Does thinking about Facebook Tabs, how to build them, what content to build within them and what the return will be keep you up at night? You are not alone. What I would love to know is,

Are Facebook Tabs all the rage because they really work, or do we think we need one because everyone else has one?

My favorite brands on Facebook, Burberry, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Free People

I find brands are most successful when they have a well established digital community, and a well thought out Landing Tab that:

• Has strategy behind it and best represents the brand
• Does not waste time and money with a messy pile of ridiculous features and excessive links
• Does not overwhelm the user with brand messaging and sales tactics
• Integrates the tab into the overall brand communication strategy (email, PR, etc.) without exhausting the message

I have come to your page thanks to who you are as a brand or a friend of mine led me to your page through a Facebook Sponsored Story, now please don’t overwhelm/annoy me.

One of my favorite brands, Free People, kicking tabs and taking names…

I like this Landing Tab from Free People because it does a few successful things in a simple way:

• Reminds me I am indeed on Free People’s page
• It’s clean, pretty, on brand and not cluttered with 100 videos, reviews, magazine articles, etc.
• Encourages me to take our relationship to the next level via email (this is money)

Now that we’re such good friends mind if I hit up your inbox sometime?

After “liking” Free People you land on the option to sign up for their emails and this closes the loop between the many ways you can interact with their brand, Email – Driving to website – Website to Facebook – Facebook to Website – Facebook to Email and so on and so forth. I’ve officially “liked” your page and given you my email in a good 30 seconds, and am now perusing your page’s content to see what outfit I must have.

Good brand experience = happy loyal purchasing customer

I am a vegetarian obsessed with Buffalo Wild Wings, or at least their Facebook page. They are smart, witty and do not try too hard to be who they think their customer wants them to be. They create content that is relevant to their brand and/or personifies their brand’s personality. Instead of landing on a tab with a big arrow pointing to the “like” button, you land on a game that allows you to hunt chickens with wing sauce. What Buffalo Wild Wings’ fan would not enjoy this game?

Buffalo Wild Wings = Marketing Geniuses

It is important to remember that a person’s experience on Facebook is very different from the experience they have on your website, and we should stop comparing and attempting to emulate the former. My answer to the Tab question would have to be that content and engagement is still king, so find a way for fans to communicate with your brand through unique content that values their time.

My recommendation for brands utilizing Facebook tabs is as follows:

• Build a strong Facebook content strategy
• Manage that community on a daily basis, figuring out what your fans really want from you as a page
• Create a simple landing tab that briefly confirms who your brand is and offers fans entrance to your “exclusive” email database (and please don’t point to the “like” button)
• Finally, once your community is established and ready for the next level of content, discuss the creation of interactive Tabs and what purpose it serves

In the end, I may never see that wicked cool Tab you built if there’s no content driving me to your page.

What do you think of Facebook Tabs? Do you interact with them much?

Today Mashable broke the news about the partnership between Klout and brands on Facebook – where content shared on a particular Facebook page can be dictated by the individual fan’s Klout score. Mashable writes, “In Involver’s (the company creating the app) Klout interpretation on the gate model, a Facebook user’s Klout score will determine what type of Facebook content you see and what perks, if any, you get.” Audi is the first to roll it out.

As I read the article, many questions came to mind which were also reflected in the comments from other readers of Mashable:

• Who decides what a “good Klout score” is?
• Is Facebook Klout as accurate as Twitter? Many people privatize their profiles so is Klout able to access this and rate users fairly?
• Will this trend burst out of control losing relevance as more and more brands hide content until fans get their Klout scores?
• Will potential brand fans become irritated if they’re only gained access to information by enabling another application?
• What if the simple Klout score given to a fan isn’t reflective of their influence in a particular industry topic?

The announcement was made relating to a trial run with Audi where users are led to believe that only if their Klout is high enough, they’ll receive the Audi wallpaper or ring tone, but looking through their comments, Audi is apparently rewarding everyone, which may not be the best way to roll out the new initiative.

While I’m excited to see where this trend goes, I do hope that brands using this initiative to share their Facebook content are able to have more control in dictating who receives what. My personal recommendation would be for Klout to be cautious of the brands they partner with. Groupon only approves deals from brands if the value is in line with what subscribers want. Being selective will help this initiative stay relevant.

I also believe brands should be able to tap into the specifics of a person’s Klout score. We social media pros always discuss what’s important in social measurement and it’s not just one number of followers, fans, subscribers – it goes deeper than that and for Klout, I’d recommend my clients look at rewarding only Klout users that are influential in few topics (shown in the “influential about” part of Klout profile).

