Social Marketing: Glue Guru Giveaways Target Online Influencers

Brand marketers trying to figure out how to tap into social influencers online might want to pay attention to an experiment going on at AdaptiveBlue's GetGlue. Glue is a social browsing assistant that shows ratings and recommendations of movies, books, restaurants, stocks, and other things as you surf the Web (via a browser plug-in). Members who rate and comment the most in any given category are named Gurus. These are the most active, opinionated people on the service. Glue is going to be rewarding its Gurus with free giveaways for movies and book from promotional partners including Universal, Random House, Hachette, Harcourt, Farrar, Wiley, and Harper Collins. Some of the initial giveaways include free tickets to the movie The Wolfman or free copies of books such as Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget and Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It! (as if that needed any more social-media promotion). The media companies get their movies and books seen by known influencers, who are likely to rate, comment, and talk about the products. And Glue gets a way to reward and encourage active users with free books and movie tickets.