Social Media – Letting Your Visitors Control The Direction Of Your Business

When people talk about social media today, you may instantly think of Facebook or Twitter. But in truth, there are hundreds of ways you can take your business social.

Have you ever been to MyCokeRewards.com?  If you drink Coke products, you can take the codes listed on the bottles and boxes, enter them into the website, and build up your points to trade in for prizes. You can trade them for things like magazine subscriptions, coupons to use at your favorite stores, or to enter sweepstakes for bigger prizes.

So Coke has a highly concentrated site where a lot of their “fans” congregate and spend time.

Now instead of simply going there for prizes, they are also trying to get you to take the next step with their branding by offering a contest where you become the designer.

For 2010, they are looking for a new design to place on their cans of Coke. Instead of letting their in-house graphics team handle the job, they’ve turned it over to millions of fans. Design a can. Submit it to Coke. And you have a chance to win one of fifteen $500 Visa gift cards.

By making this kind of offer, they are accomplishing three things:

1. Gaining more dedication to their product – if you enter, you’ll probably be more dedicated to coming back to check results.

2. Growing their worldwide exposure. What if you enter, and win? Imagine how quickly you can spread the word about your design. Share it on Facebook. Tweet about it on Twitter. Let your blog audience in on the news.

3. Making their site even more fun. If you already visit for one reason, why not come back for additional reasons? You always have to have a reason for people to keep coming back.