Social Media Marketing

For most companies, Twitter provides a place for self-promotion, a vehicle for customer engagement. For Sears, Twitter often spotlights the company's failure. Not the standard somebody erred in judgment and tweeted something offensive failure, but the organization-wide attitudinal and operational failure that defines Sears. Over the weekend, I was in Toronto. While on Yonge Street by the Eaton Centre, I snapped pictures of the Sears store that, at one time, anchored this mall. Now the store's empty, leaving a hole in the heart of Toronto, literally and figuratively.

Launching a new feature, eBay revealed it's filed a patent for what it calls smart hashtags for use on social networking sites such as Twitter. Of equal interest was eBay's revelation that it has a "Social Insights Strategist" on staff. Now when eBay shoppers click on a tweet or "Pin It" button on certain listings to share the products on social networking sites, eBay adds hashtags to the message. eBay called it a subtle way of dropping commerce into the social conversation in a nonobtrusive and user-friendly way.

It's all about the image. The world of social media is evolving from a text-driven experience to one that's fueled by images. Urban Outfitters is embracing the new social reality by leveraging customer-supplied photos on its website to increase the return on investment of its social initiatives. Social media marketing is transitioning from a tool used to help promote a retailer's brand to a device to help savvy retailers understand their customers and their preferences. Urban Outfitters has partnered with Curalate to host customer-supplied, shoppable Pinterest images on its website. 

I recently wrote about the backlash some retailers have experienced while trying to raise money through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Because the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve the final rules for "equity crowdfunding," the money raised through sites like Kickstarter is essentially a donation. Creators seek funds for a specific project and typically offer goods or services in return, but those who back the project receive no stake in the enterprise. And not everyone thinks for-profit businesses should take donations.

The reported but still-unconfirmed news that Twitter is moving into e-commerce is baffling to most people. There were unconfirmed reports of Twitter partnering with a New York-based startup called Fancy — where Jack Dorsey is an investor — and there was something about Twitter using Stripe for payments. These reports are also still unconfirmed, but they've been picked up by mainstream media. Twitter has been in the spotlight after its first quarterly report as a public company, so one can take the company's lack of denial as a reasonable indication there might be some truth to these reports. 

By now, it's old hat for brand-name designers to team up with discount retailers (Stella McCartney for H&M, Isaac Mizrahi for Target, Vera Wang for Kohl's, to name just a few). Target now plans to dip into a new pool of talent by partnering with three of Pinterest's top influencers. Joy Cho of Oh Joy, Jan Halvarson of Poppytalk and Kate Arends of Wit & Delight, who, in addition to being Pinterest darlings also write fashion blogs or work in design in some capacity, will collaborate with the retailer on limited-edition collections of party items. 

Hometalk, a home and garden social network, has announced that its members will co-host Pinterest parties in 100 Michaels stores nationwide on Feb. 16. According to the companies, these parties will provide live access to Hometalk's expansive network of do-it-yourself (DIY) experts. Hometalk has selected 100 of its members to lead a series of DIY craft demos for consumers to learn from as they shop for supplies in Michaels stores. Handpicked for their DIY expertise, Hometalk members will put their own twist on one of five Pinterest-inspired projects, offering consumers hands-on help and tutorials, ideas and advice. 

Amazon.com's app for iPhone this week added "Flow," an image recognition tool designed to allow consumers to add a product to their shopping cart by merely pointing their phone's camera at it. Flow, as its name suggests, aims to make it as seamless as possible to shop. MarketWatch carried out its own "showrooming" with the app. Scanning a three-bottle package of the hair growth serum Rogaine, Flow immediately found the item on Amazon for $43.85, 30 percent cheaper than the $62.99 price in a Duane Reade store.

So, J.C. Penney's not really where most folks are going to get their Super Bowl commentary, but whoever's running things for the department store's Twitter account figured they might as well weigh in anyway. What could go wrong, right? Well, it's not quite an 

Twitter's plans to bring commerce to the real-time service may have come into sharper view. As of Friday night, New York-based e-commerce site Fancy.com displayed images of what appear to be mockups detailing how goods would be bought on its site through Twitter. The mockups, which have since become password-protected, suggest Fancy.com is one of Twitter's possible retail partners. Twitter has been working on a commerce strategy that would allow users to purchase goods directly through the site