I’d like to see success stories from this initiative, but I also believe Klout and Facebook have some fine tuning to do to make this worth while. What are your initial thoughts?

Last week, members of the armed forces were in limbo wondering if they’d receive pay while the government was working to meet an agreement on budgets. The news of a potential government shutdown created an uproar amongst Americans across the country, especially among those of the families and actual members of active duty armed forces. In the midst of the chaos and concern, one company stepped up to help and Facebook fans took notice.

Navy Federal Credit Union announced on April 7 that they’d advance direct deposit paychecks for active duty military members. Any military member that had direct deposit set up through Navy Federal Credit Union would receive coverage of the April 15 payroll, in addition to other financial backings including lines of credit, overdraft programs and credit card limits. This hit close to home personally as my boyfriend (in the Navy) informed me he’d only be receiving half pay.

Upon this announcement, fans took to Facebook thanking Navy Federal for their support when the government wasn’t supporting them. For a few days leading up to the announcement by congress, petitions were created and signed, and passed along through Facebook. Complete strangers bound together to create a collective voice, using FB as their bullhorn.

What I found most interesting as a social media specialist is that Navy Federal, even though they only had 2,500 fans on Facebook, garnered hundreds of engagements throughout the week. This is the kind of social interaction that most companies yearn for and it proves why  you need to build your networks before you ever need them. While prior to this, the Navy Federal fans were hardly a captive audience on Facebook, once they were given a reason to interact with the page, they were quickly activated.

In addition to commending Navy Federal on the announcement, fans of the Facebook page have gone so far as to mention how happy they are with customer service in the branches around the US. And though Navy Fed has done a great job responding to these comments, I’d recommend that they take advantage of all the extra eyeballs they have and keep the engagement going. If Navy Fed were my client, I’d insist that they reevaluate their initiatives by looking at the comments they’re receiving and catering a plan to continue growing and capitalizing on the attention they’re getting.

What recommendations do you have for Navy Federal to keep their engagement going? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve heard people predict the demise of Facebook. Everytime there is a hiccup in the service, or a major news outlet comes out with a story about Facebook and privacy, it stirs the pot all over again. And as a marketer, these uproars always come with the concern from clients and colleagues that maybe we shouldn’t be investing so much in Facebook. What if Facebook goes the way of Myspace and all this time, money and strategy we’ve put into it is useless?

Although I understand the concern, I think it is wasted energy. Here’s why:

Facebook isn’t going anywhere.

Now before you all jump down my throat about Diaspora and all of Facebook’s privacy flubs, or all the people you know who have quit their profiles, let’s put things into perspective. Facebook has 600 million users. 600 million. And each of those users has spent time and energy building their network – whether it be 100 people or 1,000. As a whole, the public is invested and has come to rely on using the social network for everything from making plans and sharing photos to dating and networking. Because of this, even Facebok haters would have to agree that the only way Facebook would ever lose its ground is if some other miracle network blew it out of the water (eg. the way Facebook did to Myspace). “Exactly!” you say to me, “It has happened before, it could happen again.”

Well, I am going to have to respectfully disagree. Even if there was some amazing network that had no privacy problems or service hiccups, how likely is it that all 600 million people are going to want to start from scratch on building their networks again? Not only would that be a huge pain in the arse, it would also mean much smaller networks. You see, everyone has connections that they friended at one point, that they would never be able to friend again. These are the people that you would never admit to paying attention to, but whom you thoroughly enjoy checking up on. People like friends from high school, ex-boyfriends, frenemies from college, co-workers from your first jobs, etc… The idea of giving up all of these connections is insanity. And while those of us who have been on Facebook since the beginning may have more of these “friend relics” than the ever growing 50+ demo on Facebook, I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone has at least one.

