Social Media is big business and with the right plan of action and a delicate touch any site can utilise people power to improve their ecommerce. Here are a few brands which have made a big difference to their ecommerce growth using social media.
Zappos
Zappos is an online shoe and clothing store which uses their company culture to sell their products. They believe that their company culture is strong enough to sell their brands by using Twitter (400 staff tweeting) and other social media outlets to project their lifestyle. Their blogs for example contains more information on their day to day life than about product updates and new releases.
Dell
Dell asks its customers to help shape its brand and even its products. A while back, some might say it was in the bad books of the social media world, but if its websites navigation is anything to go by they now make a strong statement about their commitment to community and service. They are active in every social media sector and have over 400,000 ‘Twitterers,’ or is it ‘Twits’ or ‘Tweeterers’? Most interestingly, Dell has an idea generating community called ‘Ideastorm,’ from which tens of thousands of ideas have been generated. 200+ of which have been implemented.
Best Buy
Best Buy has a mantra of radical transparency. It is also a company of regular Twitter users, but its use of an open application interface is awesome as this provides developers with access all its catalogue data from their ecommerce website to allow them to use it to test and create new applications.
Wet Seal
Wet Seal is a clothing store which has an online gallery where customers can create ensembles from their catalogue in order to best judge what to buy. However this catalogue is also a community forum where people can publish their ensembles and get reviews from other customers. This is a step beyond a normal review by being imagination driven and brings in visitors motivated by social validation. The idea is taken a step further when you visit a store physically. Customers published ensembles are searchable, so your choice of outfit could be a tool to sell to another customer – user generated merchandising.
Build A Bear Workshop
How can you use social media to sell something like a teddy bear? – Primarily, an experience centric product. Well ‘Build A Bear Workshop’ created an online world for its, largely child, patrons. This online world is basically a ‘Facebook’ for kids. From this interactive world customers can chat and share online items from each other and have access to staff from ‘Build A Bear Workshop’ to answer questions and buy online goods.
Social Media is an important and growing part of the ecommerce universe, and when used with innovation and sincerity it can be a powerful tool. How could your business use social media to better sell your product?
Martin Able is an e-commerce professional experienced with money transfer services and cheque processing for internet retailers.
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Tags: Ecommerce, Social Media
