Social Media Case Studies – The Hot List

Social Media Case Studies

There’s more and more case studies on social media, web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. Keeping track of them all is an on-going project. Here’s some of the ones I’ve been looking at lately. This is not meant to be a definitive list, it’s more like a set of bookmarks, but if there’s a really good one I’ve missed out, please add a comment* or ping me on Twitter, on my remiss and I’ll add it.

Tip – scroll to the bottom to see the latest Social Media Case Study

I’m putting any new ones at the top.

Social Media Today: Extensive List of over 30 Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies and Reports


Update – I’ve added some background to why I’ve put this list together – ‘Which side of the Firewall is Hotter?‘ My contention is that what’s happening inside the firewall is what really matters most. Happy to discuss…

The Hot List

SAP – A company transforms itself via social media (pdf)

BlogCouncil a stack of presentations from major corporations from last year’s Blogwell Gaspedal conference

Ford Amber Naslund interviews Scott Monty to see what he and his team are up to at Ford Motors

SeaWorld ROI of social media

Lego and Cluetrain

X-Men using MySpace to promote the movie

British Telecom learn about Richard Dennison and BT’s adoption of social media

Clear Water and Paull Young’s birthday – charity fundraising and social media

Cisco and the ASR 1000 launch by LaSandra Brill

Social Media Club SF – 3 case studies on Starbucks, Hooman TV and Dwell on Design

British Airways and Open Skies

ThePet.net not much detail, but notes on Qube’s project: social networking for pets, (and their owners)

Emergence Twitter and Social Media Relations. Blog by Daniel Riveong on Twitter, ‘brands’ such as No 10, Zappos and their Twitter communications

Techmash by Engage in PR

Breaking Point and Part II by Engage in PR

Lists of lists (inevitably some overlap here)

Ignite Tag Mining and 50 top retailers

Janssen-Cilag using Jitter to microblog in the enterprise

Corporate Lists

Kaya Social Media and Dermatology by Windchimes

Forrester Case Studies

Allen & Overy – UK based global law firm and web 2.0

Design Commission - Transcending E-mail as a Platform for Multi-Person Collaboration

Information Week Digital Library (Requires registration)

The United Church of Christ social media for young Christians

Motrin – ‘moms’ speak back via Twitter

Zemanta tool for music bloggers

Ama Tu Salud health therapist migrate from OSCcommerce platform to Drupal (interesting use of Opensource)

Humana’s Freewheelin social media case study on bike sharing initiative

Intrawest an ‘Uncase Study’ by Kipp Bodnar at Digital Capitalism on what Intrawest could do, to do better

FTSE 100 Social Media usage, well some of the 100 but a good start

Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company Using blogs to promote a brand with real Java coffee

Best Buy ‘Blue Shirt Nation’ video case study on Social Computing for a generation of new recruits

MGM Grand -video case study on employee engagement

Belkin – learning the hard way after ‘rogue’ employee tweaks the wisdom of crowds

American Express using ‘Open Forum’ platform to attract new customers and retain old (I’m one and not heard about this until now!)

Asics Shoe Company – Corporate video and engagement through a big WOW- factor video!

Kraft iFood assistant on the iPhone – one of the top 100 apps and consumers pay 99c for it…

Novartis – video compo on YouTube (Blog Council, not much info at present)

Dell, Monsanto, iContact, Sabre 4 very different approaches to internal comms and technology.

IBM – Corporate Culture and Social Media – why the culture is so important for success

The Rose Project – Dublin based not-for-profit using Twitter and Blogs to help support charity work in Africa

TriWest Healthcare Alliance – e-mail/video campaign raises awareness with over 1 million people watching video on support for troops. 1st use of social media by TriWest – raising $ with social media.

BBQAddicts.com an enquiry via Twitter starts global viral web campaign to bring home the bacon

IZEA Kmart use whole range of Social Media Marketing tools/platforms inc Twitter and A-List bloggers to get their message through and raise brand awareness. Good range of metrics to back it up.