I also think it is telling to see who is all up in arms about the privacy concerns on Facebook. I’m making generalizations here, but it is most usually the crowd that has only been on the platform for a year or two and is much less invested. It is also the crowd that doesn’t have a history with mass Facebook protest. If you fall into that group, I don’t blame you for your reaction. In fact, when my relationship with Facebook was just beginning there were all sorts of times when my friends and I were outraged about Facebook changes. First there was the newsfeed, “UM, a Newsfeed?? So now I can’t see birthdays prominently displayed?? AND I can see when people break up? Oh this is horrible. I will sign a million petitions about it and complain endlessly.” And then they introduced photo tagging – “WHAT? You are telling me other people can just tag things and they will appear on my profile without me approving them first? This is crazy. Crazy!” Oh and don’t even get me started on when they started letting companies on Facebook… And guess what. Despite how outraged I was over these changes, it didn’t take me too long to realize that ol’ Mark there knew what he was doing. And that he’s really smart. Sure there have been awkward times along the way where Mark has gotten over-zealous and made changes without properly explaining them or giving you an opt-out option, but he always remedies that. So for those of you who haven’t yet had the long relationship with Facebook, you’ll find yourself trusting Mark after a while. And then you can laugh with us when the next generation gets all out of whack about Facebook and starts predicting the network’s demise.

In the end, it really comes down to why people are on Facebook. They are there to connect with their friends, sure, but you can connect with your present friends easily enough via phone and email. The real power of Facebook is that it allows you to essentially keep a scrapbook of friends. It lets you to “creep” on people and build relationships you wouldn’t have had otherwise. It has a low enough barrier of entry that it makes it possible to connect with people in a way that no other medium can. And that is why, for the forseeable future, Facebook is here to stay.

Now, I will never be one to tell you to put all your marketing eggs into one basket, nor do I think Facebook is the end all be all for social media marketing. Far from it. I am simply saying for those marketers who are crossing their fingers and hoping this whole Facebook craze will blow over, you may be waiting for awhile. And while I respect that many may dislike the platform for personal reasons, it is undoubtedly a successful marketing tool and will likely be so for years to come. So if you are wondering what the next steps for your company’s Facebook page should be, I say invest. If you don’t have the skills to develop a business strategy on your own, find a social media agency to help you with long-term goals and who can advise you on how to handle the daily changes. Ultimately, how much you spend and to what extent you use the network will vary for every company, but if you were planning on sitting around waiting for the next Facebook to arrive, that may not be your best bet.

At the dismay of my friends that are not engulfed in social media, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research into LBS programs and what works and doesn’t work with each one. For the past month, I’ve been looking into Facebook Places, more specifically its new Deals program.

If you’re not up to speed, Facebook enables companies to claim their venue so when smart phone users check-in, the location is tied back to the official Facebook page (see The San Diego Museum of Art for example).

Once a company has claimed its venue, the admin of the official page can create a Facebook Deal. The challenge of marketers is to decide “which type of deal is right for my brand?” I’ve come to find there are some loopholes in some of the deals that marketers should be aware of before deciding.

Types of Facebook Deals:

Individual Facebook Deal – To claim this type of deal, users need to only check into a venue once. When the user checks in, they click “Claim Deal,” which changes their phone screen to say, “Show phone screen at register to redeem.” Any venue offering these giveaways should be sure that the staff is well-versed on how to fulfill the deal.

The individual deal is best for venues looking to attract new visitors. Each time a person redeems a deal, it’s posted to his/her Facebook wall, making your venue front and center for his/her 100-1,000 friends.

What to be aware of: Deals are new for most users, so messaging and staff training are a necessity. Also, a major challenge for new users of Facebook check-ins is that instead of waiting for their phone to auto-populate with nearby locations, they have the option to create their own venue if they can’t find yours. If they make their own, they’ll never see your official location or your deal.

Loyalty Facebook Deal – Users receive these deals by checking into a venue numerous times (usually between 3-5 check-ins within a 60-day period). A person’s smart phone will automatically mark off how many times the user has checked into the location and once they’ve met the required number of check-ins, they will get the screen telling them they can redeem the prize.

This type of deal is great (in theory) to bring repeat customers to your venue. By encouraging them to visit often, they will be rewarded. Plus each time a person checks in, his friends will be notified, seeing that he frequents this spot, then when the deal is claimed, his friends will see that your venue is offering more value.

What to be aware of - Users don’t need to actually be at your venue to check in. That, in my opinion is a BIG problem seeing that the point of this deal is to bring customers in numerous times. I’ve checked into venues from six blocks away (of course to test the accuracy of a loyalty program). In all honesty, I’d warn my clients to try one of the other deals until Facebook is able to fix this issue.

Friends Facebook Deal – When visiting a venue together, a group of friends can claim a deal by both checking in and tagging one another. This deal is specifically important to have staff training so they know how to verify that each friend is on Facebook and has checked in. In my research, I am yet to find a friend deal offered, but continue to be on the lookout.

