Comments on: Skittles – Using Social Media As A Homepage

By: Think of fans as collaborators « People like to share

Think of fans as collaborators « People like to share — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:28:48 +0000

[...] Skittles – Using Social Media As A Homepage (viralblog.com) [...]

By: Why do I want to be using social media? « Mark’s Blog

Why do I want to be using social media? « Mark’s Blog — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:56:41 +0000

[...] to Google the old site to find a link to it. There’s a great article looking at this move here. I believe that this experiment will, in relation to corporate social media, be the Wright [...]

By: Using Social Media to deliver Brand Content: The Skittles example | UseOnline.net

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:46:47 +0000

[...] You’ve got to check it out to understand the concept. It is also good to read the interesting analysis from ViralBlog. [...]

By: Linkdump 38 | ettf.net

Linkdump 38 | ettf.net — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:59:09 +0000

[...] ViralBlog analysis of the recent Skittles efforts [...]

By: Matthijs Roumen

Matthijs Roumen — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:07:57 +0000

@Rovef1ster: How do you rate that action of the community? Personally, I don’t believe it has a really negative impact on the brand. For as far as I can see it, its only a trend among a small group. Or am I wrong?

@Mark: Thanks!

By: Matthijs Roumen

Matthijs Roumen — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:06:31 +0000

Hi Elizabeth, thanks for your comment!
You’re right about the speed of the brands entering the social space. It’s going way to slow, while consumer expect the presence of brands on their favorite platforms.

You can take a look at the posts I’ve written before at ViralBlog (http://www.viralblog.com/author/mroumen/). Those are mostly case studies on this topic.

Good luck on your research

By: mark

mark — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:21:39 +0000

Very good article!

By: Rovef1ster

Rovef1ster — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:22:06 +0000

#Skittlefisting

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:48:13 +0000

Hi,
Thanks for this article. I’m an MBA student doing research on how blogs and user-generated reviews have changed consumer behavior and corporate marketing strategies. This is a great case study to include in my research! I agree that this should be a dialogue rather than throwing everything against the wall (no pun intended) and seeing what sticks. It’s interesting that Skittles has taken this approach because most CPG companies are reticent to let their brand develop with very little control (i.e. letting anyone on Twitter say whatever they want about Skittles). Generally I’ve found that brands enter the web 2.0 pool slowly, having a CEO start a blog or casually respond to other bloggers they’ve found through Google Analytics or another buzz search platform.

I’m curious as to more of your thoughts on this topic and whether you have some more case studies that you’ve written. I’m trying to research a variety of industries to determine if there are commonalities that can be drawn across industries, thus facilitating more general information/frameworks (yeah, I know it’s so b-school) that marketers can use.

thoughts??

By: Matthijs Roumen

Matthijs Roumen — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:44:26 +0000

Hi Pierre, thanks for your comment!
I was aware of the fact that Modernista also created a site with the same content showcase.

I didn’t mention that in the article, because I wanted to write about the positive and negative aspects of the website itself, not whether or not it is a rip-off

I think brands should in fact conversate on social media platforms. Its even a start if they’d even enabled a properly way of communiation through Facebook. If you’re displaying yourself as a brand on a social medium, you should be social yourself.