Welcome to my new post series: Best of Social Media. I plan to share the best ideas, examples, and stats I see every week. Definitely let me know what you think in the comments.

Cheezburger CEO on What Makes Internet Culture Viral

Obviously humor is at the heart of what drives the viral spread of content on the web, but Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh explains that those things that go viral most often and for much longer are remixes and mashups of existing content. Take a look at the Kanya/Obama video, which takes two independent clips, marries them, and creates something wholly more viral than the source material.

Even viral content can spawn more viral content. Take a look at Charlie Bit Me and the remixes such as the “Charlie Bit Me (Auto Tune)” which spread the video through the web again.

The key, Huh believes, is to take something familiar and put it into a new context or give it a new meaning. The question is, how can brands do that?

Domino’s Pizza Holdout “Bounty” Social Campaign Soars

Domino’s, just a little over a year ago, was hurt more often than helped by social media. A video of two employees flinging snot and messing with orders in other disgusting ways drew millions of views and mainstream press coverage. Domino’s was forced to close the location where the incident took place and a company spokesman said it definitely attributed to a fall in sales:

The company had been on track to see a profit in the second quarter of this year, McIntyre said, but saw a 0.7 percent decrease. “Because we were trending positive, all things being equal, that was the one thing we could point to and say that impacted us.“

Since then, Domino’s has done tons of great stuff to build its brand through social media. Ramon De Leon, a Chicago franchisee, revolutionized relationship marketing for the company through Twitter, built the most profitable Chicago store, and has been sharing his insights with other Domino’s franchisees. And now they’ve taken their “Pizza Holdouts” TV campaign to social media through an interesting new concept.

With Domino’s “Taste Bud Bounty” consumers hunt down friends and place a “bounty” on them via the Taste Bud Bounty Hunter game.

For each bounty placed, the friend in question is gifted with a coupon for a free pizza (with purchase of a second pizza. The bounty issuer also gets a coupon in turn (first time only). Should the friend order with your coupon (before any others), you “capture” their taste buds. After ten captures, you’ll earn a coupon for a free large one-topping pizza.

The “Taste Bud Bounty” game will run through June 27, and the player with the most captures will win free pizza for a year. The game has already been quite successful. If you look at the bounty hunter wall, 5,860 people have already participated in the first week.

As an extension of a sampling campaign to get customers to try the brand’s new recipe, it seems like it could do exactly what Domino’s wants in spreading awareness and trial.

Vitrue Launches “Social Page Evaluator” To Measure Fan Page Value

Vitrue, a social media management company, has released a free tool that determines the value of a brand’s Fan Page by measuring number of fans, posts per day, number of interactions, and other miscellaneous data.

It’s an interesting, if questionably accurate, way to help determine the value of a fan page. The formula is proprietary and how it calculates value is unknown, but it works off the premise that every fan and interaction it worth a certain dollar value. For example, since the average CPM rate online if $5, one of the factors it seems to use is calculating the impressions a fan page is earning through posts and interactions. So if you generate 1 million “earned” impressions, it’s technically equivalent to spending $5,000 on ads.

Try it out. It’s obviously all theoretical, but still interesting

Consumers Embrace Mobile Ads

A new study by mobile audience media company JiWire surveyed 1,000 smartphone users to find out their responsiveness to mobile ads. Here are the key findings

• 52% claim they have acted on an advertisement in an app.
• 18% have made a purchase directly from an ad in an app in the last month.
• 53% said they were willing to share their location to receive more relevant advertising (interesting news for apps like Foursquare)
• 40% spend more than one hour per day using apps
• Average smartphone owner has 22 apps on their devices

Interesting and Unknown Facebook Stats

• Of the 400 million monthly Facebook users, 50% sign on every day
• 70% of FB users live outside the U.S.Facebook is the #2 web site by traffic. Google is #1, Youtube is #3 and Twitter is #11.
• Facebook users spend a cumulative 8.3 billion hours per month on Facebook
• There are 550,000+ active applications
• Women aged 55+ are the fastest growing demo on FB in America
• Facebook has become so popular, psychologists have identified a new mental health disorder: “Facebook Addiction Disorder”
• After netting about $650 million in revenue is 2009, FB is expected to make $1 billion from FB Ads

