The new turn in online retail – Social Media

According to a study released by the The National Retail Federation’s Shop.org and Forrester Research, companies who are still indulging in online marketing campaigns are diverting big money towards investments in social media. And why not, since that’s where they will find most of their target audience, the under-30s shoppers. So, online retailers are trying to catch them on popular social sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs hold more credibility over conventional marketing strategies like email campaign, PR and more.

Gen Y relies heavily on peer recommendations when making buying decisions. They often leave a shopping site to seek opinions from communities before they get down to actual buying. So how can retailers use this to their advantage? There are two ways to nail this. Either the retailer can syndicate their product catalogs to blogs, social rating sites, social networking sites and other affiliates or they can enable social networking on their sites. If visitors can view comments and ratings from friends, indulge in real time conversation on the retailer’s site, it paves way for a richer user experience.

So, retailers should look for social networking platforms that caters to large user community and which allows retailers to integrate social networking capabilities into their site. Users should be allowed send information out via feeds to one or more social networking sites. They should facilitate single click sharing of news, deals or any other retailer content.

The day is not far when e-commerce will metamorphose into “social commerce”. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!!