• Tyson Foods
• Community Medical Centers
• General Mills

They’re joining the likes of Dell, Walmart, Nokia, SAP, GM and Coke – and more than 40 other fantastic, global brands – as members of the Social Media Business Council collaborating every day on how to create successful, scalable, and sustainable social media programs at large organizations. If you’re leading social media at a major enterprise, we’d love to have you join our family. Click here to learn more.

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YouTube occasionally offers banner ads on the home page of their site, and when Volvo bought the ad space, they decided to incorporate a Twitter feed into the expandable masthead ad that expanded when you moused over it.

The ad itself, advertising Volvo’s XC60 model, included video, photos, a 360 degree view of the car, and a video game that highlighted some new safety features. The main draw to the banner, though, was the incorporation of a constantly updated Twitter feed that showed people’s update messages if they included references to the new car.

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New York based clothing company, Liz Claiborne, relaunched its brand this year with the help of some 300 female consumers. The brand built a private online community where fans of the brand could communicate with one another and with the company directly.

Dave McTague, Liz Claiborne’s EVP, Partnered Brands, says that their online community project turned a panel of women into a “focus group on steroids.” The participants received rewards for different levels of participation, which McTague believes to be a more genuine approach than paying them.

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Sharpie has created a website called “Sharpie Uncapped,” which promotes personal expression by drawing on clothing and other non-traditional canvases. The website includes links to a gallery where people can submit pictures of their drawings, links to a blog, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook pages, as well as a “how to” page with videos of people making their artwork.

In a press release, Sally Grimes, Sharpie’s Global Vice President of Marketing, described the community site as having a “treasure-trove” of ideas created by the brand’s fans, the people who best know and appreciate the company — and has decided to showcase the creative work of these fans to inspire other people to express themselves in new ways and to show how simple a project can be.

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Disclosure: Sharpie is a Social Media Business Council member (and an awesome one at that!), but even if they weren’t, we’d write about them anyway.

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Volkswagen puts a link to their Facebook page — not vw.com, their corporate website — at the end of their television commercials. The VW Facebook page is an interactive environment that, with your permission, accesses information that you have uploaded to your profile such as gender, age, and interests, and then suggests which two cars in their lineup suit you best.

On the page, in addition to the analyzer, fans of the brand (of which there are more than 100,000) often comment on the brand’s wall discussing the direction the company is heading, showing excitement about new models, and boasting about how many VWs they have owned in their lifetime.

Learn More: http://facebook.com/vw

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• Abbott
• Alticor
• Johnson & Johnson

They’re joining the likes of Dell, Walmart, Nokia, SAP, GM and Coke – and more than 40 other fantastic, global brands – as members of the Social Media Business Council collaborating every day on how to create successful, scalable, and sustainable social media programs at large organizations.

If you’re leading social media at a major enterprise, we’d love to have you join our family. Click here to learn more.

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Sandwich chain Quiznos recently launched a contest to promote their new Toasty Torpedo sandwich. The contest, hosted on ToastyTorpedo.com, invites fans of the chain to submit photos or videos of them eating the sub “in an unusual place or while doing an unexpected activity.”

In a statement, Trey Hall, Quiznos marketing chief, said, “We believe social media and interacting with our consumers in this way is really important to our brand and is in many ways, the wave of the future.”

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Chicago, IL — The Blog Council, a community of social media leaders at large companies, has officially changed its name to the Social Media Business Council and will call SocialMedia.org its new online home.

“Every day, our members share advice on how to build successful, scalable and self-sufficient social media programs,” said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Social Media Business Council and its parent company, GasPedal. “This new name and domain better reflect the wide range of issues our community focuses on.”

The name change was a collaborative effort, with members sharing dozens of name suggestions before selecting Social Media Business Council through a vote at Member Meeting 4 in New York City.

“We’ve got a great group of active members,” said Sernovitz. “It’s fantastic to see how much pride they take in the Council and how willing they are to collaborate — not only on social media issues — but also in advancing the group itself.”

Social Media Business Council members represent the heads of social media at the world’s largest brands, including: Abbott Laboratories, AccuQuote, Allstate, Amway, Analog Devices, Ariba, Avery Dennison, Chevron, Cisco Systems, CME Group, The Coca-Cola Company, Community Medical Centers, ConAgra Foods, Dell, Duke Energy, First Data, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, General Mills, General Motors, H&R Block, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, IDG, Intel, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, Kraft, Mayo Clinic, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Molson Canada, Nestle Purina PetCare, Newell Rubbermaid, Nokia, Novartis, Orange Business Services, PepsiCo, Petro-Canada, Pfizer, Pitney Bowes, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Salesforce.com, SAP, Sara Lee, Starbucks, SunGard, SWIFT, Symantec, Turner Broadcasting System, Tyson Foods, U.S. Coast Guard, UPS, USAA, Walmart, and Wells Fargo.

About the Social Media Business Council:

The Social Media Business Council, formerly the Blog Council, is a brands-only community that helps large organizations build successful social media programs. Members gain instant access and advice from the heads of social media at the world’s largest brands and collaborate with one another in a friendly, productive, and private environment.

The Social Media Business Council is a GasPedal project. We teach word of mouth marketing and social media to companies of all sizes.

Learn more about the Social Media Business Council: http://socialmedia.org

Learn more about GasPedal: http://gaspedal.com

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Walmart employees were invited to the Activision studios during the videogame expo, E3. Activision unveiled new games and technology to these employees in a sneak-preview of what will soon be available in stores.

At the demo, Eric Bright, a representative of Walmart, live-blogged the event so that customers can get a look at games being released in the coming months. The live blogging included reactions to gameplay, announcements on new games in development, and enthusiasm about what the Walmart stores will soon be carrying.

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Disclosure: Walmart is a Blog Council member (and an awesome one at that!), but even if they weren’t, we’d write about them anyway.

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The commissioner of the LPGA, Carolyn Bivens, recently encouraged players to use social media during competetive rounds of golf. Said Bivens in an interview, “The new media is very important to the growth of golf and we view it as a positive, and a tool to be used.”

Updating sites such as Twitter and Facebook in the middle of the round would be mostly for the benefit of the younger fans of the sport who aren’t necessarily waiting for golf broadcasts on television, explained Bivens, who believes they want to know what’s going on in the middle of a round.

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