that learned about engaging in online communications the hard way. This is a classic case study that dates back to 2005/2006.

What started with a blog post of one person, caught fire on the Internet and ended up with ‘Dell Hell’ as the most highly ranked Google search term associated with Dell for some time.

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A golden case study…

It’s an old story now, but a great example of how you can build exposure cheaply and effectively using online PR. Nintendo Wii, the fantastically popular home gaming console, used the blogosphere to it’s advantage when they pitched influential blogger Heather Armstrong.

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