Social Media Marketing Awards: Ultimate Software

LinkedIn: Winner

Program: LinkedIn engagement initiative

Why we liked it: This maker of human capital management solutions made a bet that the LinkedIn business social network would be the best place to prospect for customers. It bet right. Getting to success, however, involved making a companywide commitment to establishing LinkedIn's value as a source of human resource knowledge. Ultimate mounted a multipronged initiative to raise awareness of its then-lightly trafficked LinkedIn page through a combination of conference promotions, social media business cards, website visibility and an online contest. Experts at the company joined members' discussions in the group. The result was a 236% increase in membership in the group in one year. More important, LinkedIn referred more than 6,100 visitors to the company website, resulting in 107 sales leads and six deals closed. Visitors from LinkedIn spent significantly more time on the Ultimate Software site and posted referrals inviting friends to join the community as well.