If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites.

Just consider the statistics from social media monitoring site Pingdom:

• Males and females almost equally use social sites (47% vs. 53%)
• 61% of Facebook users are middle aged or older, with the average age being 37
• 18- to 24-year-olds don’t dominate any particular social networking site; they’re spread out all over

The bottom line: If you aren’t discovering which in social networking channels your customers spend time and include them in your ecommerce marketing mix, you’re probably  missing out on building relationships, community and increasing new customer acquisition through online word of mouth.

Leverage these five social media marketing tips for ecommerce to either get started with more social digital marketing or take your current social strategy to the next level:

1. Go Where Your Customers Are

Very few things in life promise endless options – digital and social media marketing being one exception. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking channels available for your business to leverage. Key to successful social media marketing for ecommerce is choosing the right channels to reach customers.

Find out where your customers are congregating by:

• Asking them. Sounds overly simplistic, but sending a formal survey t/> [...]
  
  Fri Mar 12, 2010 05:15 am

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  You know your brand is socially relevant when…
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  1. Consumers interact spontaneously with each other; and the brand is the core focus of each interaction.
  2. Your content is being shared all over the interwebs without you even asking.
  3. The meaning of the brand evolves; and you embrace it.
  4. Consumers find and promote new uses of your brand and you don’t sue them.
  5. Consumers develop a new language around the brand and you learn it.
  6. Normal users become brand advocates and you love them for it.
  7. A community is born and you participate in it.

  Fluffy stuff I know; i just felt inspired today.  I usually try to write something of value so that anyone who reads this can take actionable steps to facilitate change within their organizations. Sorry. : (

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  Tue Apr 06, 2010 23:30 pm

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  Are search metrics optional?
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  Image via Wikipedia

  Some of you read this blog every day. Others of you have read my books. I realize that this is an odd title for a post coming from me, because I am a nut about metrics. But I am more of a nut about being practical, and when small businesses try organic search marketing, I am starting to think that metrics are not the place to start. If you want to know why, then check out my latest post on Search Engine Guide, "Are search metrics optional?"

  
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  Sat Dec 12, 2009 16:30 pm

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  The economics of mistrust
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  Just how serious is the economic state we're in? At a debate on Christian responses to the recession, Andrew Dilnot, the well-respected economic commentator and evangelical Christian, suggests the crisis isn't so bad. Recessions are part of life in a capitalist economy: the real question is why there hasn't been a recession for the last 16 years, since in previous decades recessions have come every 3 or 4. He also thinks that the worry about the levels of debt the UK is now carrying is a worry about the wrong thing. Debt is basically a good thing, at the macroeconomic level: it is the key that liberates people from poverty. Ask yourself how one billion children have been lifted out of poverty in Asia. It couldn't have been done without the alchemy of debt, the ability of the countries concerned to borrow and lend. As for UK's debt, it's larger than it was, but it is still pretty modest by historic standards.

  So why the sense of panic? Dilnot's suggestion is that it's a moral issue. He believes that there is a kind guilt lying behind much of the current anxiety about economic woes. We, in the UK, are a rich generation four times as rich as our parents and grandparents were after the second war. So we need to get used to our prosperity, and not let the media drive us into paroxysms of fear, which actually make things worse since they stop us enjoying the benefits of wealth.

  Dilnot is at pains to point out that we are a massively redistributive economy too: 1% of earners at the top of the pile pay 25% of all income tax; the bottom 20% of earners are 60% better off because of the welfare benefits taxation funds. This redistribution he interprets as a practical application of the commandment to love your neighbour. Humans have a tendency to greed. But Christians should be proud of their economy, even celebrate it as a manifestation of Christian faith. [...]
  
  Sun Dec 20, 2009 21:56 pm

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