Social media has grown tremendously this year pushed forward by the likes of Facebook and, to a lesser degree, Twitter. But despite having been around for years, businesses are still trying to get the hang of this new opportunity to bring in customers and, at the end of the day, make more money. One company which seems to get it, at least in this case, is Ikea which has put together a hugely successful campaign to promote a new store and did so at a significantly lower cost than if it had used traditional marketing methods.

The idea was simple enough but it didn't need to be any more complicated. IKEA made a Facebook profile for Gordon Gustavsson, the manager of the new store in Malmo, Sweden, and then uploaded several images from the Ikea showroom over the course of two weeks. Nothing groundbreaking so far, but the interesting part was that the first Facebook user to tag his or her name on one of the products in the picture won it.

As you could expect, people got really into it and soon enough the story spread throughout Facebook from profile to profile as the people added Gustavsson as a friend or tagged one of the photos. Not only did the campaign got a lot of people to visit the profile and, more importantly, the actual showrooms most users lauded the company for the innovative approach.

In a couple of weeks and with minimal investment, IKEA got people actually engaged with the brand and also got them to promote it to their friends, a vote of confidence much more valuable than any other form of advertising. And the best part is that the company used existing tools and features on Facebook to do it. Unfortunately, very few companies take advantage of the things social media has to offer to promote their brands and, when they try to, they still apply the same thinking and methods they would in a traditional marketing campaign.