Try, Enjoy, and Share

Brands today know the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Building buzz in social media is as natural a concept as peanut butter and jelly, but content creation is only the beginning. With TwineSocial, the most successful brands are going further.

For Swedish content provider Smartson, raising consumer awareness of new products has taken many forms over the years. Founded in 1999, just as blogging sites first became popular, the company’s seen a tidal wave of social activity since sweep the Internet. While competitors have come and gone, Smartson’s success story centers on its ability to adapt – to continually move and feed the conversation.

Each year, the company hosts hundreds of product campaigns in six countries. Clients include Purina, Dr. Oetker, Acuvue, Samsung, Nestle, Naked Juice, and numerous others. Thousands of consumers apply in hopes of becoming product testers, most receiving samples at no charge. In exchange, Smartson asks participants to share photographs and reviews on social media.

However, with millions of new posts flooding networks daily, Smartson needed a way to search and display very specific content for the benefit of its product providers and consumer base. Twine’s platform provided a refreshingly easy solution, Smartson’s Chief Technical Officer Fredrik Westermarck said.

With Twine’s API rolling behind the scenes, each product page now showcases recent content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Flickr, along with applicant stats, product information, and an overall test grade. Having the flexibility to route posts to different collections based on specific criteria gives Smartson a streamlined display with big results.

Westermarck believes “social walls on the campaign pages have increased the number of posts in social media,” and, since creating authentic consumer engagement is key for businesses like Smartson, the more that participating brands can also observe the social activity, the better.

That makes Twine’s feature set “a perfect fit,” Westermarck said. “We know that our customers, who supply the products, love to be able to get an overview of the images and videos that consumers share in social media. And we also know that most of the consumers like that we display their posts on the campaign page.”