Artificial intelligence case studies demonstrate the many ways companies are using AI to increase sales, productivity, speed, efficiency, segmentation, targeting, compliance, conversions, create new products and, of course, generate significant business growth.

Artificial intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

These artificial intelligence case studies show AI’s breadth, innovation and business return.

Here are 9 artificial intelligence case studies that show companies the money.

1. ALIBABA GROUP: Is a Chinese multinational conglomerate specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, AI and technology. Among companies is our artificial intelligence case studies, Alibaba uses AI to help map the most efficient delivery routes. Works quite well! And Alibaba claims that smart logistics have resulted in a 10% reduction in vehicle use and a 30% reduction in travel distances.
2. AMAZON: Alexa is one of Amazon’s most popular and most famous AI product. It helps drive the algorithms that are essential to Amazon’s targeted marketing strategy. AI allows Amazon to predict what products will be the most demanded to provide customized recommendations based on customer searches. And according to rejoiner, Amazon’s recommendation engine drives 35 percent of total sales.
3. COCA-COLA: Coca-Cola Amatil is the largest bottler and distributor of non-alcoholic, bottled beverages in the Asia Pacific. Coca-Cola Amatil was relying on limited and manual measurements of products in store, as well as delayed data sourced from phone conversations. Coca-Cola Amatil sales reps used Trax Retail Execution image-based technology to take pictures of stores shelves with their mobile devices; these images were sent to the Trax Cloud and analyzed, returning actionable reports within minutes to sales reps and providing more detailed online assessments to management. Coca-Cola Amatil gained 1.3% market share in the Asia Pacific region within five months.
4. COGNIZANT: Is a multinational corporation that provides IT services. Cognizant Digital Business has developed an AI-driven machine learning solution for the compliance function at a leading healthcare services provider that parses doctors’ notes entered into the organization’s electronic medical records (EMR) to identify potential drug-seeking behavior. Opioid dependency is devastating for patients and their families. In our artificial intelligence case studies, Cognizant’s system uses text analytics and an advanced machine-learning algorithm to mine physicians’ notes and electronic medical records. alerts doctors during patients’ visits when a pattern of at-risk behavior is identified. So far, 85,000 at risk patients have been identified through this system with savings to organizations of $60 million.
5. GLOBAL TECH LED: Is a LED lighting design and supplier to U.S. and international markets, specializing in LED retrofit kits and fixtures for commercial spaces. The company used Google Analytics’ Smart Lists in our artificial intelligence case studies to automatically identify Global Tech LED prospects who were “most likely to engage” and to remarket to those users with more targeted product pages. They used Google’s Conversion Optimizer to automatically adjust potential customer bids for increased conversions. Remarketing campaigns triggered by Smart Lists drove 5 times more clicks than all other display campaigns. Traffic to the company’s website grew by more than 100%, and was able to re-engage users in markets in which it was trying to make a dent, including South Asia, Latin America, and Western Europe.
6. JD.COM: Beijing-based JD.com partnered up with Siasun Robot & Automation Co Ltd. to use automation technology, such as robots, to improve warehouse operations. The key idea was to improve the speed and efficiency of product sorting and delivery in warehouses, cutting down the costs and increasing revenue.   According to Techemergence, after implementing this new initiative, a number of online orders reached 1.26 billion in 2015 (double the amount of orders in 2014) and approximately 85% of those orders were delivered within two days. Unfortunately, JD.com aims to use Artificial intelligence to reduce the number of employees from approximately 120,000 to 80,000 over a decade to increase efficiency, by reducing manual work and therefore increasing profit margin.
7. PETER GLENN: has provided outdoor apparel and gear to individual and wholesale customers for over 50 years, with brick-and-mortar locations along the east coast, Alaska, and South Beach. Peter Glenn used AgilOne Analytics for advanced segmentation abilities included data on customer household, their value segment, and proximity to any brick-and-mortar locations. Peter Glenn saw a 30% increase in Average Order Value (AOV) as a result of its automated marketing campaigns.
8. RAKUTEN: Japan’s largest e-commerce site, Rakuten, continues to invest in AI to better predict customer behaviors as it is critical to the e-commerce success. Right now, with their Rakuten Institute of Technology, they are able to analyze their 200 million products to forecast sales with a high degree of accuracy. Now they are also capable of segmenting buyers more accurately using real-time data.
9. UNDER ARMOUR: An American manufacturer of sports footwear and apparel,  built a UA Record™ app was built using the IBM Watson Cognitive Computing platform. The “Cognitive Coaching System” was designed to serve as a personal health assistant by providing users with real-time, data-based coaching based on sensor and manually input data for sleep, fitness, activity and nutrition. The app has a rating of 4.5 stars and grew revenue for Connected Fitness accessories by 51% to $80 million.