CoffeeGroundz Mr Tweet shows off how Twitter doubled the clientele in a Houston coffee shop

Carnival Cruise Lines using Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to build brand and customer loyalty

Namecheap O’Reilly study on using Twitter to drive sales

Auto-Transporter.com not really social media but good article on usability and doubling conversion rates by using ClickTale to gather the right data and making changes to forms

No Reservations / SnapMyLife – neat study on using mobile photo sharing to keep a TV show’s audience engaged

Schindler’s ‘Killer Elavators’ not really a case study but a very good example of where open communications using social media inside and outside the corporation would be kind of useful

Barack Obama Strategy Slideshare on the Obama campaign – neat round up of what was used when and by whom in the campaign

Australian Bushfires humanity at its best and most ugliest – Twitter, mashups and mobs on Facebook

Webinars and lead generation. Are they worth the effort? Yes! Says Eric Glazer and he has numbers to back it up

Doritos Positive Brand Hijacking – It takes 2 to Tango and Doritos prove this by encouraging slow sexy dancing, in the streets, plus 33 Facebook Groups, 20,000 members, 240 blogs, 200,000 views on YouTube plus $600K media!

Dell make the Word of Mouth Marketing book – ya, ya, ya, Dell hear bad things on a blog, eventually put things right. (I bought HP after buying Dell and ringing customer support.)

Dell and Twitter – update on continuing sales and Twitter featuring a compo to drive them even higher. (Are peeps mad?)

Twitter as a scalability case study. This is cool and different – it’s about Twitter’s architecture and well techie. I like it.

TransUnion – SocialText using SocialText as Wiki and IM in an environment with SharePoint. Best aspect – question asking to groups. Claimed total savings of $5-8M. Hard data on this would be v useful – savings can be slippery – earnings are far harder to show…

Motorola’s Intranet 2.0 IT success “70,000 people using it every day, including partners. The company now has 4,400 blogs and 4,200 wiki pages and uses, among other technologies, social bookmarking and tagging by Scuttle and social networking by Visible Path.” See also eWeek article

BBC and Blogs - Reportr.net How they are central to what the BBC does. Full report needs subscription at: iFirst, but article interesting.

Urbane Apartments – using social media to reach ‘millenials’. No one cared about Urbane so they went for it with Facebook, MySpace, blogs, Flickr, Twitter etc and it worked.

FT.com – not really social media but worthwhile study on increasing subscriptions by mix of free and paid for (yes do keep the free stuff pleeze!)

Paganum Farmer’s Market – showing how a very traditional sector, UK farming can use social media to increase sales with Twitter, Facebook and blogs

1:10 Protect the Human – Amnesty International’s social media awareness and action campaign for International Women’s Day to stop violence against women. Blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace.

Freemium and Corey Smith – short but sweet on how Mr Smith gives away his music on his site and sales go up as a result on iTunes


Bacardi – using Facebook to reach Irish punters and get them drinking Bacardi via a compo. n.b, integration with Facebook API re tagging & photos.

National Express & Silverpop – e-mail marketing in conjunction with social networks – National Express cited (but what about the major TV ad campaign?)

Embarq – conservative telecoms company overcomes the hurdles and battles with negative customer feedback via social media – esp videos (links don’t work – I think the slideshare is to this Slideshare).

Radvision & PixelPoint Press – Corporate blogs, Communities and Twitter (Slideshare)

Flu Shirts – great guerilla case study on SEO and undergoundblackhat tactics: Forums, Twitter and Forbes

My Church – what a good Christian can do with an annual budget of $225 and help in High places: Website 17,539 unique visitors; 31,529 visitors, 107,726 pageviews YouTube 17,540 views since March 25, 2008 Blip.tv 19,288 views Vimeo 3357 views Flickr 71,264 views since November 2007

JiveWorld 09 Conference Videos and Presentations – over 20 hours of case study video (requires registration)

Guidelines and Governance

40 Social Media Staff Guidelines – Laurel Papworth has compiled a mega list of staff guidelines on social media. 40 ways to avoid HR-Hot water!

Tools and Applications (will need to review if this is manageable)

Lead Generation Comparison between Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc

Publius Project is an effort of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society – uses Drupal for new portal, replacing WordPress.

Corvu “Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage”. Differentiating between public, team and enterprise Wikis, looks and governance and use of Wiki as KM.

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