Social Media Marketing

As Facebook defines the future of consumerism in America, chief marketing officers are scrambling to find unique ways to leverage the social network to drive sales. It's important to hook a customer, but to keep them engaged is another story — one that ultimately depends on how much business you can create on the most popular networking site in the world.

Google+ may surpass 10 million users just two weeks after its launch. The numbers don't come from Google, but from Paul Allen, the Ancestry.com founder who posted on Google+ the results of a "surname-based analysis" which "shows that the number of Google+ users worldwide reached 7.3 million yesterday (July 10) — up from 1.7 million users on July 4th. That is a 350 percent increase in six days."

As more consumers access social media via mobile devices, it changes the way they research and shop for products and services offline. Knowledge Networks and MediaPost Communications surveyed teen and adult social media users for “The Faces of Social Media” study and found that, in May 2011, 40 percent of respondents accessed social media via their mobile phones. This was an increase from 28 percent who reported doing the same in September 2010.

Hermes is breaking its normal interaction with Facebook fans by posting photos of nude paintings. Compared to other post types, these receive a much higher number of likes and comments, suggesting that shock tactics can be an effective way to promote engagement.

These are the boom years for social media and mobile apps, which continue to grow at a torrid pace. Wal-Mart’s Facebook fans doubled to more than 6 million since February, Victoria’s Secret’s Twitter followers nearly tripled to 126,335 in the same period, and Sears has upped its mobile ante to 21. 

Heinz is eyeing potential e-commerce campaigns for future tomato ketchup products following the success of its first Facebook shop. The company became the first fast-moving consumer goods brand to sell a product via the social network earlier this year when it made a limited-edition flavor of tomato ketchup available exclusively through Facebook.

After shutting down the Google+ invitation process late last week because of "insane demand" from people eager to try out its new social network, Google once again began to allow new members.

British apparel and accessories designer Burberry is tapping YouTube to uniquely display the features of its new Brights eyewear collection. Burberry displayed a video on its branded video channel that shows how the glasses fold into itself. The brand promoted the glasses and the video via Facebook and Twitter.

Someone — unbeknownst to the Ralph Laurn camp — had claimed the Twitter handle @RalphLaurenUSA and started to tweet on behalf of the brand. The feed mostly has retweets and replies thanking followers for their support. One post even talks about Ralph Lauren's partnership with Wimbledon. The big question we have is why?

Google stopped inviting users to join its new social network less than 48 hours after beginning a limited release of the service. Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra said the company had shut down the invite mechanism for the Google+ service for the night, in a note he posted on Google+.