This deal is similar to the individual deal but it allows the company to reach a larger audience. It also takes the responsibility off the venue to encourage the check-in. Rather it requires the visitor to find people to go with and to make them check-in on arrival. Finally this deal type also spreads to more eyeballs on Facebook. Since users must have three or more friends check in to redeem the deal, the company benefits by having a larger network view the check-in.

What to be aware of - Not everyone has a smart phone so make sure your staff is prepared to explain that they offer other deals for non smart phone users. Additionally, individuals can tag friends as if they’re there even when they’re not, so be cautious that those that checked in are who they say they are.

Charity Facebook Deals – These are deals that companies pledge to donate to a cause each time an individual checks in. I’ve seen two different companies honor this type, one of them being Subway Sandwiches donating $0.10 to heart health programs for each check-in.

This deal is beneficial no matter what type of audience you are trying to attract. A great time to implement this type of deal is if your venue is hosting a fundraiser or event where you predict you will attract a large audience.

What to be aware of – I don’t see a downside to honoring the charity deal as long as the venue is prepared for the fact that people can check-in even if they’re not in the actual location. It may be beneficial to establish a budget and put a cap on the donation.

All in all, these Facebook deals are a great addition to a company’s marketing initiatives. Because they’re so new, though, I’d recommend incorporating messaging and signage to inform passersby and visitors to your venue that you honor the deal.  And be certain to train your staff on how to check-in and what to look for when patrons try to redeem their prizes.

Quora: in a nutshell, allows you to ask and answer questions that are of personal interest.

It does what social networkers are already doing: asking questions of your network and followers. However, it conveniently groups all of the responses together.  It’s kind of like if Twitter, Digg, Google Wave and Yahoo Answers had a baby.

It was just made public the summer of 2010 and has been growing (in hype) ever since. Launched by a former CTO of Facebook, the site and concept at least have street cred.

Here’s the breakdown:

Pros:

• Helps consolidate topics. If the question has been asked in another format, it points you in that direction and/or adds your query to the topic.
• Helps promote your question through other social platforms.
• The best answers will rise to the top of the question/topic by a voting platform similar to digg
• Helps you spot trends – what people are talking about and what they want to know more about
• Responses are real time
• Questions and answers come up in Google

Con:

• It’s another platform to keep up with
• It takes time to position yourself as an expert
• It is getting a lot of knocks. Have you visited Cwora?!
• If you are looking for an answer to a one-time question, this isn’t the platform for you. It’s more for people seeking an ongoing way of sharing their expertise.
• Beware of privacy settings and auto-follows
• It’s kind of been done before

How company’s can use Quora right now:

• Listen to what people have to say
• Observe potential candidates and their real life knowledge on a subject
• Don’t go crazy building a profile and answering a million questions just yet. Brands should wait it out and see what really starts to happen. After all, look what happened to Chatroulette.

Don’t write off this fairly new platform just yet. If Quora positions itself and monitors itself for spam correctly, it just may have a place in the social sphere.

2010 brought a lot of changes in the world of digital marketing and as we dive into 2011, you’ll want to be up on all the latest information. To help you out, we’ve compiled an Infographic of the top digital stats and trends of 2010. To see the entire image, click on the preview below:

Sources: Mobithinking, Fierce Mobile Content, Digital Buzz Blog, ClickZ, Marketing Vox, Marketing Charts, Phil Bradley, The Hiring Site, Geek

Will 2011 be the year for Location Based Services? Perhaps. More specifically, I’d predict it to be the year that the top tools are defined, adopted and refined. In case you’re a bit behind on the new trend, here’s a quick rundown of what a Location Based Service (LBS) is, my list of top applications in the space and how marketers can leverage these tools.

About.com defines Location Based Services as, “Any information, entertainment or social media service that is available on a mobile device, and makes use of geographical position.” Basically, it is another social element on mobile phones that keeps people informed on where their friends are, what they’re doing and when. We’ve already looked into Foursquare and see it as a major contender, but here are the apps we see catching up:

Facebook Places

What it is – Places allows users to tag where they are, see where their other Facebook friends are, see who else is checked into the same venue at the same time, tag friends with you at that location and write or review comments related to that location. Personally, because of the number of users already logging into Facebook daily, I believe Places will be a force to be reckoned with once marketers figure out how to measure and properly market their venues.

