Compete With Amazon by Creating Community

One way to go further and demonstrate your brand's uniqueness is to showcase the personalities who embody it — your staff experts and customer advocates. Here's how:

• Use social outposts to showcase behind-the-scenes staffers whose passions and expertise support your brand's identity. Title Nine, a women's recreational apparel merchant, uses its Facebook page to showcase staffers who participate in local athletic events. The message is that the company is comprised of individuals who live the same lifestyle as their customers.
• Find ways to spotlight customers and followers by calling on them to help express their shared lifestyle affinity. Invite them to submit their own ideas, images and videos.

3. Socialize the path to purchase: bring social media to your e-commerce site. You can use available social networking tools to create an integrated shopping experience — e.g., allowing shoppers to use their Facebook login in lieu of creating an account on your site. Half of consumers are already logged into Facebook as they browse, and four in ten shoppers prefer to use their social login. Facebook's Open Graph, for example, gives you the critical mass of social media combined with control over your own e-commerce site and data.