Today, my colleagues and I are meeting to review the 2012 entries to the Forrester Groundswell Awards. As always, we’ve got some fantastic submissions this year – which you can see on our awards site – and I’m excited I’ll have a chance to recognize the winners at our upcoming Forrester eBusiness Forum.

In the process of reviewing this year’s entries, I can’t help but think back to some of the great winners we’ve recognized in past years. In particular, one I still talk about all the time is RadioShack’s winning entry in the 2011 "Energizing" category.

The campaign for RadioShack had three components:

1.       A promoted Twitter trend for #UNeedANewPhone. Those who tweeted saw offers for the new iPhone if they'd engaged with related content on Twitter.

2.       A campaign called Holiday Heroes, connected with the hashtag #IfIHadSuperPowers. If users tweeted a picture along with this hashtag, RadioShack’s artists would draw a superhero costume over the photo.

3.       A partnership with foursquare. RadioShack created a Holiday Hero badge. To earn the badge, which held exclusive discounts and offers, consumers had to check in at two of three Holiday Hero hotspots.

But as always, it wasn’t just the creativity of the idea that got our attention – it was the business results generated. And the results were impressive: The program generated 68.4 million impressions on Twitter and contributed to a double-digit increase in total wireless sales for Radio Shack.

Again, today, we’re crawling through more than 100 entries for this year’s awards, and I can’t wait to find the great examples that I’ll still be talking about 12 months from now. If you want to find out who wins this year’s Forrester Groundswell Awards – and hear in detail about the lessons they’ve learned and how you can create your own great social programs – please join us at the Forrester eBusiness Forum in Chicago, October 25-26.