• Join the Earth Day Network on Facebook and record your Acts of Green. This green advocacy and action organization is generating year-long engagement and participation through its use of Social Media, starting with Earth Day.

• Save Your Water Calculator. Underwriters Laboratories created this online interactive calculator to help us better understand our water usage and how a few easy tweaks to our daily habits can save water. Living in California we all know that every drop counts, especially during fire season.

• Join Coca-Cola and Ocean Conservancy for Earth Month. Coca-Cola will donate $1 for every person who uses the Facebook app, up to a total of $200,000. It will also contribute up to $50,000 through the MyCokeRewards points program.

• Join Causeworld and donate your karma points to environmental charities. Have an iPhone or iTouch? Download this app and start checking into places you normally visit (ala Foursquare), build your karma points, then donate to the charity or your choice.  Environmental charities include Carbonfund.org and   AmericanForrests.org to name a few.

• Check out Care2.com. Visit this 13+ Million member community and find your own way to make a difference.

About Irene Shin

As Fanscape’s Coordinator, Digital Communications, Shin fully supports the company’s marketing efforts by assisting on the campaigns, developing materials and keeping the department organized.

Shin earned her degree in Psychology & Social Behavior from University of California, Irvine.

From a shoppers standpoint, retailers took the Twitter plunge this year and really stepped up their game. Nordstrom has done a good job with updating their audience as has outdoor shopping center, The Grove in Los Angeles.  Although the promotion is now closed, Sephora’s Sephora Claus campaign granted a beauty product a day wish to 30 deserving customers and even added a $1 charitable donation from every purchase in the last few days of the promotion.

Customer service is playing a big role on Twitter as well. In a previous Digitally Approved post (Customer Service in the Twitterverse), the efficiency of the @BoseService team was discussed in connection to resolving a consumer issue that wasn’t even posted on their specific page nor did it have a # tag.  Nice looking out for your customers Bose!

Massive shoe retailer Zappos.com is looking out for their customer base on Twitter by offering support and positive service, big box retailer Best Buy’s Twelpforce quickly trouble shooting and responding to product questions, and restaurant chain, California Pizza Kitchen, recently sending a follower a $30 gift certificate because of a bad dining experience. In an era of questionable customer service, big thumbs up to our Tweeting retailers for really good customer service.

As a company or a brand, want a way to track and gauge the relevance of your tweets? Give Tweeiator a go. This application is easily loaded to your site and, in real time, you can see where your tweets are going and how they are received.

Couldn’t leave our Tweet round up with out mentioning some of the best in celeb and athlete musings. Sitting at lunch today a few Fanscapers were talking about TV of all things and the Christmas episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia came up and then turned to Danny DeVito’s Troll Foot diaries on Twitter. Will admit, didn’t really know about this, but hell if this ain’t some funny stuff. He takes pictures of his Troll Foot in various places and at various events then posts them to his Twitter.

For some time now I have been raving about the one and only @OGOchoCinco.  He can be very profound like he has been the past few days in connection to the death of his friend and teammate, Chris Henry, but he can also be ridiculously funny (and sure a little self-serving) as well.

You could be one of Ashton Kutcher’s more than FOUR MILLION followers, keep up with the Queen of all Media, Oprah and learn about the Carl’s Jr. menu from  Kim Kardashian, but you’re not going to get the non sequiturs like you could by following Rainn Wilson (of The Office fame). He can easily go from apologizing for being a downer and sharing his experienc in Hati to this:    

Like stated from the onset, 2009 was pretty darn Tweet-tastic. Way too many amazing people, brands and retailers to list, but hopefully this little Best of gave you a few more places to check out or think about.

If you go to www.LetsSayThanks.com you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq . You can’t pick out who gets it, but it will go to a member of the armed services. A great way to bring so many of us together to say thanks that is FREE and only takes a few seconds.

Volunteering is always an excellent way to make a big league impact on the lives of others and doesn’t cost anything but a little bit of your time. Idealist.org is a great site to check out to find opportunities in your area. The site complies single-day occasions as well as ongoing situations. Be a mentor to a child/youth, go to your local food bank and donating blood at the Red Cross are just a few simple ways you can give this holiday season and beyond.

Want to be a little more social about your volunteer efforts, try Facebook. There are plenty of organizations that have set up pages offering great ways to help out – food banks, children and seniors to name a few.

