One of the most popular and interesting ways to create a social media campaign is by leveraging bloggers for social media promotion. And there are existing success stories. In an ideal world, when you get bloggers interested in your brand, they will become followers themselves, and via their networks, draw their own followers to become your brand’s followers.

Nowadays, of course, social media has upended a lot of the power bloggers used to be thought to wield, but the process of using bloggers to help promote your brand remains mostly the same: You offer an incentive. They blog about your product/service, and they wield their influence to get people interested in your brand. Many companies can get by without engaging bloggers at all, but it remains useful for brands who want thought leaders to be part of their campaign.

Success Story: iBlog 8

Janette Toral aka DigitalFilipino has literally written the book on the subject, and for iBlog 8 she uses the same time tested formula. Even when the event’s date and location has not been set yet, she will start blogging about it and start asking around for potential speakers, sponsors, and participants. Rather than compete with social networks for attention, she optimizes her reach with them; and so she will post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus, always linking back to her blog post.

As she draws interest in the event, people start talking about it on their own, and so she will retweet positive posts about her event and answer questions. This culminates at the event itself, when she constantly posts livestreams and invites people to catch up on the same day or for day two of the event. At the end of the event, Janette will also make sure to share roundup posts from other people’s blogs about the event.

iBlog 8 eventually got speakers as diverse as Tonyo Cruz, James Jimenez, Marcelle Fabie and Rem Tanauan. It also saw heavy promotion from blogs, with highest ranking results from the official iBlog blog, Carlo Ople’s The New Media, Azrael’s Merryland, the abovementioned Marcelle’s Mistervader Blogspot, and Danny Arao’s Rising Sun.

Success Story: iButterfly

Another recent blogging campaign relates to SM CyberZone’s iButterfly campaign last April 8. Setting aside any judgment of SM as a company for a minute, they were suffering from some bad PR online before the launch of this campaign, but were able to run it successfully nonetheless.

iButterfly is a fun little augmented reality app that has you catching these little virtual butterflies. Whey you do catch them, the butterflies themselves provide you with virtual coupons and deals. To help get the word out on SM’s pending launch of the app, Cyberzone leveraged their blogging partners, such as Yugatech and Azrael Coladilla, as well as other thought leaders, like Saab Magalona. Using famous names to get the word out on their campaign helped bring the other smaller bloggers in, making a successful event and getting word out on the new app even to people who did not go there.

iButterfly’s results in Google general search run the gamut of worldwide results, but something interesting appears when you switch to Blog Search; it all shows blog posts from the Cyberzone event. This may have been possibly skewered with Google pinpointing my location, but is still a pretty good tally of interest generated in the campaign.

Note that the top search result is not from any of the more famous bloggers, like the aforementioned Azrael, Saab or Yuga, but fashion blogger Aj Saavedra’s She Goes Thrifty!, followed by Jeoff Solas’ The Teacher is Blogging, and then IsabelleMagalona.com, and then other bloggers after that.

What lessons can we gleam from the iBlog 8 and iButterfly campaigns in making our own blogging campaigns?

1) Offer rewards/incentives, even intangible ones.

For Cyberzone, the iButterflies, themselves offering discounts and coupons, were the reward. For iBlog, rewards were not as tangible but remained enticing: you would get to hear from the country’s top thought leaders by participating, and had the opportunity to network if you were there.

2) Use your influence and leverage bloggers.

Both campaigns used famous bloggers to help spread the word out on their campaign. While iBlog had The New Media and Mister Vader, iButterfly had Saab Magalona and Yugatech.

However, both campaigns had their share of nonfamous bloggers too. While there is a distinct advantage in knowing and leveraging famous bloggers, even if you just get help from smaller bloggers, you can cast a wider net of influence. iButterfly was able to get fashion bloggers, teacher bloggers, model bloggers, mom bloggers, different kinds of bloggers who had their own different communities to influence.

3) Continue to engage post-promotion.

This is an important step that newcomers in social media might take for granted, but is vital for long term success in this field. Whoever recaps your event or promotion, you must retweet and reshare on your Facebook page, your blog and all your other outlets. Whoever missed said promotion, you talk to and offer alternatives (like future events or promotions, or lead them to recaps so they can catch up).

What else would you suggest as best practices in leveraging bloggers for social media promotion? What other events or promotions do you feel where done well? Please feel free to share.