Guest blog post by Ronald Ladouceur, Executive Vice President and Executive Creative Director, Media Logic

B2C brands are discovering the remarkable reach of social promotions.

Pepsi has reported that every entry in its Refresh Project generates, on average, 5,000 votes. That means the 5,000 projects Pepsi had approved and posted to its Refresh site by June 2010 generated 25 million direct engagements. And those 25 million represent only the tip of the iceberg relative to the total media reach generated by the 5,000 posters who promoted their causes through their own social networks.

Social promotions, defined here as any intentional social engagement – queries, polls, contests and other structured invitations to interact with a brand – seed the social landscape, trigger interaction and inspire sharing. Their success is changing how brands look at social media – reducing fears and opening minds.

Many organizations have been slow to the social media party, citing the inability to control messaging as the main reason for their hesitance. And certainly the waves of negative comments generated by the political missteps and bad design decisions of brands like Whole Foods, Target, Best Buy and Gap only make nervous brands even more so. But brands still standing on the sidelines should stop looking at the mistakes their competitors have made and instead focus on the successes they are having.

Facebook is helping brands mitigate negativity. It now allows brands to implement segregated Facebook walls where the posts of “others” are not immediately visible and also collapses comments so they too are not immediately visible. But even before Facebook implemented these options, brands had already demoted the wall by landing visitors on a promotions tab by default. Probably to their general relief and great surprise, companies from Pepsi to American Eagle Outfitters discovered their social fans and followers didn’t mind. In fact, they seem to prefer the control offered by promotions to the wild west of freeform conversation.

Promotions, it appears, provide a necessary context for consumers. Rather than shutting down two-way conversation, promotions open up the engagement faucet.

All by itself, this is cool. Promotions work, and their ROI, at least relative to reach, can be directly measured.

But promotions can do more than reach. Promotions can also teach.

Thanks to tools like Alterian’s SM2, promotions can become research instruments that in sum are potentially more valuable (and certainly more timely) than traditional data gathering techniques. Promotions by their nature constrain the question set social media monitoring tools are asked to explore. Consequently, the information returned is of exponentially greater interest and greater value.

I must offer a few caveats. First, social promotions are only valuable as research instruments if the organization issuing them is social itself. Merely having a Facebook page or Twitter stream does not qualify. Organizations must be able to share information and ideas across departments. Second, promotions need an audience. If a brand does not enjoy a large fan/follower/email base, its social promotions will need additional media support in order to gain traction.

Media Logic, with its Zeitgeist & Coffee^sm dynamic content management environment, is among a new generation of marketing agencies pioneering the development of behind-the-scenes networks designed to take social media integration to the next level. These networks connect critical departments within organizations – like product development, community relations, sales and marketing – and through marketing, connect the brand to the entire social world. Combining a behind-the-scenes social network with a public social network into a single manageable whole allows brands to maximize the power of social media to reach and teach.

To learn more about Media Logic and Zeitgeist & Coffee, visit www.mlinc.com.

Ronald Ladouceur will present our November 2nd webinar, Buh-Bye Traditional Data Gathering: Step into the Spotlight with Cooperative Social Media Marketing. He will use first-hand research and experience working with B2C brands to demonstrate how you can develop measurable social promotions.

Ladouceur has led Media Logic’s foray into interactive and online media back in the early 1990s and continues to oversee Media Logic’s interactive services team today. He oversees all creative and design services and has been a driving force in the development of Media Logic’s Zeitgeist & CoffeeSM process, a social marketing protocol that has garnered national interest among companies looking for help in defining their social media strategy.