Sure I said that there were some cool things to do that don’t cost money, and there are, but what if you really just don’t have the time? The perennial favorite is to donate money to your favorite charity. It’s as simple as dropping a little bit into the bucket or bin before walking into a store. If you don’t have a favorite non-profit, you can visit a site like Charity Navigator that helps you find a worthy cause for your donation. Non-profits always appreciate money, but they also love their volunteers too.

Just a little food for thought.

Social media is the perfect venue to catch brands in the act of doing good deeds on the behalf of consumers or the environment, and many brands have embraced the immediacy of social networks to reach consumers quickly and efficiently.  I recently caught Bose in the act of doing something good on Twitter, and as a Bose customer I now have a new respect for their service tactics and involvement in social media.

Last week I was saddened to realize that my Bose ear bud headphones were broken: sound was only coming from one ear bud.  A little bit of cord wiggle action would help, but they were pretty much useless.  I went to Twitter to voice my sadness:

I decided I’d have to buy a cheap pair of headphones to hold me over until Christmas.  Quality headphones come in handy when living with three roommates and battling the monotony of running on treadmills, but my wallet isn’t exactly in the position to fork over $100 for new Bose headphones.

Lucky for me, @boseservice noticed my tweet within an hour and offered their services.  The resulting direct message conversation via Twitter lead me to filing a replacement order. Once I ship out my damaged pair, I will be receiving a brand new set of headphones for half the price, even though my warranty is long expired.

My experience with Bose was pain free and surprisingly easy.  Instead of defecting from the Bose brand and buying a cheaper set of headphones, Bose offered me a deal to secure my loyalty to the brand and hopefully encourage me to tell people about my amazing customer service experience.

Many brands are on Twitter, Facebook and the like.  But the level of conversational interaction with consumers varies with each brand.  It’s not enough to just post company and product information to your followers or fan page members, there needs to be an initiative that seeks out consumer problems or recommendations and digs deeper to develop a one-on-one relationship with a particular customer.  And this needs to be enacted on a daily basis as part of the company’s social media strategy as a whole.

Social media is a great tactic for brands to reach their consumers, and a little attention to detail can strengthen a brand’s image and reputation among brand loyalists. Bose’s high-end products come with high-end prices, but at least you’re getting what you pay for…and then some.

Everyone knows that Barack Obama doesn’t have an official Facebook page and neither does Steve Jobs or even…God. But we can always wonder, “If any of these people had their own profile page, what would it look like?” And furthermore, “what would they be saying?” Thanks to the people over at Mashable, they garnered as many fake Facebook pages as they could and chose 5 of the most humorous profile pages. With over 1810 retweets and counting, that makes this tweet one of the most talked about this week!

Full article found here.

My favorite update comes from Steve Jobs:
“Hey Bill (Gates), you like Apples? I made the iPod, how do you like them apples?”
Response from Bill Gates: “Thanks a lot Steve. Hope you liked the Zune.”

-Christian

Read this recent Ad Age artcile…

Facebook Turns Focus Group With Splenda Product-Sampling App

Sweetener Uses Site to Give Consumers First Look at Its New Mist Spray and Gather Feedback Pre-Rollout

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Sixteen-thousand samples distributed, 3,100 fans professing their admiration and 1,500 product surveys completed.

Those are the results from a first-of-its-kind campaign conducted by Splenda for its Splenda Mist prototype, a pocket-size spray form of the sweetener, which has yet to hit the market. Traditionally, marketers in that situation might peddle freebies at grocery stores, embrace street sampling or organize focus groups. Splenda instead turned to Facebook.

BROWN: ‘It’s another tool in which to explore a product idea … in a very efficient way.’

“Facebook offered us the opportunity not only to advertise with a brand message and a product message but also the opportunity to solicit feedback and to have our target raise their hand and say, ‘I want to sample this product,’” said Ivy Brown, group product director-Splenda.

The campaign used engagement ads to direct consumers to the Splenda Mist page, where through a custom sampling application, they could sign up for a “first look” at the new product. Splenda grabbed names, shipping addresses and e-mail addresses but also demographic data including gender and age range. When consumers signed up for a sample or became a fan of the product, it showed up in their feeds, which Ms. Brown said helped the campaign spread virally. Splenda had hoped to distribute 10,000 samples in 12 weeks; instead, it gave away more than 16,000 samples in two weeks. Starting Monday, Facebook plans to launch a sampling-based engagement ad, the sixth type of “engagement ad” it’s launched.

Read the whole Ad Age artcile HERE

Sounds like a plan, huh?  Well, what if Apple decides to put out their own version of the Kindle and it’s sexier in a way that only Apple can produce?

Read this article!