The Feb. 1 Nikkei BP Column in NetMarketing Online (in Japanese) “US NetMarketing Chawa” titledGiving, the Social Marketing Keyword” covers how social media helped disseminate information and spur giving to Haiti’s earthquake victims, through cell phone text messaging, Twitter and Facebook. It also analyzes Pepsi’s move to skip its 23-year history of Super Bowl ads in favor of a $20 million social media campaign, Pepsi Refresh Program as its new marketing strategy. Below is an excerpt of the column, which is found here (in Japanese).

Feb. 1: Giving, the Social Marketing Keyword

Social Media becomes hub of information and generates huge WOM for aid to Haiti

According to social media research company Sysomos, Tweets that included the keywords “Haiti” or “Red Cross” reached 23 million during the three days between January 12 – 14, of which 59% were Retweets. Texting “Haiti” to 90999 on cell phones allowed people in the U.S. to donate 10 dollars to Red Cross, which would be billed to people’s phone accounts. Among the Tweets, there were 189,024 mentions of the Red Cross text to 90999 for donations to Haiti, showing how word of mouth by so many helped spread the message. Nielsen’s BlogPulse Jan. 15th data on U.S. blogs indicated that 3% of all blogs involved posts about the Haiti earthquake.

The column continues (in Japanese) here.