Startup BumeBox throws social media “parties to help brands engage with their customers. Its latest success story: eBay.
Not that you actually need BumeBox to engage fans on social networks, but the service helps put together special, limited-time events, which can then be aggregated and embedded — so fans could participate directly on Twitter, or they could jump into the conversion from the company’s website.
BumeBox says it held its first party for eBay over the holiday season — a highlight, apparently, was a thread with more than 30 tweets that mentioned more than 40 board games. The companies also held a two-hour event over Valentine’s Day that was focused on “gifts for him and her.” BumeBox says that the associated hashtag, “#eBaywithLove” was viewed 14 million times.
I have to admit, there’s still a part of me of that has trouble believing people are genuinely excited about talking with large corporations (incidentally, that was one of the big themes at Facebook’s marketing event today), but apparently some were, and they were pretty darn excited — the average participant tweeted 10 times. (And to be clear, to many of the conversations were more about eBay than with eBay.) Most of the comments were quite positive, as you can see in the tag cloud above.
“It really seemed to be a pent-up demand for this kind of outlet,” says CEO Jon Fahrner.
eBay seems happy with the results, too — it’s expanded the program this week with daily parties focused on specific product categories, like Motor Mondays and Tech Tuesdays.