Scenario As a fitness, health and beauty products company, our primary goal in using social media is to increase our revenue and our customers' use of our products. We focus many of our resources on the three main social graphs--Twitter, Facebook and YouTube--where each of our customer groups use social media a bit differently. For example, existing customers become fans of our company on Facebook and submit product reviews via outlets such as Bazaar Voice, online community members tweet daily progress in their fitness regimes, and coaches use YouTube to post before and after videos of people who have used one of our products.

I would like to add more strategic responsibilities to my social media group, in addition to their typical tasks of activity tracking and observing traffic. I'm also establishing a metrics dashboard so I can correlate new social media initiatives with their outcomes. I know that being active in the social media world has become almost mandatory for companies today, but how much of it is simply hype and how much empirical evidence can you find showing that customer loyalty and company growth can be directly attributed to social media activities?

Use Customer Feedback to Inform New Products

Joe Yanoska, VP and Head of Technology, American Greetings Interactive

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