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Social shopping a new dimension in social networking

Guest post by: Fabian Smith

Article Overview: The social networking waters are gradually making their way to every part of the marketing hub, invading almost every part of our lives. Social shopping is another phenomenon that is taking over the marketing world. Social shopping platform is a true market place, where users can meet up with other people, engage into conversation and may also get down to trading any item they want to dispose off.

Social shopping a new dimension in social networking

The social networking waters are gradually making their way to every part of the marketing hub, invading almost every part of our lives. Social shopping is another phenomenon that is taking over the marketing world. Social shopping platform is a true market place, where users can meet up with other people, engage into conversation and may also get down to trading any item they want to dispose off.

Moreover, they can discuss over the internet while shopping for a product, share their experiences. One more thing that can be done is a live environment where sales personnel can directly engage a customer in a chat and then shape his opinion.

We have been hearing of different brands integrating with Facebook in order to take their social marketing to another level, gain more followers and word of mouth. Online shopping stores such as Levis, Amazon, Pandora and many others are linking with Facebook to boost the social shopping experience, and with that marketers are now closer to the hearts and minds of the buyers like never before.

However, social shopping concept is not fully adopted yet by majority of retailers but the coming year of 2011 is promising, with Facebook rolling out new services like Open Graph to integrate with almost every kind of social media that is available on the internet; the shopping world is in for a treat. Facebook is using all the user data it has, very smartly. Facebook connect is already a part of many famous online stores, where the users’ interests are taken in accordance. More than anything, it brings convenience and time saving for the customers. Where friends had to set a time to go out and shop for something, they can now just log in from where ever they are and shop together.

Just as Pandora uses Facebook integration to give its users a more personalized music experience via their social graph, similarly, Levis opted for Facebook Open Graph and demonstrated that user social graph and ‘Like’ button is indeed highly applicable to e-commerce and social shopping.

Integration with Facebook caters to clients’ needs

Facebook Open Graph helps in understanding the mind-set of buyers; they integrate your website, while Facebook log-in registration makes it easier for the user, providing a simplified experience.When you connect with Facebook and add personalized features, it gives a significant impression on users when they see what their friends ‘like’ and review. Also, you can enhance reviews on your site with social content giving users a chance to comment on the posts, this further gives them an opportunity to post feedbacks on their walls. Maintaining your website homepage and personalizing it by surfacing the most recent feedbacks from users, gives an authenticated touch to it.

‘TheFind’ too being one of the second largest shopping search engines, also integrated with Facebook to provide a complete personalized search to its users. My personal favorite is Amazon connecting with Facebook and leveraging with it immensely. Buyers can now see the list of gifts keeping in mind their preferences and interests. They even show the birthday notification along with a gift suggestion. With your Facebook friends’ profile that lists their favorite books, movies and TV shows, it is a very cool feature that excites the users.

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Article Tags: Custom Facebook Fan Pages, Custom Fan Page Design, Facebook Pages, Fan Page Promotions



Related Forum Posts
Re: Best looking social networking site? - Hi Kevin [quote:3h76yt08]With so many social networking sites to pick and choose from, what influences your decision to join a particilar site? Is it just your friends, the content, people using it or looks??[/quote:3h76yt08] For me, the most essential criteria in selecting a Social Networking Site is its Content followed closely by popularity- in terms of daily visitors. Then comes the Content followed by the Friends and looks. Most of do social networking to attract traffic to their website(s) and as such the Content and Popularity of the site are important. btw, the list doesn't have digg or netscape or del.is.us which are the top social media sites.
Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Kevin Lee, the site's Admin, has asked me to create a poll to determine if users would like to see a new section/category called "Social Media Marketing." With the rise of social networking websites marketing a business using social media can produce amazing results; very high ROI since the market is young.
Re: Owning a social network software...How is it?? - Hi, I am a big fan of social networking software (75% of our business) but what we constantly have to remind people is the concept of a social network has been around for ages. It just so happens MySpace & Facebook made the ability to do it free & online mainstream and the rest is history. Our company finds that pre-developed social networking applications do not create good internet business. The simple reason is a social network is not an internet business; all it is a group of link minded individuals that are able to communicate with one another through the medium you provide. A construction company can build an office building...but that does not make it a profitable business. You need to (1) build your business and (2) build social networking software features around that business. So my advice to you, just like facebook.com opened up their code, make your social networking software open so ANYONE can modify it to meet their needs. Jeff
personal view - My personal view on the social networking scene is I do not believe it to be in our human nature to live globally. If that where the case we would not be working continually to-wards this goal. It would JUST BE to begin with from the beginning. From what I can tell we are creating a new generation of people that are intolerant of the least amount of thinking involved in any application that hits the web. The TWO Button rule seems to apply to almost everything we do today. Have you taken good look around at the education system in this country? Social networking is perhaps the worst thing to end up on the internet. I do not believe the internet was intended to be used as such. All the Best
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff


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