Will you ‘socialise’ your online store?
By Tamara Caddy
Online purchasing is growing while Aussies have a more ferocious appetite for social networking than most of the world.
So it makes sense that there’s infinite plugins and extensions to help e-commerce shack up with social networks. Get it right and your social media output can be used to add value to your online store continuing the conversation and building relationships and loyalty – way beyond single transactions.
Our preferred e-commerce solution, Magento, can easily be integrated with Twitter feeds and Facebook fanpages using Magento default APIs. Similarly e-Newsletter sign-up options include features that allow recipients to share the newsletter invite across social channels.
Beyond share or like buttons, social commerce can be built across communities through all sorts of user engagement platforms, reviews, mobile apps, newsfeeds, coupons, discount and deals.
Social referrals can aid the purchasing process by spreading the word amongst shoppers’ friends and offering rewards and incentives to do so.
“Peer referrals allows consumers to gauge the product relative to their personal preferences,” explains SocialTwist CEO Vijay Pullar. ”A key trend brands can leverage is that friends know what other friends like and they know what their other friends are looking for,” said Pullar.
There’s seemingly no end to the plugins and extensions that can be integrated with your Magento online store, here‘s a handful:
ShareThis, Socialable Allows users to share specific sites, pages or products and distribute information via Facebook, Bebo, Twitter and tell friends.
Beetailer, Storeya, Facebook Store App Integrates some or all of products from your Magento store into social networks and fanpages.
Curebit, Social Twist Get your customers to refer their friends via Twitter, Facebook or email, with useful tracking features
Groupon, Zizio Social Deals Launch social deals campaigns and coupons offering rebates for referrals for your customers to tell their friends. This is a flooded category of social commerce to be weary of but it can occasionally still be appropriate for certain markets.
Facebook Referrals, Open Graph and Comments Allowing your customers to invite people and get automatic discounts, share what they ‘want’ and ‘own’ or leave comments your webstore’s product page by logging into their Facebook accounts.
Shopalize Purchase Sharing Widget After purchase, customers can share their purchases or offers with friends in social platforms.
Tailor your social strategy to your market, capabilities and objectives as running consumables out the door at bargain prices needs a different approach to a premium product looking to create brand longevity and a loyal fan base.
While Facebook and Twitter will give you wide reach, more niche and specialised social platforms are being used by brands to supplement their broader social strategy.
These communities geared to a specific interest may give you a more targeted reach. For example, sharing photos of your clothing range and inspirational images via Instagram may help gain the attention of fashionistas or you may establish credibility with foodies by posting info on Foodspotting. These niche audiences may be the trendsetters within your category of commerce.
We recommend staggering the implementation of your social elements unless you have internal resources in place or the budget to outsource its management. Social needs to be monitored carefully and providing rapid response times or risk alienating users.
Our advice: get your store working, then plan and implement one or two social extensions or plugins at a time.
Access their effectiveness and reach through services such as Facebook Insights and Google Analytics, which includes analysis of your site and e-sales across multiples channels including social.
Socialising your online store will be an evolving process as technologies and communities change, yet it is a necessary and worthwhile investment in today’s e-commerce mediascape.
Need an expert at Magento integrations including in social extensions and plugins?
Design Industries offer tailored web solutions. Click here for more info about Magento e-commerce integrations or contact us.
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How to Improve Your Social Media Presence
By Sam PascuaSocial media is a large and mostly uncharted territory for a lot of businesses and organisations. We all may have a Facebook page, but how can we best utilise this resource to gain the most from it? As the world continues to focus on the internet as a source of information and marketing opportunities, everybody needs to start getting into the game. From Facebook to Twitter, and from LinkedIn to Fastpitch, the list of social networking sites and marketing methods continues to grow.
If you want to make the most of your online presence, here are a few tips to make the process easier and more productive.
Maintain a Consistent Brand Image
At the most basic level, you need to create a business site that mimics your brand. So much of your customers’ perception of your company comes from the visual and audible messages you are sending out. So it is important to duplicate these messages on your viral marketing sites. Keep the messages you send out consistent with the corporate image you are portraying.
Read morePiano star on Chatroulette makes us smile
By Sam PascuaWe recently wrote an article on Chatroulette and an interesting video has appeared on YouTube of a piano star doing video improv. Its a great video worth watching to the end.
Read moreEffectively Incorporating Social Media Applications into Your Business
By Sam PascuaIf you have yet to play in the world of social media, then prepare to be overwhelmed at first. The number of websites, options and users in the field is astronomical and the figures continue to grow exponentially. Though overwhelming, the rapid growth of social media demonstrates its popularity in the modern world, as well as its importance for businesses and consumers.
