Certify and Increase Opportunity.
Be
Govt. Certified Social Media Marketing

Case Study

This article highlights seven mini case studies of businesses that have stood out by implementing innovative social media marketing practices.

You’ll find inspiration for your social media marketing efforts here.

So let’s dive in!

Case study #1 Sharpie
Sharpie is the permanent marker company. Through social media and other marketing efforts, this company has taken an ordinary commodity and turned it into a common noun.

Sharpie excels on Twitter, but they also make good use of their blog and Instagram and have even formed their own community. Here are some things to learn:

Mix up your background images. Notice how Sharpie incorporates various images. Over the last four weeks, they have had at least the following three images on display. sharpie twitter profile

Sharpie rotates their profile images on Twitter frequently.
Spotlight your customers. Smart businesses know that satisfied, loyal customers drive their business. One way to increase loyalty and retention is to focus attention on your customers’ creativity. Sharpie does this through sharing samples of customers’ artwork. sharpie customers artwork

Showcase your customers’ artwork.

Feature case studies. Sharpie makes a subtle double-play on their blog. First, they tell stories about their customers (and what customer won’t go tell their friends to see them featured online?). Second, they use blog posts to inspire creativity from their fans. It’s as if they’re saying, “Who can top this Sharpie Snow Leopard?” snow leopard

Readers are often looking for inspiration.
pop that collar

Practical how-to instruction guides prove to be popular case studies..

Start your own online community. This strategy won’t make sense until you reach a certain size, but at some point you may decide to take your audience from the public social networks and create your own unique community. Social Media Examiner recently did this with Networking Clubs. Sharpie invites their community to engage through art challenges where users vote for the best submissions. creative invitation

An invitation to be creative is all it takes for some people to invest hours with your brand.

Case study #2: HubSpot

HubSpot is a leading B2B company that provides inbound marketing tools for small businesses. A key to their explosive growth comes through a strategic content creation plan.
free resources

Notice three different references to free resources just in this snapshot.

HubSpot knows what their audience wants. They write about hot topics (like the post on Pinterest pictured below), they tag their articles based on experience level (see “Introductory” in the illustration above) and they provide a way to listen to their posts through a service called Vocalyze.
hubspot recommendations

Recommendations are an important selling point to site visitors. Notice the prominence given here.

It would be easy to overlook this, but HubSpot also does a great job providing easy access to a variety of social sharing buttons. Notice how prominently those display next to both of the above images.

HubSpot excels at making their brand personal. On their Facebook page, they do this by featuring their employees.