Telecomms giant Sony Ericsson has teamed up with marketing agency Iris to offer Australian Facebookers the chance to bag themselves an Xperia arc smartphone. To do so, they must try to ‘unlock’ the arc featured on the brand’s new Facebook application, ‘Unlock Xperia’ – very much like sitting in the pub with a friend’s phone, trying to guess their phone password.

Since the consumer boom, psychologists have long debated the drivers that push us into impulse buys, or how we reason with and justify purchases. Now we’ve social shopping in the fray, the psychological aspects of shopping are even more complicated. Indeed, Facebook storefront maker Tabjuice describes the sprawling web of social shopping as ‘a mighty confabulation of social rules and subconscious needs’

The early tally is in. Despite the doom-and-gloom economic predictions, the 2011 holiday shopping season has gotten off to a record start. Online shopping and, dare we say it, the nascent social shopping sector is a major factor in what is shaping up to be a record holiday season.

These aren’t the usual inane ramblings of someone trying to decide what to have for dinner, or complaining of a cold; Lala’s updates give a distressing snapshot into a harsh, unforgiving reality that many individuals face every day in London: ‘My family probably think I am dead’…

Here, users are given the opportunity to select Nivea gift packs for their friends, and have them wrapped in paper featuring photos and comments that illustrate their friendship as it appears on Facebook

According to comScore, an estimated $37 billion will be spent online over the festive period this year, up 15 percent on last year’s $32 billion, and Shop.org’s eHoliday survey anticipates that 73.7 percent of retailers will use Facebook pages to reach out to shoppers, a marked increase from 57.1 percent last year. Indeed, according to CNBC, 18 percent of chief marketing officers say that social media promotions are their top sales priority this weekend

Last week I was asked to deliver a presentation on social SEO and what Google’s search formula tweaks now mean for brands and organizations looking to boost their visibility. This is a rapidly evolving issue, but there are some enduring points here that all organizations (and journalists too!) should keep in mind. Hopefully this guide will help you.

The TV-to-Facebook links in this campaign work well, too. Marketers can capitalize on the fact that many TV viewers are sat with their laptops and tablets to hand, so directing them to an online space is pretty much risk-free, especially following adverts like Ginger Joe’s, which leave the audience slightly perplexed and keen to find out more.

As the TNS survey demonstrates, knowing your market is vital. UK users are more likely to use brand pages for praise and to offer advice than for moaning (17 percent vs. 11 percent), whereas the Spanish and Argentinians are more likely to use a brand’s online presence to complain. Having the resources in place to capitalize on these behaviors, then, will lead to more positive brand awareness.

Of course, crowd-sourcing in this manner will bring to Walmart’s attention any number of worthy cases that might otherwise go unnoticed – after all, users have to do very little in order to nominate their cause. It is interesting to note, however, that in the promotional video the individuals approached for their take on the spirit of giving are not necessarily a likely target demographic for an online campaign