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Nikon and eBay demonstrate new media best practices

Wondering how large companies can tap into the popularity of social media, Web 2.0, and other contemporary trends in the online world? Well, they could just pay $50,000 and set up a commercial MySpace account (no kidding, that's the base fee for a fancy professional profile) or they could actually be inspired and tap into the popularity of YouTube or Flickr and do something really cool.

That's what eBay did when it created an admittedly cheesy 75 second introductory movie promoting an upcoming course they're offering to the eBay seller community. They filmed the movie then simply uploaded it to YouTube and mentioned it on the eBay Chatter weblog. Cool!

Nikon did something even more cool, though: it picked out a group of existing Nikon digital SLR photographers from popular photo sharing site Flickr and sent them brand new Nikon D80 camera setups. Their assignments? Take pictures, send us your best. The result? Stunning Nikon. A very savvy marketing effort!

You can learn more at: eBay and Nikon: Examples of New Media Marketing

Author Dave Taylor runs the popular Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support site and is also the author of the Intuitive Life Business Blog.