Yesterday Chris Garrett posted a list of 22 social media tools with notable brand examples (originally from Peter Kim) and after reading it I thought:
Cool, it’s nice to have a reference of which companies are using these tools well, but I don’t plan on working for or with McDonalds on their podcasting, so who are some of the local companies that are getting this right?
I’ve started working on a list for Colorado companies, can you help me fill in the blanks?
1 – Blogs
I’m going to narrow this one down to blogs that are current (have posts at least monthly) and have a human voice. You’d be surprised how many companies I see that put up a blog that basically regurgitates their latest earnings call presentation. Ooh, exciting. Not.
- National: Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines
- Colorado: New Belgium Brewing, Crocs, Ciber, and tons of others. Let me know who your favorites are in the comments.
2 – Bookmarking/Tagging
I am frequently on delicious, adding, searching for, or updating bookmarks. I’ve heard of creating descriptive pages for a specific set of your tags, but I hadn’t run across a company actually using it in this way. Pretty cool.
3 – Brand monitoring
Lots of companies are jumping into this realm – I think this will quickly become a standard tool in your online arsenal.
4 – Content aggregation
This could be content aggregation companies or those that are actively using content aggregation tools to manage/monitor content about their company.
- National: Alltop, EMC (using FriendFeed)
- Colorado: ??
5 – Crowdsourcing/Voting
I’d never heard of UDR before, but they’re one of the largest companies in Colorado and their website was an official honoree for the 2009 Webby Awards. Maybe my tech circle is too small!)
6 – Discussion boards and forums
Tell you the truth, I’m a little surprised at how little I found for local companies. Maybe the larger companies are keeping these for (paying!) customer use only?
- National: IBM, Mountain Dew
- Colorado: SurveyGizmo
7 – Events and meetups
Based on Chris’ examples, I’m guessing he’s talking about companies that use social media to promote their events/meetups; or that sponsor social media events and meetups. Fortunately, the Denver/Boulder tech scene seems to be very supportive of each other and have developed several events to learn, connect, and engage.
- National: Molson, Pampers
- Colorado: Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup (sponsored by OneRiot and others), Silicon Flatirons
8 – Mashups
- National: Fidelity Investments, Nike
- Colorado: HealthGrades
9 – Microblogging
Twitter has really caught on in the Front Range – at least among the startup set.
- National: method, Whole Foods
- Colorado: Flying Dog Ales, Time Warner Telecom, Downtown Boulder Businesses on Twitter
10 – Online video (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
This wouldn’t include the video embedded on a company’s site – those fall under the same category as the “list of executives”, “investor relations”, “blah, blah, blah corporate speak” pages.
- National: Eukanuba, Home Depot
- Colorado: Crocs, Tattered Cover
11 – Organization and staffing
Chris’ examples include big companies who have snapped up social media talent and, I think, assumes that this means the big guys are ready to make a formal commitment to social media. There’s also been a lot of buzz recently around companies that are using Twitter for recruiting.
- National: Ford, Pepsi
- Colorado: Qwest (staffed up their social media group and launched a new portal in April ‘09), Jobing (a staffing and recruiting site that is actively using social media)
12 – Outreach programs
- National: Nokia, Yum Brands
- Colorado: ?
13 – Photosharing
Interesting statistic I picked up at Startup Weekend Boulder 3 – Photobucket’s market share and traffic have been way above Flickr for quite awhile (although it looks like Photobucket is losing market share), but only about 5% of the people in the room had, or were using Photobucket. Everyone was using Flickr. Now that so many folks are posting photos on Facebook, it will be interesting to see if companies start adding more photos directly to Facebook or keep them in Flickr.
- National: Rubbermaid, UK Government
- Colorado: Crocs, Flying Dog Ales, Chipotle (hosted on their own site, but definitely community focused)
14 – Podcasting
- National: Ericsson, McDonalds
- Colorado: Time Warner Telecom, NewsGator, Callisto.fm (currently developing a “Pandora for podcasts” product)
15 – Presentation sharing
Anyone out there using SlideShare? SlideShare+LinkedIn?
- National: CapGemini, Daimler AG
- Colorado: ?
16 – Public Relations – social media releases
17 – Ratings and reviews
18 – Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities
- National: British Airways, Saturn
- Colorado: Brightkite, Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup, (who else? I’m away from my Facebook today…)
19 – Sponsorships
20 – Virtual worlds
I know a lot of geeks and a lot of gamers and I still can’t imagine that this would be more than an extreme niche space for a company.
- National: National Geographic, Toyota
- Colorado: ??
21 – Widgets
- National: Southwest Airlines, Target
- Colorado: Lijit, NewsGator, OneRiot
22 – Wikis
As much as I love wikis, I think they’re very much a niche product for most companies and if used, stay behind the firewall. Can someone show me differently?
- National: Second Life, T-Mobile Sidekick
- Colorado: ??
Obviously this is not a comprehensive list – I could spend several pages just listing great Twitter and blog feeds – but hopefully it will be a helpful start if you want to see how Colorado companies are engaging with social media. Don’t forget to add your suggestions in the comments!