Businesses, brands and personalities that have grasped the concept of social media are experiencing wild success. They receive real-time feedback from their customers and fans about their products and services, while providing their customers with an experiential marketing experience, rather than simply providing a basic service or product. When used correctly, social media can enhance the relationship between businesses and their consumer and enforce brand loyalty.
Which Social Media Application is Right for Your Business?
Once you decide to enter the world of social media, your next decision is to determine your placement. Just the fact that a dozen different applications are available doesn’t necessarily mean you should be involved with all of them. Here are brief descriptions of the most popular social media techniques:
Read moreFriends Among Strangers; Try Your Luck at ChatRoulette
By Sam PascuaDo you recall the days before the Internet existed? When you may have spent a quality afternoon getting to know your next-door neighbours, rather than chatting with strangers or blogging the day away? Those days are long gone, and today there’s no shortage of social-media sites in which users can introduce themselves, their ideas and their thoughts to anyone who will listen, view or read. You can share whatever you like – within legal limits – with the rest of the world. Perhaps your ideas will be received, or perhaps they’ll be lost in cyberspace. With all the communication, you won’t ever know.
The Surprising Impact of Twitter
By Sam PascuaWhen Twitter was first introduced, it seemed to be nothing more than a novelty. It offered people a way to send “tweets” about their life, in succinct 140-character blurbs. Interesting? Perhaps. Useful? Perhaps not.
But since Twitter’s introduction, its popularity has spread like wildfire. Millions of users send tweets throughout the day, and although the content of many of those tweets is mundane trivia about what people are doing at the moment, other tweets cover more substantive, newsworthy topics. Some individuals now attract thousands of followers, with tweets being disseminated more broadly than ever before.
Twitter has taken on a life of its own. People are using it in ways that were never foreseen by the individual creators. Some of the new uses are slight modifications that have significant implications. For example, users have begun tagging tweets related to a specific event with the # sign, so that #inauguration allows people to follow messaging threads about inaugural events, and similar tags can be used to discuss conferences, national disasters, and more.
Other users began using the @ symbol to reply to other tweets, directing their response to a particular user. The convention was adopted rapidly, impressively changing Twitter’s isolated tweets into interactive conversations where users can speak directly to one another.
In addition, more than 11,000 applications have been created by developers, taking Twitter in new directions that the original creators never envisioned. Summize created a way to search live streams of Tweets, providing an easy way for anyone to find up-to-the-minute comments on breaking events. SickCity tracks references to illnesses in Twitter, potentially alerting medical professionals to epidemics. Activists in China and Moldova have used Twitter to organise public demonstrations. Each new application adds a new layer of depth and richness to the Twitter experience.
Some people lament the way that users spend hours glued to their cell phones and other mobile devices, tweeting their friends and colleagues. They argue that this type of instant communication deprives people of more meaningful, richer person-to-person interactions. However, the opposite argument can also be made. As people use Twitter to comment on world events, they are actually becoming part of a large audience enjoying a shared experience. A few decades ago, unfolding events were seen on television and discussed among family members. Nowadays, users can discuss those events in real time with a much wider, more diverse group of interested observers.
And, contrary to skeptics’ objections, in reality the conversation is not limited by the 140-character tweet size, because users often use Twitter as a pointing device to direct their followers to other online resources, such as news articles, blog posts, and videos, or even charitable causes. This type of redirection has become so popular that some websites are reporting that the amount of traffic they receive from Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking applications is now greater than what they used to receive from Google search engine results.
Perhaps Twitter’s greatest legacy will be that it allows people to keep up on each other’s lives in an increasingly disconnected world. A typical user is connected to relatives, friends, colleagues, and a few celebrities. Even if there is no actual interaction, people feel connected simply by knowing what is happen in the daily life of others. While some complain about the intrusion of technology in our personal lives, others embrace it as a way to improve communication and interpersonal relationships.
Read moreThe Twitter / WordPress test
By Sam PascuaOk so i have read my new social media book, Groundswell and I am a true convert. It blew me away, loved almost every moment. The final chapter on the “future” ways we will interact sent a shiver up my spine however 99% of the book was eye opening, in a good way.
So here I was updating our blog and thought I set up that twitter account a while back and apart from that one post with the ground breaking news of “sending our new newsletter….” not much else has happened. Therefore I made the decision to start posting some tweets, so far so good, a few got posted today and I am all content with the small yet now due to my insight knowledge important first steps 
I decided to go one further surely there was a simple WordPress plugin to link my Twitter account and my blog to make the interaction and posting a far easier process, and that is where the Groundswell found trouble. The plugin was easy to install like most WordPress plugins are, but it simply does not work. Well it does not work as I write this blog, which is in fact also a final test for the Twitter plugin, after this it is disable time…
So either you will see our new little right column Twitter plugin or you won’t.
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