Give Me MySpace Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM
, BY KEN BURKE
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Microsites that offer deep content regarding a product or product family give shoppers an immersive environment.
For
example, the American Eagle Spring Break '07 Microsite used
user-contributed video, rollover product displays and a blog to
showcase springtime apparel, creating a connection with fun-loving
students in the merchant's target demographic.
Dressing rooms and collection selling allows browsers the chance to mix and match products to suit their needs.
Finally,
with more and more consumers looking to their peers for product
guidance, merchants should showcase customer reviews on their sites.
Jupiter Research reports that 77% of online shoppers seek reviews
before purchasing; they're fast becoming a must-have feature.
And
customer reviews give product experts — your customers — the power to
explain just how your products and your site are unique. It's an easy,
practical way to help differentiate your products and your site from
the competition.
Incorporating
customer reviews serves as a catalyst for interactivity among members
of the online community. Ways in which merchants can increase
credibility and reference include:
Richer customer profiles
By
requiring reviewers to share information about themselves as well as
the product they're rating, shoppers can identify which reviews are
most relevant to them.
Product attribute rating
By rating individual aspects of products in addition to assigning an overall score, reviewers provide a deeper level of detail.
Helpfulness rating
Hold reviewers accountable by allowing other shoppers to rate which reviews give them the most information.
Video reviews
Increasingly popular, these sound-and-motion-enabled reviews show off products in action.
While
providing more ways for consumers to view and purchase products, RIAs
and customer reviews are good points to begin thinking about how to
reach your customers. In the next two years, merchants should prepare
to take social computing to the next level, engaging meaningfully with
customers beyond their e-commerce sites.
EFFECTIVE SOCIAL COMPUTING TACTICS FOR E-COMMERCE
Looking
further ahead to the next 12 to 24 months, smart merchants will employ
blogs, social networking sites, podcasts and newsfeeds to join the
dialogue with their customers. According to Forrester Research, 19% of
consumers who shopped on the Internet visited a social networking site
in 2007, vs. 10% in 2006.
In
addition, blog usage increased 10% year over year, while podcasting
usage increased 2% from last year. It's easy to get started.
As
consumers engage via social computing, the first step for the merchant
is to understand and monitor how they are engaging. Using a brand
monitoring agency can help identify where your key audience is spending
time online. There are also free tools that can help to identify how
and where your core customers are spending time, including:
IceRocket.com: Searches blogs and MySpace
Technorati.com: Searches blogs
Qoogle: Enhanced YouTube video search
Google alerts: Set up alerts of new articles, blog posts and Web contents that contain the keywords you have identified
It is important to focus your efforts on the social communities that will have the most impact on your target demographic.
Especially
for members of “Generation Y,” social networks such as MySpace and
Facebook have become some of the most frequently visited Websites on
the Internet. These sites also offer the ultimate opportunity to
interact with customers.
To
take advantage of this willingness to share information, consider the
following factors when integrating social networking into your online
business strategy:
Focus on MySpace (82% market share) or FaceBook (7% market share).
Ensure that you capture opt-in email addresses.
Provide obvious links back to your e-commerce site.
Provide
syndication code for incorporating your content onto others' social
networking pages. For example, make a banner ad with a link to your
Website and supply the HTML code for ease of posting on friends' pages.
Consider banner advertising on the social networking sites your customers visit most.
Stay away from corporate-speak on your page. Talk like you're speaking with a friend, not like a business.
Post
bulletins consistently; a clearly outdated page will quickly lose
viewers' interest. Aim to post at least one bulletin a day.
Blogs
are a second option for connecting with your customer. A running log of
events and personal insights contributed by an individual or group,
blogs showcase your expertise and open the dialogue between you and the
consumer.
Depending
on the audience, blogs can look and feel very different — from the
inclusion or exclusion of text, graphics, photos, and videos.
Regardless of the format of the blog, follow these best practices to
ensure effectiveness:
Look
like a blog, not a company site. Diluting blog content with empty PR
speak is a surefire way to alienate potential readers; it's imperative
that you create content that has true relevance and a genuine voice.
Hotlinks
are your friends. While maintaining that genuine voice, don't neglect
to include links to current deals and specific products that are
mentioned in the blog.
Tag every posting with search-friendly terms. Blogs are a great way to boost SEO relevance for your brand.
Let
other bloggers and the press know you're out there too; they'll give
you viral boost by linking into the relevant content you post.
Podcasting,
an extension of blogging, can be in either audio or video format and
gives shoppers a continually-updated feed of information straight from
the source — you, the merchant. Podcasts add a personal connection to
your products and content, but keep these tips in mind:
Keep it short — podcasts should be no more than seven to 10 minutes in length.
Craft
summaries that are concise yet descriptive. iTunes gives you 255
characters to use in the summary that announces your podcast — make
those characters count.
Be enthusiastic. Podcasts are only as good as the personalities behind them.
Be
consistent. To earn a loyal following, you have to commit to a
consistent production schedule: “Same Bat-time, Same Bat-Channel.”
As
social computing continues to evolve, consumers will be the first to
adapt to the new technologies. To best serve customers, merchants need
to follow them. After all, in the end it's the merchant's
responsibility to share, connect, influence and learn from the
customer's point of view. Social networking strategies are a good place
to focus as you grow your business in the coming months.
Ken Burke is the founder/chairman of MarketLive, a Petaluma, CA-based provider of e-commerce technology and services.
