Toys “R” Us has become one of the fastest growing brands on Facebook. They gathered 100s of new fans over Thanksgiving holiday and the last few weeks…

How did they do it

?

• Yesterday I went to the Toys R Us Facebook Fan page and the offer is if I become a fan of Toys R Us, they will donate a $1 worth of toys to a non-profit that’s sponsored by Shaquille O’Neal.

• Made it easier for customers to vote on product deals for their wish list. It’s called “You Vote – You Save” Promotion, it allows you vote on the deal you most wanted activated with the focus on Cyber Monday.

• As a Facebook fan, you are able to get status updates with weekly and daily deals, special promotions, coupon offers, and find out about exclusive and unadvertised deals.

• Toys R Us gave its customers a preview of their “Biggest Big Book” – a print catalogue that is mailed out full of deals on the latest toys, on their Facebook page, a day before the “Book” was launched on the site. They gave their customers a sneak peak at their “Black Friday” deals.

It will exciting to see other companies and businesses leverage Facebook and help them communicate and improve their customer’s shopping experience with creative ideas.

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There’s been a lot of excitement about cupcakes the past few years and Portlanders love to indulge in heavenly desserts.

One of the cupcake businesses in town, Cupcake Jones, has done an impressive job with their online marketing. Here’s just a highlight of what they’ve been up to.

1) Every Tuesday is “Benefit Day” – a way they can give back 5% of their sales to a cause. Cupcake Jones is great about announcing the different causes each week on Twitter and Facebook.

2) If you go to their Facebook Fan page, they have their most current menu and lots of great photos of their customers eating cupcakes and of weddings they’ve catered. They are also on the ball and reply to messages on their wall quickly

3) They are pretty active on Twitter and have a nice, warm vibe to their tweets. One thing that was stood out to me is they shared photos of some of the trick-or-treaters that came to their shop, that’s pretty cute.

4) I was so impressed how many reviews they have on Yelp and how they averaged to be very positive. It sounds like they’ve made a lot of folks happy.

Overall – Cupcake Jones has built up a league of fans through promoting, being genuine, and communicating on a regular basis through social networking tools. I hope they keep up the good work!

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In 2006, I began folding cranes for world peace. Learning to fold origami cranes is challenging so I put an ad on LiveJournal. A nice lady offered to teach me in exchange for coffee and a scone and so we spent an hour folding cranes until I got the hang of it. I continued to fold cranes while watching TV or chilling out and found it meditative and was able to fold about 30-40 in about an hour. I getting close to around 500 and wasn’t sure if I continue in my quest, I began feeling burned out. I was telling a friend about my project earlier in February about how I wanted to finish and send 1,000 cranes to the Japanese Hiroshima Peace Park and she said, why not ask for help.

At the time, I was learning how to use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with friends and colleagues and saw this project as a great way to use social media. I also had a blog that I could use as a vehicle to explain my project and start asking people to send me their address and I would send them 10 origami crane papers to make 10 cranes. I believed if I got 50 folks to make 10 cranes, I could reach my goal.

In addition, I set up a Facebook group, explaining my project, linking it to my blog, and sending it out to my friends, letting me know what I’m doing and that I would have a meet up where I would teach people to make cranes. I was amazed who signed up to my group. In less than a month, I had around 80 folks that were members. Some were really excited and shared their experience at different memorials in Seattle and Japan and how powerful the symbol of the crane can be.

Through Facebook, I set up 2 events where members of the group were given a notification that there was an event where they could come and learn to make cranes. The turn outs were awesome, the first one was 14 people and the 2nd was 15 people. Using Facebook as a tool to bring people together for a great cause is powerful.

In addition to using Facebook and my blog, I also made little announcements on Twitter. I just used my profile that’s mainly for my business, but let everyone know how many cranes there (status updates) as well as let folks know about the meet ups and link the tweets to my blog or to the Facebook group.

Not all of the folks in the group were Facebook friends, at least 1/4 were people that I didn’t know and during the meetups, folks I didn’t know very well came to support it.

I was able to reach my goal of 1,000 cranes on August 2009 and have sent the package to the Peace Memorial Park. I trully believe that the social media tools we have now really improve our lives and bring us closer together. It’s very moving and powerful. I challenge you to spread a positive message through email, Facebook, your blog, or Twitter over the next week. I bet you’ll be amazed at the results. I sure was!

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