All the Stats You Need To Know about Social Media Usage

• Only 7% of the population is aware of location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc)
• 7% of population uses Twitter. Up from 2% in 2009
• 33% of Twitter users are on every day, 37% of Twitter users are on only once a month or less.
• Twitter demo by race:
  • 51% White
  • 25% African American
  • 17% Hispanic
  • 3% Asian
  • 5% Other
• 52% of users are 25-44 yrs old, only 29% are 12-24 yrs. old
• 86% have at least some college education
• They believe the recession has passed. 32% said financial problems have gotten better vs 18% of gen population
• 54% update their status on social media sites multiple times per week from their phones
• 42% use Twitter to learn about products and services
• 41% use Twitter to provide opinions of products/services
• 31% use Twitter to ask for opinions about products/services
• 49% of Twitter users follow brands, only 16% of all social networking users follow brands.
• 44% of Twitter users feel they’re early adopters, trying new products before most people
• 73% of Twitter users feel the Internet is “most essential” to their lives. Only 13% feel the same way about TV
• If forced between choosing TV and the Internet, 79% would eliminate TV and keep the internet.

Social Stats: How Business Leaders View Social Media

2,700 readers of the business management e-mail newsletter “SmartBrief on Leadership” gave these responses to Social Media Issues

• Are their companies currently using social media/social tools?Getting there: 51% of respondents say their companies are actively using and exploring social media in a number of business areas.  Another 30% are in pilot test/consideration mode.  Only 27% say they are not using social media now and won’t be in the future.
• Is social media just a marketing fad?Social media is here to stay:  While many leaders say they see social media as somewhat “over-hyped,” 63% of respondents say they disagree with the notion that it is a marketing fad.
• Falling behind the competition: 40% of respondents say they fear they are falling behind their competitors in using social media. Also, 25% admitted that they did not know what their competitors were doing in the space.

The Benefits of Linking Customer Loyalty with Social Networking

NYTimes has this very interesting report about social media and mobile networking apps.

A phone is a simple replacement for a wallet stuffed with loyalty cards, but the real appeal for stores is in the location information provided by Foursquare and other location-based applications. Retailers can track when customers actually enter their stores. Such data can be used to learn things about store traffic, such as when men visit versus women. And it’s easier to note when the most loyal customers visit.

“If you check into work, then you leave work, you check into a bank and then you check into a store, that’s a behavior that, in aggregate, we might use to transform the way we market to you in the offline world,” Mr. Bough said. “We might see dayparts that are more likely for you to check out of some place and go to the store, and we might do advertising during that specific daypart in that specific place.”

Pepsi, in addition to beginning a Foursquare program, is also introducing a location-based iPhone application called Pepsi Loot through which customers can collect points toward free music downloads.

“We believe it’s a real, new opportunity to transform loyalty programs in a way that we haven’t done before,” Mr. Bough said.

Tasti-D-Lite wove Foursquare into its loyalty-card program this year. When someone registers the card online or visits the loyalty Web site, she can click to connect the card with her Foursquare account (along with Twitter or Facebook). Whenever the card is swiped after that, the customer accumulates Foursquare check-in points and Tasti-D-Lite loyalty points at once.

“Imagine the amount of data we now have in order to make better marketing decisions, in order to make loyalty decisions, about our customers, as opposed to the paper punch cards we had before that didn’t do anything for us,” said B. J. Emerson, social technology officer for Tasti-D-Lite.

This next quote is particularly interesting given my observation in 7 Keys To Measuring Social Media ROI, that the brands that have seen the most direct and measurable benefits from social media usage have been those that control their retail environment, like Dunkin Donuts, Tasti D Lite, Naked Pizza, and Dominos.

Pepsi’s Foursquare program will begin running in June. While the company is still working out details, Mr. Bough said that he expects that when a Foursquare user is near a Pepsi retailer, an offer to enroll the person in a Pepsi rewards system will appear. Once people are enrolled, whenever they check in at a grocery store or drugstore selling Pepsi, they will accumulate rewards points or badges that they can redeem for products or offers or donate toward charities. Restaurants can layer in offers, too — Shakey’s is giving $3 off a large pizza for people who show the Pepsi Loot app, for instance.

Five Steps for Consumer Brands to Earn Social Currency

Very, very interesting article from FastCompany that I can’t even summarize. You should just read it. It’s formatted like an infographic, so it’s easily digestible.

Some of the topics?

• How Dunkin Donuts trumps Starbucks in social with far fewer followers/fans.
• Why not every brand, like mass market brands, are built for social media
• Social tools are a means, not an end
• Gimmicks marginalize trust

What are some of the social media or general marketing articles that stood out to you this week?