Traditionally, brand awareness is m

Traditionally, brand awareness is measured through tracking studies and surveys. Online, however, marketers have a number of ways to track brand awareness.
In the social media environment, every time a person uses an application designed by or about the company, the company gains increased exposure to its brand, often in highly relevant contexts. For example, several days before Election Day 2008, Starbucks ran a spot on the “Saturday Night Live” show as well as on YouTube, promoting a free coffee giveaway. Twitter mentions of Starbucks skyrocketed, averaging a mention every eight seconds, which translated into a sizeable increase in brand exposure.7 Such usages enhance and strengthen associations of the brand in customers’ minds through increased exposures. Thus, brand awareness is a key social media objective.
Another example is Naked Pizza, a New Orleans, Louisiana-based business catering to health-conscious pizza lovers, which tweeted about its pizzas in 2009 and successfully drew around 4,000 followers in just a few months. The company also kept track of sales that were spurred by a billboard outside its shop encouraging customers to follow it on Twitter. The microblogging campaign’s success culminated in the company breaking its one-day sales record, with more than 68% of its sales coming from customers who were Twitter followers. Also on that day, 85% of the company’s new customers claimed they had been motivated to buy from Naked Pizza because of Twitter.8
Finally, in what have rapidly become classics in the social media sphere, K-Tec’s blender brand Blendtec posted a series of humorous demonstration videos in which the company’s founder, Tom Dickson, posed the question “Will it Blend?” and then proceeded to blend iPhones, glow sticks, golf balls and many other products previously thought unblendable using his line of hardy blenders. The “Will It Blend?” campaign quickly went viral and as a result saw its sales grow fivefold. The BlendTec videos have now been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube.
Brand Engagement Brand engagement can be enhanced through social media in various ways, and the results can be strikingly positive. In an effort to engage its customers, Southwest Airlines revamped its “Nuts About Southwest” blog with podcasts, videos and other social media tools. Visits to the new and improved blog rose by 25%, page views increased 40% and visitors stayed 26% longer on the company’s website. The blog engaged customers on touchy subjects like assigned seating and used the results from 700 posts as a virtual focus group.9
Target leveraged the social networking aspect of Facebook by encouraging its customers to join and participate in an online environment devoid of any apparent self-serving sales pitches. Target tracked the success of its social media campaign by monitoring membership sign-ups. On their own, thousands of members generated significant buzz with regular posts, which in turn motivated numerous others to join and participate on the networking site. A Facebook application called “Circle of Moms” — which let mothers post messages, arrange carpools, set up back-to-school checklists and click through to promotions on the Target site — generated more than 20,000 visitors in six weeks.
For its 125th anniversary, Gretsch Guitars held a contest on its MySpace page to find the next best unsigned independent band. Nearly 900 bands entered the contest, and over 55,000 site visitors voted for their favorite bands. By soliciting participation from both musicians and their fans, Gretsch engaged its target customer and raised awareness of the brand more broadly.
These highly engaging social media campaigns involving user-generated content likely generate commitment on the part of the consumer, reinforcing loyalty to the brand and making the customer more likely to commit additional effort to support the brand in the future. The bottom-line rewards for this kind of engagement may be observed through delayed sales. Traditionally, marketers measure engagement through customer surveys. Online, marketers can use one-time versus repeated interactions or active participation compared to passive consumption of social media as proxy measures.