Social Media tactics can be tough to measure and monetize, unless you do social media the right way. Today’s gleaming example comes our way from Starbucks. You may have heard Starbucks wanted to give away a free pastry with the purchase of a drink. And their savvy social media tactics are the reason you heard that.

Let’s start with their Facebook promotion. They created an Event, Starbucks Free Pastry Day: July 21, 2009, which by last count had nearly 600,000 “confirmed guests” on Facebook alone. That is a whole lot of foot traffic for Starbucks around the map, but we said “start” with Facebook because the biggest piece of their promotion puzzle was Twitter.

Twitter has an immense amount of potential when executing a promotion. We’ve seen a couple media companies in the recent past, Squarespace and Moonfruit, use hash-tags (#squarespace) to spread the word on Twitter. Their promotions actually required Twitter users to use that hash-tag in a tweet in order to be entered for a prize. It worked. Their names (because so many people were using their hash-tag) quickly jumped into Twitter’s top Trending Topics. Due to Starbucks already established brand and recognizable name, the Twitter population did the work, by simply doing what the do every day, tweeting. By just telling friends, family, and other “followers” they were headed to Starbucks or just got a free pastry, Trending Topics was soon taken over by “Starbucks” - thus adding fuel to the flames. Below is a graph from Twist showing Starbucks mentions as a percentage of total tweets. Their mentions were up nearly ten times due to their promotion.

As you can see, social media can absolutely be measured and monetized, if done correctly. Early evaluations look promising, and despite a fair amount of negative blog posts about individual hiccups, the data indicates this promotion was a success for Starbucks.

One company, local here to the Ann Arbor, Michigan area, just jumped into the social media space with a Facebook promotion of their own. That company is Weber’s, a boutique hotel/upscale restaurant/ultralounge that has always had a terrific following via word-of-mouth, but like everyone else it was time to take that online. They kicked off their Facebook Page opening with a giveaway (are you getting the hint that we all love free stuff?!). With a beautiful landing page setup (taken down after the promotion expired) at Facebook, they emailed their existing client database with the offer to enter for a chance to win 1 of 50 free rooms at the hotel. The email gave them the Facebook fan page link and simply required they “become a Fan” to enter. Within 3 days of launching their Facebook fan Page, Weber’s had over 500 Fans and an interactive Wall packed with compliments and praises.

It certainly helped in Weber’s case to have a Facebook Page that was clean and professionally complete with photos, visual tabs, and a thorough company bio. You can check it out at facebook.com/WebersAnnArbor. They definitely disproved the myth that small businesses can’t effectively use, measure, and monetize social media. Execute them correctly and Facebook + Twitter can equal big rewards for your company.