Do these artificial intelligence show you the money? Are you ready to see how AI can be used at your company?

Segmentation is the process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics.

The importance of segmentation is that it allows a business to precisely reach a consumer with specific needs and wants. This enables the company to use resources more effectively, make better strategic marketing decisions and realize new revenue streams.

Four basic factors are required for effective market segmentation. They are:

1. Clear identification of the segment
2. Measurement of its effective size
3. Accessibility through marketing efforts
4. Dedication of company resources

Whose done it well? Here are 6 segmentation case studies that opened up new revenues for brands.

1. BUSTEDTEES: Ecommerce retailer BustedTees has a global customer base. It used to send all of its emails at the same time of day. The company segmented its email list by time zone then set its campaigns to be delivered at 10 am local time. BustedTees added an extra layer of segmentation using past data on individual open times to develop a personalized send time for each subscriber. The results were:
   • 8% lift in email revenue overnight from personalised send time.
   • 17% increase in total email response rate.
   • 11% higher clickthrough rate.
   • 7.6% increase in post-click site engagement.
2. CANON: The quick rise of Smartphone cameras was eclipsing the development of the digital camera market. The kids segment was an under-developed market. Canon was trying to extend its target segment from parents-to-be to parents with kids, targeting mainly 5-9 years old and their parents. Dubbed Kidictionary, a three months contest asked participants to interoperate an ordinary word in a creative way through photography, and then to share online and social media. In order to drive better engagement, the company planted the seed via key opinion bloggers and online advertising to draw eyeballs. The campaign website pulled in 3,559 (64.3% ) new visitors and 1,976 (35.7%) returning visitors. In total, the site recorded 5,535 visitors per month and over 180 visitors per day. Total submission on the “Kidictionary” reached 344 and 348 users.The campaign gained 40% market share on low-end DC compared to last year.
3. DOGGYLOOT: Flash sale site Doggyloot segments and personalises its emails based on the type of dog that its customers own, so people with big dogs get different emails to those who own a terrier. In order to collect this information the company offered incentives to its existing email list if they shared their dog’s size and birthday. The campaigns segmented into three groups based on dog size, and yielded results:
   • Open rate up 10.2%.
   • Clickthrough rate is 410% higher than average.
   • Contributes up to 13% of daily total revenue.
4. JOHNNY CUPCAKES: Clothing retailer Johnny Cupcakes had an email list of 80,000 customers. However, the data was incomplete and everyone received the same marketing messages. In order to make its emails more effective, Johnny Cupcakes initially used vendor software to mine additional information from its customers’ social profiles. It was then able to find out data on gender, customer interests, brand preferences and media habits. For the first time the business could run a product launch campaign with separate emails for men and women who had expressed an interest in baseball. This fairly simple segmentation resulted in:
   • 42% increase in clickthrough rates.
   • 123% increase in conversion rate.
   • 141% increase in revenue per campaign.
5. LEGO: By carefully targeting its intended audiences and using the social media platforms where these consumers actively participate, the Lego Group was able to effectively reach its customers and offer them the kind of online experience. The company used six distinct personas to categorize their customers based on purchase and usage rates: These six personas ranged from consumers who were highly involved with the Lego Group’s products, such as those who helped shape product design to those having no experience with the brand. By actively engaging these people and giving them special attention, the Lego Group stood the best chance of encouraging them to be the company’s most ardent advocates. The Lego Group became the world’s fourth largest toy manufacturer, capturing approximately 6.9% of the global market share of toy sales and continues to sustain a high growth rate, as well as showing a net profit of about $688 million dollars for the year.
6. ROYAL CANADIAN MINT: By identifying key characteristics of high-value new and existing customers, the Mint wanted to create custom models to develop effective up-sell and cross-sell strategies throughout the consumer lifecycle. By turning to PRIZM and TKTK the Mint was able to score the best unaddressed admail segments as having the highest concentrations of those prospects and top performing segments. These same insights also helped the mint develop messages that would resonate with those consumers. The data analytics helped the Mint add 140,000 new customers in a single campaign. The Mint was able to identify 15 percent more prospects for major coin purchases—and predicted higher revenues over the next year.

To these case studies convince you of the effectiveness of market segmentation? Is your brand ready to realize new revenue streams through segmentation?

