Many large companies are turning to social media to run contests. Most are seeing some excellent marketing exposure from these social media contests.

Anheuser-Busch ran a social media contest for naming the three-week old star of Budweiser’s Super Bowl 2013 Ad, a foal Clydesdale born Jan. 16th.

Anheuser-Busch said Tuesday that its contest to find a name for the foal born Jan. 16 at the company’s Clydesdale ranch in mid-Missouri generated more than 60,000 tweets, Facebook comments and other messages.

The name Hope was chosen.  Hope was one of the more popular names generated through the social media effort.

Budweiser’s Super Bowl 2103 Commercial was one of my favorites.  Click here to view my top Super Bowl 2013 Commercials

Hasbro, the maker of the board game Monopoly ran a social media contest to determine which iconic board game piece would be replaced.

More than 10 million people clicked the “like” button on the Facebook voting page for the token change.

The results spelled Goodbye to the iconic iron and hello to a new Cat piece.

I doubt there will be the run on Monopoly games like there was for Twinkies when they announced no more Twinkies would be made.

It goes to show that incorporating social media into your marketing mix can be good if done right.