For those of you unfamiliar with American Express OPEN Forum, here’s a primer: The site, which originally launched in 2007, is an online resource and social networking hub for small-business owners and entrepreneurs searching for practical information and tips for industry experts. According to Compete, OpenForum.com passed 1 million monthly unique visitors for the first time in March.

This success, in part, is due to Jason Rudman, who leads OPEN Forum’s content strategy and development. We recently spoke to him about the evolution of the platform and how American Express OPEN is using social media to arm small business with the information they need. Here’s a snippet from the full-interview on eMarketer Total Access. (Read more…)

As part of our preparation for the recently released report, “How Moms and Retailers Interact Online,” Senior Analyst Jeffrey Grau spoke with Maria Bailey, CEO of BSM Media, about how moms shop online and use social media to share opinions. She also discussed how brands are successfully engaging moms on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and mom-centric online communities. Here’s a clip from the full interview, available on eMarketer Total Access. (Read more…)

We recently spoke with Tina Sharkey, the Chairman and Global President of BabyCenter, a Johnson & Johnson company and online community reaching millions of expectant and new moms. She spoke about how motherhood changes a woman’s shopping habits and purchase criteria, and how women use mom-centric online communities to get personalized advice on baby products and brands. Here’s a clip from the full interview: (Read more…)

When was the last time you cancelled your Super Bowl party because your favorite team wasn’t playing in the game? That was the question posed by Michael DiLorenzo, the National Hockey League’s social media and digital communications manager, at the Business Development Institute‘s Social Integration breakfast Wednesday.

DiLorenzo explained that one the challenges faced by the NHL is convincing fans to “activate nationally” during the Stanley Cup playoffs — that is, getting people to care and watch playoff games even if their local or favorite team isn’t playing. So when a couple innovative fans came up with the idea to have a “Tweet Up” for the 2009 playoffs, the NHL ran with the idea. Since then, #NHLtweetup has become a great example of how marketers can use Twitter not only as an engagement tool, but as a loyalty and community building tool as well.

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Rahim Fazal, CEO of social media application company Involver, says that businesses should assign more value to consumer interactions in social media, and measure the impact over the long term, not just during a promotion. Key quote from the full interview on eMarketer Total Access:

Mr. Fazal: It’s really important to recognize that the activities happening on social networks require special attention and a very personal contextualized approach for marketers. It’s unlike the approach that we as a marketing community have taken over the past decade, where we’ve extended the television model of impressions to banner ads for websites.

In social networking sites, the behavior is really dictated by the users, like playing games or sharing photos or videos with friends, or writing comments about a news article. It’s important for us as marketers to think about how we can support that activity.

Rather than trying to figure out how to advertise to our customers, it’s more important to figure out how to provide tools to our fans, so that they can advertise to their friends about us.

eMarketer: I see a lot of marketers on Facebook using a coupon or promotion to drive more people to become fans. But once a brand has accumulated fans, the next step is crucial. What can marketers do to help get to that next step?

Mr. Fazal: Marketers need to think about the bigger potential of Facebook as a customer relationship management opportunity. I think that is where all of these efforts lead to. For example, our client Us Weekly has been around for decades, and they have a very large following. And that following has traditionally been communicated with through direct mail, or more recently, through their Website.

However, as more of their subscriber activity has transitioned over to social networking sites such as Facebook, they’ve found it important to maintain engagement with that community there. And so when they started working with Involver back in April, they had 2,700 fans. Today, they have more than 270,000 fans. So it’s growth of a couple magnitudes mainly driven by various social media applications that met both the objectives of distribution and engagement. Now it’s leading to a broader opportunity, which is developing relationships.

I’ll give you an example. The base of 270,000 fans on Facebook is a very active one, in terms of their engagement metrics. There’s a high level of frequency. And Us Weekly has done a fantastic job in really maintaining the interactions with those fans.

Us Weekly is now translating it to real measurable business value, where they’ll post a couple of examples of cover photos for an upcoming issue and actually have fans comment on them. Or they’ll put various stories or photos or pieces of content that the editorial staff is interested in building a story around, and push it out to the Facebook fan page to gather input. Ultimately that is becoming a meaningful source of information for editorial decision-making.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access subscribers only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs. Other meaningful of case studies/interviews about brands using social media can be found here.

• Helping Wal-Mart Get Interactive: Kenny Tomlin of Rockfish Interactive chats with us about the company’s work with Wal-Mart and the social media forecast.
• Clorox: Rewiring The Brand Experience With Social Media: Mary O’Connell of Clorox talks about the company’s efforts to make digital and social media part of its brands’ success. O’Connell referred to creating a new vision of digital marketing that is “rewiring and re-imagining our entire brand experience.
• Best Buy Talks Social Commerce on Facebook: We chat with Tracy Benson, the Senior Director of Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media at Best Buy, about the company’s recent launch of social commerce campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.
• Coke Weighs The Value of Social Media: Carol Kruse develops interactive marketing programs and experiences for Coca-Cola’s global brands around the world. Here, Ms. Kruse discusses Coke’s use of digital media and marketing and the evolution of social media.