Social Media Marketing

In a post on its Facebook page, Wal-Mart launched the deals app Crowdsaver, which unlocks a discount once enough consumers opt in - much like the group deals phenomenon the start-up Groupon has made popular in recent months.

We’ve found that YouTube has broad appeal and, unlike virtually any other channel, YouTube videos allow us to tell stories that we couldn’t convey in print or other online media. We create original content that you can’t see anywhere else for YouTube fans and the active blogger community.

Part two of this series examines what impact social media will have on retail going forward. In particular, opportunities to bridge online and offline customer experiences in order to seamlessly integrate multiple touchpoints and selling channels are identified.

YouTube is the second most trafficked search engine on the web; if you aren’t using this service for your business, you're missing out on reaching tons of potential customers.

Social commerce has shifted into high gear. E-commerce continues to grow at increasingly rapid rates and experts predict that online sales could grow to as much as 30 percent of total retail sales over the next few decades.

The introduction of Facebook's Community Pages combined with the social media site's launch earlier this year of Places, a location-based service, has put the relevancy and longevity of other outlets like Foursquare and Gowalla into question seemingly overnight.

Brick-and-mortar retailers badly want to tap into Facebook's 500 million users. Retailers realize that for a growing number of Facebook users, it's no longer just a website. It's a new platform, one of the "big new disruptors" in the online world, according to experts assembled at this week's Shop.org annual retail technology summit in Dallas.

Social promotions such as those offered by deal-of-the-day website Groupon are wildly popular with shoppers, but they might not be as big a hit for businesses, according to a recent study by Rice University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Groupon promotions were profitable for 66 percent of the businesses surveyed for the study, but they were unprofitable for 32 percent. More than 40 percent of the respondents indicated they would not run such a promotion again.

A Betsey Johnson store in California and a novelties e-tailer will each launch Facebook Places campaigns today. The location-based efforts represent the first-ever Places initiatives, marking the beginning of what promises to be a growing trend among Facebook marketers.

Brands that are only now establishing themselves on Facebook are playing a desperate game of catch-up. They're pulling out the stops to rack up what Facebook now calls Likes, social actions by which consumers express interest in a brand. To get Likes, they're going beyond ads and bartering for friendship with offers of exclusive content, discounts and special offers.