Part four of our white paper deals with the business success stories of social media. And we’d very much like you to add your own in the comments (and we’ll update!)

If you’d like the whole white paper to download, copy, share, whatever, it’s all yours right here.

Examples of success with social media are myriad. Here are a few examples complete with links to investigate further.

• Dell IdeaStorm:

Dell calls on its users to tell them how to make better products. The result is products more people want. Thousands of ideas. Draws on the idea that the cleverest people don’t work for you – and none of us is as clever as all of us.

• Cadbury’s Gorilla ads mashed-up on youtube

Cadbury’s didn’t grant permission, didn’t enable and didn’t encourage. But there are now more than 1000 versions on youtube, spoofs, mash-ups etc. One ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ was copied as an official TV ad.

• Subservient Chicken garnered about 14 million unique visitors and 396 million hits to date, through Adweek here (March 7, 2005).
• Up Your Budget Treasure Hunt for Budget Car Rental in 2005, the first ever blog-based viral marketing campaign, promoted entirely through bloggers and blog advertising - with no traditional marketing whatsoever. The results: one million unique visits to the site, 2,000 registered treasure hunters, and over 10 million page views in only four weeks. The clue videos were downloaded a total 43,000 times. There were 19.9 million blog advertising impressions at an average cost of 33 cents.
• Click TV - Blogger Relations for Click TV (April 17, 2006): An outline of a blogger relations campaign for a Web 2.0 company
• Fiskateers for Fiskars, who make crafting tools. Branded mentions of Fiskars products are up more than 400% on a per-week basis since the program began (2007)
• Coca Cola’s Community Approach to Second Life (April 17, 2007): Coca-Cola’s new social media strategy in Second Life featured an approach other than buying real estate and creating a store, SeaWorld San Antonio: Journey to Atlantis (May 3, 2007): The launch and results of an “event” site to support the opening of a new ride.
• Splashcast’s Social Media for Marketing: (May 16, 2007): Splashcast used social media for marketing purposes, and succeeded by directly engaging the community.
• GeoCommons Social Media News Release (May 29, 2007): An outline of the pitfalls and successes of releasing news
• New Adventures of Old Christine (June 14, 2007): The show was about to get a new day and time, and she thought outreach to parent bloggers was a perfect fit.
• Sci Fi Channel Digital Press Tour (July 12, 2007): Sci Fi channel begins blogger relations program by providing access to filming sets Sci Fi, Channel via Marketing Roadmaps
• Goodwill’s Social Media Strategy (August 29, 2007): How Goodwill used social media to rebrand its vintage clothing, Livingston Communications
• Five Lessons from the SIGGART Online Word of Mouth Campaign (August 30, 2007): This eco-friendly aluminum water bottles company chalked up tons of quantifiable results, including 8000 unique visitors who visited for an average of 17 minutes
• Hugh Macleod marketing Stormhoek wine entirely through blogs and social networking. (Sept. 17, 2007)
• Gates Foundation ED in ‘08 (Sept. 25, 2008): This very successful case study shows social media tools from video to Facebook, and calls to action like ordering endorsement kits.
• Social Media Case Study: CMP’s TechMash (September 27, 2007) Social media forms used to garner attendance at CMP event
• Dell Computers does a complete 180 and reverses Jarvis’ Dell Hell to become a company admired across social media circles. And Jarvis writes them up for their great progress in BusinessWeek (October 18, 2007).
• Squidoo is profitable, and without venture capital, Viget Labs and Seth Godin (December 18, 2007)
• The White House uses social media to get the word out on drug policies (December 18, 2007)
• ITToolbox, who’ve grown their social network for IT professionals into multi-million business with more than $8 million in ad sales, and 1.7 million pages of user generated content as of Jan. 1, 2008.
• Sony drives approximately 11,000,000 million visits to 30 Days Night moviecontests page using Facebook widget (reported by Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang, January 29, 2008)
• Nokia’s Mosh creates more than 200,000 rabid friends, almost 30 million downloads through crowd-sourcing
• H&R Block Friends Stressed Out Taxed Americans on Twitter (reported by Social Media Explorer, March 21, 2008)
• Disney’s continued MySpace Step Up 2 the Streets success yields a surprise box-office hit; it also managed to expand the movie’s already sizeable and enthusiastic group of fans. The movie’s MySpace profile has more than 156,000 friends (March 24, 2008, AdAge).
• Neat Receipts Becomes a Hit with Mommy Bloggers (SHIFT Communications, April 2, 2008).
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog: HHS engaged national leaders and the online pandemic flu community through its 5-week blog summit (June 2007).
• Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company drove traffic to their site, increased buzz and branded in social media and the blogosphere using a beta test. More than 1500 blogs participated (, June 3, 2008).
• Scripps Networks - HGTV’s Rate My Space. Online community creates prime advertising real estate, generating ROI within weeks and creating continuous stream of advertising revenues. Success leads to companion television series - social media successfully serves to bridge gap between online and on-air (NY Times, June 19, 2008).
• Adidas leverages mobile social media to increase retail revenues 20x around NBA All Star game in Vegas (Event Marketer, June 24, 2008).
• The Nature Conservancy leverages Facebook and Digg for cause marketing: How TNC raised nearly $75,000 through Facebook Causes and a partnership with Lil Green Patch, a popular Facebook application. The group has also built significant brand awareness through the social news site Digg! (As reported by Jonathon Colman of TNC, September 29, 2008).
• Comcastcares: US company changes perceptions with customer service outreach programme initiated through twitter.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Viral Clips Are Brand Conversation Starters (viralblog.com)
• The Viral Scent (jossip.com)