The holiday shopping season is behind us now and everyone can catch their breath. A lot of companies tried out some new approaches to their traditional e-commerce strategies by adding in touches of social. It is still too early to tell what worked and what did not for sure but it is time to start talking about real strategies for social commerce in 2011.
Based on your business there are a number of approaches to take with regard to social commerce. Looking online, there are a lot of ways to drive new sales. These would include setting up proper descriptions on review sites like Angies List, Yelp, Google Places, etc. It might also include considering product ratings, comparisons and customer reviews on your own site.
Regarding walk-in or foot traffic, how does social come into play here. Certainly there is the daily deals phenomenon that Groupon started and now hosts dozens of competitors including Wal-Mart. Is Groupon the best avenue for your business? Other offline successes have come through checkins and scavenger type of hunts that bring in gaming type of incentives.
What is the best approach for applying social to your 2011 e-commerce strategy? What’s working and what’s not? We brought in the big dogs for this discussion. One of Forrester’s leading analysts covering social media, Augie Ray will moderate today’s chat. Augie brings an entire industry worth of research to help us discerne the right values and help spots some of the early trends. Our topic and questions this week are:
Topic: Social Media and Commerce for Business
Q1: How is social affecting online consumer purchases?
Q2: How is social affecting off-line/in-store purchases?
Q3: What are top 10 things to consider when setting up social commerce?
Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, January 4 at noon ET. Follow #sm92 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live. The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.
