The new turn in online retail – Social Media
September 18, 2009
As you can see from the The National Retail Federation’s Shop.org and Forrester Research the increase in budget is going into social media. It is no suprise really as this is where the bulk of the under 30s are hanging out. Also with the level of trust high compared with email this is where consumers are more likely to click to buy or sign up to a newsletter. Whether twitter users will become more jaded and really tie down the people they follow is yet to be seen. We saw a similar thing with MySpace when everybody went friend adding crazy only to realise that there ‘friends’ were meaningless. By the time facebook came along people we educated and made sure that friends were personal and so the messages in their feeds were relevant. People on twitter are more promiscious and it is to be seen how this plays out.
Retailers and companies promoting on social media have to be careful not to over spam with offers and top provide actual and genuinly interesting information. This is a shift from most etailers as they are used to banging out those offers.