How marketers can leverage it - Though a few brands have had a go at using Places and claimed success, users seem to run into a few snags (not understanding the difference between a check-in and wall comment, on-site customer service wasn’t properly prepared to handle inquiries, etc.). For a successful promotion with this platform, a venue should claim their official location, use the Deals feature, educate its current likers (fans) about the promotion it intends to run and make sure its messaging is very clear and concise. Furthermore, if running an on-site promo, test out a small scale check-in program and make sure employees on-site understand and know how to best implement the program. Once people fully adopt the service, Places can take off.

Gowalla

What it is – With over 450,000 users, Gowalla has created a community of passport holders that check-in to receive passport stamps, write reviews, upload photos, comment on places friends visited and highlight their own favorite places. Gowalla offers an added bonus to users and marketers by highlighting the best venues (selected by their users) on its City Pages.  This is great for marketers because it means more eyeballs on their venue and it’s helpful for users who want to discover new and popular places.

How marketers can leverage it – Gowalla offers venues cusomized stamps that its artists create. When a user checks into your venue, that stamp will be added to their passport with all their Gowalla friends able to view it. With the rewards program, brands have created virtual souvenirs that can be redeemable for actual real-life rewards.

Disney created a fantastic campaign by creating a trip with over 100 stamps within its park, allowing family and friends of Gowalla users to see a virtual scrapbook as users upload photos and share experiences. As a marketer, this sharing of personal experiences stretches outside the park and beyond any paid advertising.

It seems as if Gowalla is tapping travelers by offering suggested trips recommending a series of restaurants, gardens and parks to visit (creators of trips include National Geographic, CNN Money and USA Today). When a trip is completed, a pin is added to the user’s passport, tracking where he’s been in the world. For business owners, simple signage in your venue can encourage Gowalla users to check in and highlight your location, leading to a possible featured on the City Pages for users looking what to do or eat in a new city.

SCVNGR

What is it – Creating a game out of your check-ins, SCVNGR incorporates geo with challenges to people checking into venues. It’s ideal for creating a scavenger hunt. The services offered include standard challenges (non-location based), Treks (connecting places and challenges) and Rewards (points or real-life prizing). SCVNGR also integrated with Facebook Places, enabling users to post their points and activities to their wall as well as tapping into their pre-established community, rather than adding friends “from scratch.”

How marketers can leverage it – Brands need to dig deeper when integrating with SCVNGR because people use the app for fun, to look for trivia and for literal scavenger hunts. When promoting a venue, create challenges that would encourage visitors to explore, read and learn about your brand’s offering.

Whrrl

What it is - Similar to Yelp, Whrrl offers reviews of restaurants, bars, stores and more written by someone who has actually checked into the location. Whrrl then maps everything onto Google Maps so that when users enter their location, a map will auto populate with venues nearby. Click on one that looks interesting and you’ll get the distance from your current location and all the details about the establishment: when it opens, if it serves brunch and the type of payment options.

Whrrl’s point of differentiation is their use of “societies.” These are groups people can build to engage with friends based on common themes, such as the Live Music Society, American Food Society and Coffee Lover’s Society. The idea is to see check-ins and get reviews from like-minded people. Societies can be created with exclusivity – The Wine Bar society requires a Whrrl user to check in to at least three wine-related venues before accepting membership. This ensures other society members are receiving recommendations from friends they trust to be in-the-know.

Notifications of friends’ recommendations pop up as you navigate through the application based on your current location. If you’re in a new city and interested in what other Whrrl users recommend, click on the “Ideas” button at the bottom to see what’s nearby, what your friends recommend and what locations are linked to which societies. If you decide you “want to” take advantage of a recommendation, click “want to” and the person that made the recommendation receives extra points. Once you’ve actually followed through with the task, take and upload a photo or write your own review to receive points.

How marketers can leverage it – Marketers can leverage the pre-established point system by providing discounts and giveaways through the loyalty program. Whrrl also offers branded loyalty programs.

As people become more connected through their smart phones, I believe the ease of use and offerings will play a role in which program individuals decide to tap into. Which app do you predict most people will use as their prime LBS?

This month is big for our blogging team here at BG. In December, Don’t Drink the Koolaid Blog is celebrating its 3rd birthday and its 800th post. It’s the perfect end to what has been a great blogging year for DDTK. We’ve gained a ton of new readers (thanks!) and have had the opportunity to do all sorts of guest blogging. I know some of you may have missed a post or two along the way, so I’ve compiled a list below of the top 10 posts from 2010.

1. Common mistakes in online advertising – Jennifer breaks down the most common mistakes she’s seen internet marketers make and offers alternative solutions. Mistakes include: sending untargeted emails, not limiting the number of banner impressions, and freaking out over analytics, amongst others.

