The Best Use Of Facebook Photo Tagging By A brand Ever?

Blogging, Facebook November 26, 2009 6 Comments

IKEA one f world's biggest brands

IKEA one of world's biggest brands

You may have seen the video below doing the rounds on the web. It shows just how innovatively IKEA are using Facebook to tag their customers and spread their message through Facebook. I want to look at this from a slightly different angle because although I think their use of tagging users and creating virtual catalogues is very innovative I am more interested in the amount of coverage they are getting for this. Because they have packaged it correctly they have increased the reach of their campaign from a local shop in Sweden to some of the biggest blogs and publications worldwide. You should be able to do the same yourself no matter how small your business…

Packaging Correctly

For those of you not familiar with the media and online coverage, people spend their lives pitching the big blogs and websites to get coverage. Getting on to a site like Mashable or Techcrunch which have millions of readers can be incredibly powerful but these people get sent 100s of press releases about companies using Facebook pages innovatively. Why did IKEA get coverage? They packaged it in a very simple digestible package. A video. Writing news stories can be tough and time consuming but if you are writing about social media and are presented with a video like the one above all you have to do is embed it and write a couple of lines and you have your story.

The costs

IKEA no doubt have a PR with contacts in all the right places but you can easily replicate the coverage they have received. Their campaign is innovative but not that innovative. Making a video about what they did was the innovative part. I know video and this video wouldn’t have cost more than $1000. It is simple to make but produces a strong message. It has a strong hook and you are drawn in to watch it all. Why not make a short video pitching your product to a journalist. It doesn’t have to be high production but if you send a link to journalists with an intro by yourself if might just get their attention over the 100s of other press releases sitting in their inboxes. Get creative.

The coverage

This story has been picked up by tons of blogs already all over the world. I saw the video, knew it was relevant to the readers here and built it in to a story. Bloggers and publications all over the world are helping to promote IKEA on what started out as a local project for one branch in Sweden. The video already has over 50,000 views on Youtube. Social media is very new and very sexy. If you use it in an innovate manner for your company and then press release it there is a very good chance the mainstream media will pick up on it and cover it as well. Get your thinking cap on and come up with your own little IKEA campaign, you have all the tools in front of you and they are all free :)

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