Social Media Marketing

High-end retailer Neiman Marcus may have been slow to embrace social media, like many luxury brands, but in the last few months it's hosted a number of digital campaigns to boost its online presence. Now the retailer has almost 500,000 fans on Facebook and 50,000 followers on Twitter.

At first glance, a Facebook permissions request can look like an intimidating hurdle for users of Facebook applications. The assumption often made about a Facebook permissions request is that it asks for information users aren't willing to share, that users are put off due to privacy concerns and therefore that they opt in at lower rates.

Hair product brand TRESemmé hit a huge customer relations snafu when an email offering free samples to a few hundred email subscribers was accidentally sent out to tons of fans and posted on its Facebook page. After thousands of people contacted TRESemmé about collecting their free samples, the company realized that it made a mistake and began to backtrack.

Toys"R"Us and J.C. Penney are taking advantage of the customizable features of Facebook fan pages, including the ability to create interactive holiday-themed gaming apps on their Facebook fan pages that reward customers with exclusive discounts. On the Toys"R"Us Facebook page, a tab labeled "Holiday Scavenger Hunt" takes users to a page encouraging them to "Play Now."

Twitter's new profile pages for brands give marketers more tools, such as the ability to feature a promoted tweet at the top of a brand's Twitter page. Twitter says the new pages will help highlight the most engaging and important content and better connect with target audiences.

As the holiday orders pour in, some 3,600 L.L.Bean employees in Maine work the phones, answer questions and take orders. In addition to traditional phone orders, L.L.Bean is wading boot-deep into social media. A 10-member team was recently created to interact with customers on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook has acquired location-sharing service Gowalla for an undisclosed sum, according to a source close to Gowalla. Facebook declined to comment on the deal.

Online retailers should consider how to personalize their sites using Facebook data, as a new study shows 50 percent of visitors to e-commerce sites are logged onto the social network as well.

Google+ will allow multiple admins to manage a brand page “before 2012,” according to a Google marketing strategist. Currently, brand pages are tied to one admin account that has total control over the page and profile. This has been a point of frustration for social media managers who have multiple team members updating their company social profiles.

Searching online wish lists, guessing or just directly asking people what they want as gifts is so 20th century, therefore Wal-Mart is launching a new approach for the holidays — its Shopycat app that scours Facebook profiles, updates, comments and likes to come up with gifts for your friends.