2. Why Eat, Pray, Love’s publicity will be good for the economy - We are always looking for marketing inspiration, and in this post, Katie L. shares some of the creative marketing she saw for the film, Eat, Pray, Love.

3. What New PR Pros need to know – Erika tapped industry pros and social media experts to compile a list of the things that any new PR pro should know as he or she enters the field.

4. Why I hate Foursquare – Jon expresses his annoyance with Foursquare, shortly after its launch and during the time when most people were still streaming all their check-ins through Facebook and Twitter. Judging by the active comment stream, a lot of people agreed.

5. How to write a creative brief - Kelly shares best practices for the creation of a creative brief (for non-ad people, that is the document that the creative team uses to come up with the concepts for an ad campaign). Tips include: research, personification, simplify, structure and more.

6. Nestle’s Facebook disaster – why you need a social media crisis plan - I wrote this post after Nestle’s Facebook page was targeted by angry PETA representatives. When it was clear that the company did not have a social media crisis plan in place (as evidenced by the rude responses from their page admin), I wanted to share some alternative ways they could have handled the situation.

7. Why you should care about Foursquare – Not everyone is a fan of Foursquare, but most will agree that it has the potential to be a powerful marketing tool. In this post I outlined the basics of the platforms and 5 reasons why marketers should be paying attention to it.

8. How PR agencies devalues the industry – In this post, Indra shares her insight on how agency pricing during the down economy will have a lasting negative effect on the industry. She specifically talks about her frustration with the ways other agencies are going after new social media business and the problems with creating cheap, cookie-cutter social media plans.

9. Key Takeaways from Scott Stratten’s Keynote at BWE 2010 – Scott (aka @unmarketing) delivered a particularly memorable speech at this year’s blog/social media expo. He challenged everyone to stop looking at social media as marketing and start focusing on building relationships and creating solid content. In my post, I outlined my top 10 takeaways from his speech.

10. TweetReach – A social media reporting tool I actually use – Our agency is continuously evaluating and evolving our approach to social media reporting. As a result, we are constantly looking at new tools, and in this post Katy shares everything you need to know about the popular Twitter reporting tool – Tweetreach.

Do you have any favorite posts from DDTK Blog that didn’t make the cut? Let me know in the comments.

By now, you’ve probably noticed an influx in social media usage amongst the entertainment industry.  The film business is a natural fit for social networks – movies are innately social, and people want to talk about them. Following suit to the Classic Hollywood star system and legendary fan magazines, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and even entertainment check-in sites have created a new way to market movies, all while collecting invaluable market research along the way.

Among the plethora of movies being marketed with social media, one in particular really caught my eye – Tim Burton’s Twitter-Written story.

In a nutshell, Burton announced he wanted Twitter followers to help write his next script. He began with one line, and encouraged people on the platform to complete the plot by contributing content while  including the hashtag #BurtonStory within the tweet. Starting November 22 and ending December 6, the @BurtonStory attracted 11,307 people to follow the campaign – a good indication of the type of audience the movie would have if ever produced. Burton and Co. also set up a website for people to track the story where they can also download a PDF version of the final copy – another resource to measure whether people are attached to the plot or not. The tale began with an offbeat sentence, and one can only imagine where the storyline ended, but ultimately, the campaign was successful in connecting people with the potential film. All in all, the campaign is a great attribute to social media and its presence within the movie biz. Whether or not Burton plans on turning the fan-written story into a reality, he has shown how social media can successfully create buzz around a movie or script – all while collecting measurable data about the film’s target audience in the meantime.

Another example of how studios use social media to promote a film is Paramount Pictures’ Facebook campaign for low-budget horror flick, Paranormal Activity. The particular campaign demonstrates how to create buzz around a movie online, and also convert sales at the box office. The studio set a goal of one million Facebook fans as a prerequisite to release the film nation-wide, and sure enough, the goal was met. Not only were people eager to participate online, but they also felt ownership over the campaign – motivating them to actually purchase a ticket to go see the movie. The film grossed more than $150 million at the box office, and was ultimately a social media success.

Social media goes hand-in-hand with the film industry. Not only do platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow studios to connect with a larger audience of viewers, but they also capture invaluable information that may indicate the success of a particular film in a certain region. There are plenty of examples pointing to why social media is the next big thing in marketing for the film industry, now it’s a matter of how both industries continue to evolve with one another to determine its full potential – stay tuned.