Entries from November 2010 ↓
November 26th, 2010 — Business, Social Media
We’re back with another post! This time on Social Commerce.
Social commerce is simply the use of Social Media in an E-Commerce environment.
As we all know, with the increasing amount of users on Social Networks (especially Facebook and Twitter) every day, the scope for carrying out Business on them has grown enormously.
Almost all the Sellers/Vendors have forayed into Social Media and made a significant presence there, in terms of their brand recognition and fan following. Thanks to Social Media, all of them have been able to build their own respective communities and narrowed down on their buyers to a great extent. Social Media is a great channel to reach out to your customers. Be it the arrival of the latest range of products or promotional deals or sales, the followers are up-to-date with everything.
As per a comScore Report, 23% of Twitter users follow businesses to find special deals, promotions, or sales, while 14% of Twitter users reported taking to the stream to find and share product reviews and opinions. According to another study by Chadwick Martin Bailey, it was observed that 25% of consumers connected to brands on Facebook did so to receive discounts. Another interesting fact that comScore found was- Facebook and Twitter visitors spend 1.5x more online than average Internet users. Therefore, with growing number of users on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, the tendency to spend online also augments.
Social Commerce now has under its fold a variety of social media tools and content used in the context of e-commerce. A few of them are:
- Customer ratings
- Customer reviews
- User recommendations
- Social Shopping tools
- Dedicated platforms (Forums and communities)
- SEO
- Social Advertising
More and more companies are coming up with strategies to capitalize on Social Commerce. Facebook came out with a new strategy wherein its members who use the company’s location-based ‘Places’ feature will be alerted to special deals and discounts offered by retailers in their vicinity. The users can take advantage of this feature by showing their phones at participating stores. Facebook said that this action would be posted on users’ news feed so that their friends might also utilize the special offers. Amazon is charting out its strategy as well.
Few of the most popular Social Commerce players are Amazon, Best Buy, Starbucks, Dell and Hallmark.
Here are a list of Social Commerce sites
- ShopSocially
- Kactoos
- Groupon
- BuyWithMe
So, what more do the Sellers need now, they’ve got dedicated Communities with active Conversations happening and now even the Commerce factor comes in to play. Your time is Now!
November 23rd, 2010 — Social Media
At Dot Now social we are very interested in finding evidence that links impact of social media on any business. Our search took us to George Washington Uinversity. Researchers at GWU constructed a model that links impact of online user reviews on movie sales and tested it with real time data from Yahoo movie reviews, BoxofficeMojo and one more site. Although the model uses a quantitative approach to modeling the impact, the findings are very interesting.
Does it mean if you are a movie maker should you be worried about social media?
The researchers in order to answer this question built a study that tries to isolate the user reviews from other factors such as critics ratings, movie marketing effort, story and actors. Given all things being same does word of mouth on social networks has any substantial impact on box office opening sales?
Online social networks make ‘Word of mouth’ so effective due to the temporal factor. You would almost instantly come to know of the reviews as soon as the movie show gets over. This poses both opportunities and challenges for movie makers. It is obvious that each of us do depend on what our friends and acquaintances say about a movie, before and after its release. We are also influenced by what our news paper or popular critic on a website might say about the movie. But we also tend to make a impulse purchase, meaning we some time just go with the flow at the ticket counter. There are multitude of factors that influence box office collections, I am intrigued by what the study is offering and most importantly how it was structured.
The study establishes three important variables – count of reviews online and the extent of reviews. Extent here refers to how much positively one feels after the watching the movie. There is a clearly identifiable link between box office sales and user reviews but one feeds another. The users of these sites although give importance to volume of reviews online, but they give limited importance to rating itself, because the ratings are mixed. In such cases they go by content. So the question is if you as a movie maker, generate enough content and conversation with user reviews would you be able to influence the box office sales?
November 4th, 2010 — Business, General
Deep Red Ink, as I think about the name it reminds me of the explanation behind the name which ran into number of pages. Well today I will consider it as an accomplishment as CEO of Dot Now Social. But when I accepted the invitation of Santhan and Deepti to be part of the ecology it was an easy, obvious and humbling choice.
DRI is an ecology formed to support great ideas. DRI is not any other business, not one that can be defined by the boundaries of capacity and limitation of bandwidth. DRI is a “concept business” which is all about supporting great ideas driven by passionate entrepreneurs. Though it may appear that DRI is about providing great content, the fundamentals of how the content is generated is the true crux of the business.
While enough has been said about the importance of content in the internet age and on social media, one thing that gets usually ignored is understanding what kind of content goes viral. Many schools of content strategy have spoken of different things, some like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki have sighted it as mere chance. DRI has a fundamentally different approach rooted in the “spiritual” foundation of the founding team. Well, I cannot call myself an expert on the subject but I can say that it is a unique approach and as someone who is building a business on social media I can say it is working. A content strategy based on passion of the entrepreneur, authenticity in communication and “spirit” level approaches may not directly appeal to the ad hoc ”internet age” youngster who claims to be a Social Media expert. But as a student of marketing, the success of the content produced at DRI is a close certainty.
DRI is a concept business also because their interactions with the client are never merely to accomplish the details of a brief. DRI is an evolved business because it strives to connect with the deepest sense of purpose of the client, which is the most amazing form of building customer relationship. DRI is a concept business because profit doesnt drive the reason it chooses a client. The joy derived by working with the client is the only parameter of gauging whom to work with.
This is my favorite part. DRI is a concept business because of the way it is structured. DRI is an ecology of 6 partners. Santhan, Deepti, Anil, Netrix, Quick Silver & Dot Now Social. The structure of the partnership is that all revenues are divided between the 6 partners equally irrespective of who participates in a particular project in what capacity. I’ve been enamored by entrepreneurship and enterprises for over 4 years, and have studied business models with the vigor of a geek, but DRI beats them all. To common sense it does not appeal, nor does it sound totally logical, even remotely viable. But it is perhaps the most interesting journey of my entrepreneurial journey to see DRI evolve as a sustainable, profitable and growing business.
Dot Now Social is proud to be part of this successful experiment as takes this opportunity thank all members of Deep Red Ink ecology and all the clients of Deep Red Ink. I’m very keenly observing how DRI is shaping up and giving meaning to a key learning of last year that Ecologies are the new Business Ethic. As Social Media partners at DRI, we have received amazing work, from amazing clients with the most interesting challenges. We are looking forward to more.
