With the considerable growth in social media users, more brands are wading into the waters, allocating nearly 11 percent of their advertising budgets toward these channels this year – three times more than 2011.

As brands get social media sea legs, we are seeing increasingly successful campaigns defined by their ability to drive significant social media engagement among the brand’s target markets. Three brands in particular stand out.

Cadbury

Despite an impressive 1 million Facebook fans, the brand was concerned only 16 percent ever saw content due to low fan engagement levels and Facebook’s messaging prioritization algorithms. As such, Cadbury embarked on a campaign to improve fan interactivity. That’s when the idea was born to engineer a giant chocolate hand giving the infamous Facebook “thumbs up” as a thank-you.

A real-time video feed of the construction process drove tremendous fan engagement. The result was a whopping 250,000 people actively involved in the campaign with a bonus of 40,000 new fans gained.

Heinz

While known for its dominance in the ketchup market, Heinz produces a variety of food products, including a line of beans.

A Heinz “Beanz” Facebook page was born, generating a community of 150K fans called “beaniez.” In order to create engagement with a “bean” page, the brand knew a dose of fun and humor was needed.

One of the brand’s bean products, Five Beanz, is intended for adult consumers with a sophisticated palette. The brand created a “My Grown Up Beanz” game for the product, where Facebook users were asked a series of questions about their personality traits and told which of the five beans they had grow up to become most like.

Five winners were selected every hour, receiving their own “personalized bean.” Participants were encouraged to invite 10 of their friends to play to win a free goodie bag, which gave the campaign a significant viral boost.

The campaign generated 22,000 quiz participants and 30,000 new Facebook fans. If you think your brand doesn’t lend itself to significant Facebook engagement, imagine the uphill battle that Heinz faced with a can of beans.

Snickers

In the evolution of the “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign, Snickers paid celebrities to send uncharacteristic tweets. Supermodel Katie Price inexplicably tweeted about global economics and soccer player Rio Ferdinand tweeted about his new knitting hobby. Shortly thereafter, they tweeted the campaign slogan with a photo of them eating a Snickers bar. The campaign built such a buzz with shares and retweets that it reached a total of 26 million people.

As 2013 approaches, more brands are finding creative ways to stand out, with consumer engagement being the name of the game.

Lori Turner-Wilson is an award-winning columnist and managing partner of RedRover Sales & Marketing, www.redrovercompany.com, with offices in Memphis and Nashville. Follow RedRover on Twitter (@redrovercompany and @loriturner) and Facebook (facebook.com/redrovercompany).