Digital marketing case studies show how businesses and brands produce great results with the benefits of digital targeting, media selection and data analytics.

Here are a few reasons why companies are moving in this direction.

• 86% of women turn to social networks before making a purchase (Alist daily)
• 49% of organizations do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy (Smart Insights, Managing Digital Marketing research report)
• 40% of marketers say proving the ROI of their marketing activities is their top marketing  challenge. (HubSpot, State of Inbound)

Here are examples of companies large and small, B2C and B2B to help spark great content, creative thinkingand execution at your organization, 12 inspiring digital marketing case studies that prove ROI.

1. BRITISH TELECOM: Managed to save £2m per year by routing around 600,000 contacts per year through social media instead of its call centres. This also improved the customer experience, as these people preferred to deal with BT via social instead of phone or email.
2. CLEAN & CLEAR: Used Snapchat to help raise awareness of its Morning Burst facial cleanser among females age 13 to 24. Clean & Clear partnered with Snapchat to run animated Snap Ads that reached the right people at the right time. Clean & Clear used Snapchat’s Lifestyle Categories to optimize its Snap Ads between Stories campaign and reach Snapchatters more likely to be interested in beauty. Clean & Clear’s Snap Ads and Filters campaign generated an 11.2% lift in Aided Awareness (5.5X higher than Millward Brown Norms) and a 7% lift in brand favorability (3.5X higher than Millward Brown Mobile Norms).
3. CREME EGG: Switched ad spend from TV to Facebook in this example of digital marketing case studies. A seasonal social media campaign invited people to ‘Have a fling with Crème Egg’ on Facebook, created a long series of one-off posts that fed into an overall narrative across the three months. Facebook matched TV in driving brand consideration for a third of the cost increasing sales by 7% as a result.
4. FISHER TANK: A welded steel tank constructed with a sales cycle of 12 months to several years. They used an Inbound Marketing approach would attract more (and more qualified) prospects to their website and give the company a chance to demonstrate how they think and what they do. They developed a more visually attractive site, and one that was a magnet for search engines. They included calls-to-action to download content of interest and value to prospects (primarily engineers, owners and facility and project managers) and integrated a blog with social sharing abilities, established company social media profiles, and optimized the site with the right long-tail keywords to get Fisher found in more searches. As a result, 1) website traffic increase by 119%, 2) quote request increased by 500% and 3) drove up the value of qualified sales opportunities by $3.4 million.
5. HCC MEDICAL INSURANCE SERVICE: Infographics have been overused in recent years, but they’re still an effective medium for content marketing.HCC Medical Insurance Services (HCCMIS) managed to increase blog traffic and email revenue using an infographic aimed at its travel customers. Compared to its normal sales emails the infographic achieved a 96% lift in email revenue, while on Facebook the post that featured the graphic had more than 2,000 interactions compared to an average of 10.Overall HCCMIS’s blog post featuring the graphic achieved 3.9m views, of which 90% were new visitors.
6. IBM: trained its sales people to use LinkedIn and Twitter, and also gave them access to a content calendar so they had relevant things to share. In this example of digital marketing case studies, the program resulted in 4x more sales year-on-year, though there are a few caveats to take into account.
7. KLM: Noticed, from one of its employees, that a lot of people were asking about social payments, so they spoke to KLM’s IT and accounts teams to see if it was possible to set it up.This resulted in a new social payments tool, which cost €3,500 to setup and now takes €80,000 per week in sales.
8. MANN FAMILY DENTAL: A comprehensive family care and cosmetic dentistry practice, wasn’t generating leads that would convert to patients. The creation of a blog on their website saw an immediate rise in phone calls. They used social media to strengthen and increase that organic referral web by engaging with their patients on Facebook. They focused on long tail keyword with local geographic terms. Mann Family Dental saw a: 1) 270% increase in web traffic 2) 10X increase in leads and a 3) 50% increase in patients generated from the website.
9. NEUTROGENA: Used shopping basket data to identify competitor products loyal customers were already buying that were within their own range. Neutrogena knew they had a loyal base of customers, but 75% of shoppers were only buying items within a single segment of the Neutrogena range. They created a “product pairings” campaign delivered through video, banner ads and coupons to drive sampling. Consumers were targeted based on their personal buying habits. They saw an Increase in incremental sales with 18.1 million households reached and a  £5.84 return on advertising spend (ROAS).
10. NILLA WAFERS: used Facebook to reinvigorate its Nilla Wafers brand and boost sales. A study showed Nilla Wafers sales increased 9% in test market locations among consumers who saw Facebook ads versus a control group of consumers over the course of a five-month campaign. The Facebook ad campaign for Nilla Wafers also was able to reach 11.3 million households through 190 million total impressions (16.8 impressions per household).
11. SNICKERS: Targeting fat-fingered typists, this clever search campaign from Snickers used misspelled words in Google keywords to capture hungry office workers’ attention during the working day. The chocolate bar brand managed to reach 500,000 people within just three days of launch, without any seeding and for less cost than bidding on brand keywords.
12. W HOLLYWOOD: Knew their luxury condominiums were expertly-crafted. Vibrant homes in the L.A. spotlight are eye-catching to many people. They created a lead-generation strategy which included SEO and Facebook ads to drive engaged visitors to the site. Google AdWords campaigns targeted specific areas within the California region and other cities where qualified lead potential was determined. The campaign resulted in: 1) 115% increase in conversions from Google Adwords, 2) 63% increase in site visits from SEO and 3) 1,800 goal completions from Facebook.

