How eBay And Nikon Tapped Into Social Media And Did Something Cool

Wondering how large companies can tap into the popularity of social media, Web 2.0, and other contemporary trends in the online world? Well, they could just pay $50,000 and set up a commercial MySpace account (no kidding, that’s the base fee for a fancy professional profile) or they could actually be inspired and tap into the popularity of YouTube or Flickr and do something really cool…

That’s exactly what auction giant eBay did when it created an admittedly cheesy 75 second introductory movie promoting an upcoming course it’s offering to the eBay seller community. It filmed the movie then simply uploaded it to YouTube and mentioned it on the eBay Chatter Weblog to help drive more customers to the training course: check it out. Cool!

Nikon did something even more cool, though: it picked out a group of existing Nikon digital SLR photographers from popular photo-sharing site Flickr and sent them brand new Nikon D80 camera setups. Their assignments? Take pictures, send us your best. The result? Stunning Nikon. A very savvy marketing effort!

I applaud both companies for experimenting - and succeeding - with social media and look forward to more companies tapping into the wisdom, enthusiasm, and verve of popular social media.

An extended version of this article, with samples from Stunning Nikon and the eBay YouTube video, can be found at eBay and Nikon: Examples of New Media Marketing. Author Dave Taylor runs the popular Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support site and is also the author of the Intuitive Life Business Blog.

[tags]eBay, Nikon, social media, clever marketing, YouTube[/tags]