The Internet has become an increasingly more powerful tool for informing your current and potential customers about your unique purpose and mission.
Especially with the advent of social media platforms, current and past customers can easily interact with one another. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks are providing more avenues for these interactions to take place.
In other words, your most important constituencies are discussing your industry online. This conversation is ongoing (and increasing) as social media becomes more prevalent.
New Media Consults enhances your understanding of this conversation. We listen to your customers online. Understanding the needs of your customers helps us determine a unique, personalized online communication strategy to help you put your best digital foot forward.
Let us help you with your online communication strategy.
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Live Blogging: Creating A Killer Social Commerce Web site #SCCDC
Steve Fisher, from AppSolve and Network Solutions, is up next to discuss the social commerce, the intersection of social media and ecommerce, here at the Social Commerce Camp in DC.
Following the quick run down on social media from Sashi from Network Solutions, we’re moving forward to the social commerce element of this conference.
Quick Fact: 66% of consumers who use e-commerce also use social media web sites.
This means that e-commerce consumers are more likely to discuss your product or service on their social networks, and are therefore an important market to reach and influence.
Foundations of social commerce:
- The years from 2000-2005 were characterized by the Community Era: Forums and Forms online. People asked questions and interacted with each other about products.
- The years from 2006-2009 were characterized by The Crowdsourcing Area. People used their social networks to ask for opinions about a certain topic.
- However, The Collective Era, estimated to characterize social commerce from 2010-2015, will demonstrate a collective voice related to products and services.
Keeping the forthcoming Collective Era in mind, Steve identified 6 Components of social commerce. Here are the building blocks of social commerce, with brief descriptions.
- Social Shopping; Individuals who buy their products based on recommendations from others.
- Ratings and Reviews; Yelp.com, for example, is a social networking site where people can add their reviews about a product or service. Including these reviews in your site add credibility because reviewers are brutally honest in their opinions, and demonstrate a third-party testimonial of what you offer.
- Recommendations and Referrals; www.pandora.com, for example, provides recommendations of related products, that gives the user pertinent content and can relate your product to others.
- Forums and Communities; These online niche communities can be converted into your own marketing team because of their relationships with their communities who share similar interests and are a trusted source of information from their followers.
- Social Media; sharing reviews and posting reviews on social media sites. Repost your reviews, allow people to share what they have bought or what event they are going to attend. This way, you’re increasing your WOM about your product or service.
- Social Advertising; paying for social media advertising space, but being transparent about.
That said, these 6 building blocks are imperative to the best practices of social commerce. Social Commerce must:
- Be authentic in social communication; if you’re paying for posts, it is not a transparent or authentic way of communicating a message about your product.
- Go beyond your .com; It’s not just about your site, it’s about how you’re appealing to your constituencies on social networks as well.
- Recruit and Empower Your Advocates; If your community is not behind you, you have so many more barriers to entry on the social commerce site. However, if you’re able to convert influencers to be fans of your product, then you’re able to nurture those relationships with those individuals and create positive communities advocating for your cause!
Overall, a great presentation.
Small Business Blogging: Why not?
I was looking up some general information on the benefits of small business blogging, and came across this post that gave some great statistics.
Small Business Trends explained the statistics in the following way.
Small businesses that blog have:
- 55% more visitors to their website.
- 97% more links to their website which is a primary factor in where your website shows up in search results. (Want a higher ranking, get quality links to your site).
- 434% more indexed pages – this is the number of pages that show up in search engines. Just because you have a site doesn’t guarantee it is being indexed (findable). Just because some of your pages are in search engines doesn’t mean all of your pages are.
Here’s the general idea:
It would appear that business blogging is potentially a great avenue to invest in. However, I agree with Small Business Trends that business blogging isn’t for everyone, especially those who are new to the social media arena. Here are some questions to ask yourself before beginning a blog:
1. Do you know your audience? Who are you writing to, and what do they need to know?
2. How often should you post? Do you know your industry blogging standards?
3. How will you generate content? Will you have the time to devote to writing blog posts?
If you’re unsure of the answers to any of these questions, perhaps you should consider hiring a consultant to get your social media efforts underway. (note: shameless plug)