Do these digital marketing case studies inspire you? Did they prove ROI to your satisfaction? Could a creative digital marketing program help increase business in your organization?

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Influencer marketing is the fastest growing customer acquisition channel according to a poll by Tomoson.

• 88% of customers trust online reviews and recommendations from people they don’t know as much as from friends (Bright Local)
• 84% marketers have at least one influencer marketing campaign planned for 2017 (Smart Insights)
• 51% of marketers believe they acquire better customer through influencer marketing (Tomoson)

What are the results driving this interest. Here are 10 influencer marketing case studies that get to the real results.

1. ABSOLUT: Wants to create awareness and engagement in 8 key countries. They use Brand Ambassadors to create posts for #AbsolutNights. Each post begins the phrase “You know those #AbsolutNights when…” and then a sentence with a beautiful image explaining the content. 225+ posts are created in 8 countries over 17 weeks. They generate a reach of 2,800,000, 65,000 interactions for an engagement rate of 2.34%.
2. ADDIDAS: Wants to push content to their German sportswear market during Summer Olympic Games in Rio in the first ‘Influencer Games’. For the campaign, Adidas sent 20 popular influencers to Rio. The team includes fashion bloggers and celebrity models – such as Germany’s Next Top Model winner and top Instagrammer, Lena Gerke. In Rio, the influencers producd social media content promoting the Olympics. Over 54 million Germans go on the watch the Olympics.
3. BEAUTYCON (L’OREAL): Has become an iconic convention and event where the most daring and bold individuals. L’Oreal sponsors 9 macro influencers, each a heavy-hitter in the digital beauty community. One of the top performers in L’Oreal’s campaign is Chantel Jefferies. Known by her 3 million fans for her sun-kissed aesthetic and fashionable outfits, Chantel’s single post found over 225,000 likes, 1,100 comments, and an engagement rate of 15% among these influencer marketing case studies.
4. BIGELOW TEA: Wants to promote their products, and encourage healthy living. Influencers incorporate Bigelow tea into their content in different ways. Some create original recipes using it, and others turn the packaging into DIY art. Blogger Ashley Thurman, of Cherished Bliss, provides her readers with a recipe to make iced tea with Bigelow tea and lemonade ice cubes. Jess, of A Million Moments provides her readers with a guide to creating beautiful flower pots from the tea packaging. The bloggers manage to generate more than 32,000 blog page engagements for their sponsored posts. Total media value for Bigelow Tea increases more than threefold, and the brand experiences an 18.5% increase in sales.
5. BONOBOS: A men’s clothing line, wants to promote their Summer 2016 Collection through social media, and digital marketing campaigns. They launch, among these influencer marketing case studies, the #BetterThanAC campaign to promote the idea that the new Bonobos collection is designed to keep men cool. To leverage this campaign, they work with Foster Huntington, an influential videographer and photographer. The influencer creates several posts showcasing Bonobos clothing in the midst of outdoor summer moments. The campaign yields 5.1 million impressions, and more than 68,200 engagements in the form of likes, shares, and comments.
6. IKEA: Launches their first influencer campaign for IKEA Germany with YouTubers. The brand hopes that stars’ fans would respond positively to the social content. Celebrity YouTubers from Germany – including Klein aber Hannah and beauty guru Sara Desideria – set an interior design challenge by IKEA. Their task is to transform a blank canvas into a stylishly decorated living space – all within their 180 minute time limit. The vlogs capturing these challenges were uploaded to YouTube, where they quickly gain over 300,000 views and received thousands of audience engagements.
7. HULU: Wants to promote their new show, “Casual,” and reach their existing audience, as well as the audience of  Thrillist, a men’s digital lifestyle brand among these influencer marketing case studies. They need someone influential to get the word out. So they decide to work with TV personality Andi Dorfman, who previously starred in, “The Bachelorette.” She is invited to the show’s event premiere. She then entices her social media fans with images from the event, through which she shared her experience. Her posts include hashtags like #keepitcasual and #casualonhulu to promote the new show. These images and other images from the event are then added to a landing page on Thrillist. Through just one influencer, Hulu is able to reach more than 1.3 million people. The influencer’s content generates high levels of engagement, with over 13,000 likes, 81 comments, and 96 shares. Andi’s appearance at the event helps build hype for the new TV show, enabling Hulu to achieve their goal.
8. LEESA.COM: The direct-to-consumer mattress company, Leesa, wantes to win the trust of their target audience through unbiased reviews. Since they only sell online, online reviews sre the best way for the company to prove that their products are worth the investment. They work with influencers who could generate high levels of engagement. To find the right influencers for their campaign, the brand focuses on follower engagement rates rather than number of followers. Blogs like Sleepopolis review the mattresses from Leesa, and provide their readers with their unbiased reviews, The bloggers also provide their readers with a coupon code to help them save money on their purchase. Leesa was able to drive more than 400 mattress sales, and 100,000 clicks to the brand’s website.
9. NORDSTROM: To promote its Anniversary Sale, Nordstrom partners with 22 Instagram influencers to create 46 sponsored posts on Instagram. The vast majority of the influencers involve were millennial females with fashion-focused feeds. They range from up-and-coming fashion Instagrammers with around 100,000 followers to some of the most well-known fashion influencers in the industry. The Instagram influencer campaign has generated 1.1M likes and 10K comments, with a total engagement rate of 6.3%.
10. PEDIGREE: Wants to humanize their brand by standing up for a cause. The brand runs, “Buy a Bag, Give a Bowl,” campaign to support a national effort, and amplifies it with the help of influencers. The influencers promote the campaign through their social media content, blog posts, and video content. Influencers like Kristyn Cole help promote the campaign on Instagram by sharing touching stories about their pets to appeal to their followers’ emotions. The campaign helps Pedigree increase their total media value 1.3 times, and generates more than 43 million impressions, and 62,800+ content views. The campaign drives 9,300 blog page engagements, and helped Pedigree win the love of their target audience.

