I am no expert in social media, but just recently I have tried to catch up. A few days ago, I posted some useful tips that I heard picked up at the inbound marketing seminar run by Kahena in Jerusalem.  And yesterday, I attended an internet conference at the Jerusalem College of Technology.

Now what was really cool was the presentation by Alon Chen, responsible for Google’s marketing in Israel and in Greece. Entitled ‘Art, Copy and Code’, he described how modern technology leads traditional marketing concepts, bringing together the creativity and copywriting teams.

Of the many examples Chen referred to, I want to concentrate on three case studies. My aim is to repeat Chen’s message – with some simple clear thinking, small business can take on these features without too much investment.

1) Connect the dots

Snickers is a chunky chocolate bar that people tend to eat at work, when they are hungry. The manufacture understood that hungry people make mistakes at work. So, they contacted Google to find out the most misspelt words on the search engine. The result was an effective, humourous advert that produced a clear upward spike in sales.

The point is that the Snickers team just followed a logical pattern of thought, without trying to be too clever.

2) Collaborative stories

Kraft foods recently launched a new ‘hummus and cheese’ dip. Their advert was centered around a stereotype “old Greek grandmother” figure, dressed in black and telling off a younger generation.

While the campaign has drawn some criticism, the revenue stream has been healthy. The reason is that Kraft posted the advert on an open utube page and then encouraged others to make and post similar films. Thus, a community has been created and Kraft has increased its branding power.

3) “Just help me”

Google is trying to promote “google hangout“, a potential rival to skype. One of the first companies to embrace this potential was Toyota cars. For example, they created a mind-boggling advert where three people in different locations are seen choosing a car, while hanging out together on-line.

And here’s my point. From the conference, I visited two of my clients and told them what I had learnt. Both are small businesses with limited time and resources. Within minutes, my customers were putting together the framework for a marketing plan, based on hangout and thus increasing their interaction with their potential community. In laymen’s terms, they are seeking to apply user-friendly tech, available to all, to up their revenue base.