BtoB announces People's Choice social finalists

New York—BtoB today announced the finalists for the tech and nontech People's Choice awards.

Readers can vote for their favorites in each of the People's Choice categories by visiting www.btobonline.com/peoples_choice_2013. Online voting ends March 1, and the awards will be presented at BtoB's Social Media Marketing Awards luncheon March 20 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. The luncheon will take place during BtoB's daylong Digital Edge Live conference.

The nontech People's Choice finalists are: Aon, Emerson Climate Technologies and New Cities Foundation. The tech finalists are: Adobe Systems, Dell Inc. and Deltek Inc.

Best Integrated Campaign, Nontech, winner: Aon

Campaign: Global Service Day

To celebrate its 25th anniversary as a global brand, Aon devoted a single day to rallying its 62,000 employees to donate 25,000 hours of service to their local communities. Colleagues and partners were urged to use social channels to tell about the good work they were doing all over the world and to contribute photos to a master Facebook page. The #AonPassItOn hashtag tracked activity on Twitter, and more than 80 photos were posted on Facebook.

Gamification, a tactic that's common to many social media campaigns these days, also was used. Aon contacted 50 social media influencers and encouraged them to participate in the community service initiative, promising a sneak peek at the company's Global Citizenship Report and entry in a giveaway as incentives. Results exceeded goals by 400%, with nearly 140,000 impressions and a 32% growth in Facebook activity over the previous month.

Best Integrated Campaign, Nontech, runner-up: New Cities Foundation

Campaign: DeusM Social Media Campaign

New Cities Foundation is a nonprofit Swiss institution dedicated to improving living conditions in urban centers of emerging nations. Hoping to drive registrations for its summit last May, the organization enlisted UBM DeusM to field a grassroots campaign on major blogs and social networks. A dedicated editor and social media agent posted questions and polls on Facebook, uploaded documents to SlideShare and Scribd and worked to build the foundation's Twitter following. Urban-themed blogs and communities such as Urbanophile, Untapped Cities and Sustainable Cities Collective were targeted for discussions and posts.

With a small staff working across multiple channels, the one-month campaign drove a 20% increase in conference registrations. Facebook likes tripled, Twitter mentions rose nearly fivefold, and content on SlideShare and Scribd was viewed more than 20,000 times. Targeted Facebook advertising and conventional press releases supported the effort; the formal conference release was picked up by 247 outlets.

Facebook winner: Emerson Climate Technologies

Campaign: Painted Copeland Scroll Compressor Program

Emerson Climate Technologies celebrated two milestones in 2012: 25 years in business and the shipment of the 100 millionth Copeland Scroll compressor, a product that has become a standard in commercial refrigeration and home air conditioning.

There was cause to celebrate, but how do you get people excited about a torpedo-like device that's buried in the innards of a big machine?

How about a contest? Emerson challenged each of its eight Copeland Scroll manufacturing facilities to turn a compressor into a work of art representing its region of the world. A Facebook page was designed for employees, trade schools, community partners and customers to vote for their favorite creation.

Emerson Climate hoped the campaign would generate 1,000 votes. It was off by 134,000. Enthusiasm was so high that more than 10,000 votes were coming in daily as the contest neared its close.

Best Integrated Campaign, Tech, winner: Adobe Systems

Campaign: Metrics, Not Myths

Adobe used psychology to market a new cloud-based suite of tools for managing marketing programs. It designed the "Metrics, Not Myths" campaign to debunk common misconceptions about marketing and give marketers credit for the discipline their profession demands.

Using low-cost paid and earned social media channels, Adobe created and syndicated a series of humorous videos that capture the passion of professional marketers for their work and the frustration of feeling undervalued. A Facebook hub was set up to host the video content and encourage engagement. The page hosted ongoing discussions with marketing experts on the value of social media, while a companion contest encouraged marketers to share the biggest misconceptions about their field.

The campaign drove more than 2,200 social media posts within its first three days and 1.1 million video views the first month. The Facebook page added 11,000 Likes. It also drove countless smiles on the faces of beleaguered marketers.

Best Integrated Campaign, Tech, runner-up: Deltek Inc.

Campaign: Connect More

You don't see many campaigns that use as many outlets as Deltek did to promote its Insight 2012 user conference. To drive awareness and registrations—and deliver updates to non-attendees—the company employed Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare, YouTube and Instagram.

Facebook was the hub for photos and updates. Twitter hashtags #Insight2012 and #BestofInsight generated the most interactions of any social channel. A LinkedIn group hosted conversations before and after the event. The best presentations from previous conferences were plucked from the archive and a new one was posted on SlideShare each day leading up to the event.

YouTube brought prospective attendees videos from past conference, and Deltek partnered with InstaPrint to print on-site photos uploaded to Instagram with the #Insight2012 hashtag.

The campaign generated nearly 700 new Twitter followers and 900 tweets. YouTube videos were watched more than 10,000 times, and Deltek added 1, 000 followers to its LinkedIn company page.

LinkedIn winner: Dell Inc.

Campaign: LinkedIn Page

As one of the most prominent users of social media for customer engagement and support, Dell wanted to do LinkedIn right. It has been a leader in leveraging the most sophisticated features of LinkedIn's company pages and in making effective use of LinkedIn groups to build sub-communities around customer interests.

With more than 400,000 followers, Dell's LinkedIn company page is a major avenue for communicating news and career opportunities to its constituents. Dell posts multiple updates to the page each day and currently lists nearly 700 jobs. The company was the first to use LinkedIn's new Careers page and targeted status updates and to showcase its products in the Products & Services tab.

What really impresses us about Dell's LinkedIn presence, however, is its many groups. They include the 3,000-member Dell TechCenter, a 10,000-member Business Solutions Exchange devoted to management advice, and even an invitation-only group for CIOs.

Below is a list of all of this year's winners and runners-up:

Best Integrated Campaign Tech 

Winner: Adobe Systems, Metrics, Not Myths

Runner-up: Deltek Inc., Connect More

Best Integrated Campaign Nontech 

Winner: Aon, Global Service Day

Runner-up: New Cities Foundation, DeusM's Social Media Campaign

Best use of Twitter

Winner: GE Intelligent Platforms, Our Water Counts

Runner-up: Technology Association of Georgia, Technology Tweet Tournament

Best use of Facebook

Winner: Emerson Climate Technologies, Painted Copeland Scroll Compressor Program

Runner-up: Cisco Systems, Facebook

Best use of LinkedIn

Winner: Dell Inc., LinkedIn Page

Runner-up: Burns & McDonnell, LinkedIn Company Campaign

Best use of Pinterest

Winner: Constant Contact, Pinterest

Runner-up: JCK Marketplace, JCK Pinterest

Best Corporate Blog

Winner: Intel Corp., Turning Up the Volume: Boosting Intel Health IT Blog Views 1,200 Percent

Runner-up: Strother Communications Group, 41 Stories

Best Closed Community

Winner: Cisco Systems, Social Media Training and Certification Program

Runner-up: The VMware User Group, VMUG Online Workspaces

Best use of Mobile

Winner: Cisco Systems, Mobile Event App

Runner-up: Hobart Corp., Spotlight App

Best Viral Video

Winner: Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., EdAhead Awareness and Adoption

Runner-up: Sourcefire Inc., The Breakdown of a Fake AV Scammer