Using social media tools to make dull products more exciting must be everyone's favorite topic these days. On the heels of my own posts about social networking, consumer generated complaints, how messing up can actually help you, and a great example of a viral video in the B2B realm, Matt Bailey has offered up his own take on the issue over at Site Logic Marketing.

In "Are You Creating a Customer Experience?," Matt points to several excellent examples of companies that have taken advantage of social media options like Flickr and YouTube to "sell" both their products and the customer experience.

My favorite, is the example of a theatre in Spain that actually allows site visitors to find out what the view from every single seat in the theatre is like. Talk about serving up useful information!

Matt explains...

Now, prior to purchasing tickets online, a guest can see the view from their seat prior to visiting the theater. Many felt that this would harm ticket sales, as many of the seats with bad views would go unsold. However, it increased sales as well as the average ticket sale! People knew what they were expecting when choosing the less expensive seats, which were available as others upgraded their tickets .

Now that's not to say that an option like the theatre view would be easy for a small business with limited funds to create, but there are plenty of affordable ways to promote your content and products as well.

From filming one of your customers using your product to posting geo-tagged images of your restaurant or hotel to Flickr, there are plenty of ways to upload content that's more exciting than simple text.

So I'll leave you with Matt's thought-provoking question:

What are you doing to be a part of that experience and how can you create your own?