Are you convinced from the results of these influencer marketing case studies? Does your company need help with influencer marketing?

Social media case studies in disaster response show social media as a vital communication vehicle and database to government agencies and communities. And how they use both the networks and technology available in life saving ways.

Consider these facts for people who have survived a disaster:

• 76% contact friends to make sure they are safe
• 37% use info on social media to buy supplies and seek shelter
• 35% post a request for help on a first responder’s Facebook page (Source: Emergency Management)

To view more facts, there is an infographic at the bottom of these social media case studies in disaster response.

Here are 10 inspiring social media case studies in disaster response.

1. AMERICAN RED CROSS: The Red Cross has been at the forefront of social media case studies in disaster response using its social media accounts to serve communities in an emergency. BLOG: The Red Cross blog covers many topics related to the organization and its mission. During active disasters, the blog is the primary tool for sharing disaster-related information. FACEBOOK: The Red Cross’ Facebook page, which has more than 830,000+ Likes, serves as a community forum for providing information, sharing and discussing current issues, and learning how to take action and donate funds. FLICKR: The Red Cross’ extensive volunteer network operating in many locations provides a substantial database of photos of impacted communities and relief efforts. PINTEREST: The Red Cross uses Pinterest to give visitors the ability to pin Red Cross-related images to their own pinboards and share information through social media platforms.
2. CITY OF NEW ORLEANS, HURRICANE ISSAC (2012): Early on, reports indicated that Florida would be in the storm’s path during the same week as the scheduled Republican National Convention. As the storm changed its path and headed toward New Orleans, official organizations such as the National Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service, FEMA, and the City of New Orleans used #Isaac and #NOLA consistently on social media networks to clarify alerts and warnings. The New Orleans mayor’s Twitter account was used to respond directly to community members’ Twitter messages and to correct misinformation. Community members posted eyewitness videos and photos of damages and reported utility outages, flooding locations, and road closures. FEMA and the City of New Orleans used this information to plan their response efforts.
3. CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO: The city uses a text-based notification system, AlertSF, and encourages its Twitter followers to sign up for those alerts and AlertSF subscribers to use Twitter. More information is pushed onto Twitter, such as traffic and weather details. AlertSF is used solely for emergencies because officials do not want to clutter people’s cell phones with messages, Dudgeon said. The city also uses an outdoor public warning system.
4. FEMA APP: With hurricane season continuing through November 30, the FEMA app is an essential tool to help your family weather the storm, nationwide. Receive weather alerts from the National Weather Service for up to five different locations anywhere in the United States. Learn what to do before, during and after emergencies with safety tips. This is a free app.
5. MAKE AMERICA SAFER THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY: The Make America Safer through Social Media community, led by Hal Grieb of Plano, is collecting the best practices of the different social media tools available, DHS’ Vazquez said.Members of the network can engage in specific forums, contribute to blogs and wikis, post documents, share calendars, and bookmark content from the Internet. Members also have profiles that give details about their accreditations, association memberships, credentials, training, and areas of interest related to job activities, such as social media. “They have a level of trust that we, the government, can verify that the people there are also first responders and have a need to know information” related to emergency management, Vazquez said.“In many ways, it gives [first responders] a social collaboration tool similar to Facebook and LinkedIn,” he said, “but the difference is that this is a controlled environment.”
6. PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, 2010 EARTHQUAKE (2010): After the Haiti earthquake, hundreds of volunteers around the world, dubbed in the media as “digital humanitarians.” As part of the effort, the volunteers first completed the digital mapping of the country using satellite imagery. An open source interactive mapping solution called Ushahidi Platform was then used to map geotagged Twitter messages and other mappable content from hundreds of other online sources. Another successful venture during the Haiti crisis, the American Red Cross’ charity text message campaign, took advantage of smartphone and SMS messaging technology. The campaign raised more than $22 million for Haiti relief within only a few days of the earthquake, thereby demonstrating the power of mobile technology. The charity’s previous record for a text-based campaign was $400,000.
7. QUEENLAND FLOODS (2010): Long lasting and intensive rainfalls over large areas of north eastern Australia during the wet season of 2010 led to large flooding in Queensland. Nearly seventy-eight per cent of the state of Queensland had been declared a disaster zone in this example of social media case studies in disaster response. The QPS used Social Media streams during the 2011 flood disaster mostly to get information and warnings out to their following community and the public. They wanted to act as a centralised clearing house for disaster-related information. The need for verified informations two significant boosts of “Likes” on Facebook. The first boost occurred in December 2010 and doubled in number. About 14,000 people followed the QPS Facebook account by the end of December 2010. The second more powerful boost occurred after the flash flooding events of Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley on the 10th of January 2011, and at the beginning of the flooding of Brisbane on the 11th January. “Likes” of the QPS Facebook page increased from 14,000 to over 160,000
8. TORONTO POLlCE SERVICE: The Toronto Police Service (TPS) has taken an aggressive approach to social media. By mid-2012, it had trained 300 staff to use networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. One example of this strategy emerged when police were conducting a manhunt in a residential community. The suspect was regarded as armed and dangerous; as a precaution, some schools were locked down and homes secured. By following keywords and hashtags (a symbol used tomark keywords or topics), the TPS were able to monitor what the community was saying about the incident. In doing so, they were able to correct misinformation, dispel rumors and provide assurance that police were on the scene.
9. U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: The U.S. Geological Survey is developing a prototype site that monitors Twitter feeds to provide scientists with real-time data about earthquakes in this example of social media case studies in disaster response. The goal of the Twitter Earthquake Detector effort is to demonstrate a way to rapidly detect earthquakes and provide an initial damage assessment. TED taps into the Twitter API and searches for keywords such as “earthquake.” It then pulls and aggregates the information, including photographs, to give USGS scientists a map based on the number of tweets coming from a geographic area. That information is useful because there is a time lag between an earthquake and its official verification.
10. VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT (VDEM): Launched an emergency management system — the Virginia Interoperability Picture for Emergency Response — that has transformed how it prepares for emergencies and responds to disasters. VIPER is a geospatial information system-based enterprise platform that integrates with numerous information systems and links with approximately 250 data feeds. It supplies a Web-based common operating picture and numerous analysis tools. Emergency commanders; first responders; and police, fire and government officials can tap into a single information resource to gain an accurate understanding of events.

Do these case studies convince you of the value of social media in disaster response. To help your understanding, here is an infographic of the ways that it is used.