For corporates, social media isn’t just another channel to communicate, it’s a chance for them to connect with their customers on a personal level. For companies with an image problem, it’s also a chance to redeem themselves.

Starbucks

With falling fortunes, and an eroding market share, Starbucks was beginning to lose its iconic status. So, when competitors were spending hundreds of millions of $ to promote their stores and increase footfalls, Starbucks (the coffee chain) resorted to a new advertising campaign, fuelled by social media. The campaign saw Starbucks use outdoor posters in six major U.S. cities – San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, Boston and New York. To bring social media into the mix, Starbucks ran a contest in which it is encouraged people to post photos of its posters on Twitter using the hashtag #top3percent.

The campaign was a phenomenal success, receiving overwhelming favourable response from the community

Starbucks had other social media initiatives planned for this campaign, including a contest for Starbucks store employees to submit headlines for future ads and YouTube videos with coffee experts talking about Starbucks coffee.

Starbucks says it thinks its campaign will be helped by its 1.5 million fans on Facebook and 183,000 followers on Twitter. On the Saturday before the presidential election, Starbucks sponsored a single 60-second television commercial on “Saturday Night Live” advertising a coffee giveaway on Election Day. Starbucks then posted the video online. By Tuesday, it was the fourth-most-viewed video on YouTube, and people were mentioning Starbucks on Twitter every eight seconds.

According to VP-Brand – Content & Online, Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks’ social media presence gave it an advantage over competitors with gigantic ad budgets because its fans wanted to talk about it online. “It’s the difference between launching with many millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”

Cadbury

Candy maker Cadbury came up with an interesting contest to help promote its latest offering, the Twisted bar, via social media. The contest is actually two in one; the first part is a very basic campaign that lets consumers register as agents to “locate the Goo” and decipher clues to find the candy bars in special locations around UK.

The second part is the most intriguing, and it basically involves rewarding the social media influencer who promotes the brand the best. Cadbury also enlisted the help of “super agents,” who were given cameras and charged with sharing content across YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to get the word out about the candy bar. The super agents earn points depending on how much buzz they generate, and the winner gets walks away with a cool $32,900 prize.

Instead of spreading their own message via social channels, Cadbury is rewarding consumers for their word-of-mouth abilities.

American Express

American Express has adopted social media to build brand equity, acquire new customers and build customer loyalty. AmEx launched the OpenForum blog as a platform to provide small business the knowledge, tools and networking resources, and also taps the expertise of leading experts and small business bloggers.

HP

HP social media managers engaged experts who work daily with customers to develop relevant marketing content grounded in true client need and real-life business issues. By combining podcasting with blogging and traditional tech-media syndication, HP now validates its messaging via an extensive buyer audience review process that yields vetted, relevant content that HP marketing can deploy in its ongoing sales and marketing efforts.

Here are some other examples

Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.

Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.

HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.

Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.