How to combine social networking and e-commerce
In my opinion, there are two ways to combine social networking and e-commerce:
1) Create a social network around your products (Social commerce)
2) Market products to your social network (Modified traditional social networking)
- #1 Social Commerce -
In this first case, what you have is essentially a supercharged e-commerce store. You build your store as the focus of the site, and tightly integrate community features into it. For example, if you were selling coffee, you could have a feature where you would make users out of your customers - give them a profile, allow them to message you and other members, reward them fir leaving feedback, let them rate other member’s feedback, let them upload photos of the different countries you have coffee from, then display those photos on the specific coffee’s product page.
There’s a world of ideas for this option and unlimited potential. The key is that you create a community of not only passive users but active customers. If people really like what you’re selling, they’ll be more likely to come back.
We are all well aware of how important word of mouth is for a business. Combine that with the fact that people associate more easily with like minded people, and even to a degree become sort of like each other by adopting common interests. What you have is the foundation for a true Social Commerce business.
- #2 Modified Traditional Social Networking -
Traditionally, websites monetize their traffic through selling advertising space to companies like Google & Yahoo. In this scenario, what you have is basically two separate entities in a sort of symbiotic relationship.
Both entities are hosted on the same domain for example:
www.YourStoreSite.com and…
community.YourStoreSite.com
www.YourStoreSite.com is a fully functional stand-alone e-commerce store and the “community” subdomain is a fully functional social network of people interested in the products you sell.
For instance, say you sell sports cards. There’s no question that there is an intense community of sports card collectors out there, many of whom buy online. These customers usually have a preference for one seller or another but each seller most definitely has it’s hard core fans. This option is similar to how traditional e-commerce sites might use a bulletin board with threads for different topics. My design is that you amplify the social networking side of the equation.
Again - allow your users to interact with each other, leave feedback, comments, rate comments, other users, and products. Let them upload relevant media and display it on their profile, etc.
–
A tactic you’ll absolutely want to use for both instances is publishing relevant content regularly. I’m talking about integrating blogging and online marketing into your online marketing strategy. I won’t go into great detail but basically, having frequently updated, high quality content relevant to your products on your site is phenomenally important to attracting people to your site. I’d recommend looking into what factors Google ranks pages based on.
Lastly, in both cases, it is important to consider yourself as a user and interact with your customers/users on your own social network. The more transparent you are as a company and as an individual, the more likely your customers will trust you, and trust is a key aspect to a successful e-commerce business.
I hope this has been informative for people considering building a successful social networking website for business. As always, I am available to consult on this topic specifically, just email me.
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
RennyBA
Thanks for the add at BlogCatalog and as i said, giving lectures at The Norwegian School of Management, this blog is an interesting read.
I do agree: the Internet really is magnificent for both networking and commerce.
Aug 20th, 2007
ugyen
I agree with you and thanks for sharing.
Aug 22nd, 2007
Roberrific
I’m building a web 2.0 antiques and collectibles site called dumpdiggers.com
I really hope to combine an interesting new form of social networking with ecommerce on this site but its expensive - i have already spent 20K in India and I still don’t have half of the stuff that I was dreaming about on the SoW.
When all is done maybe you can consult…
Aug 22nd, 2007
Philip Wilkinson
Interesting.. what do you think about “product discovery” sites like Kaboodle, ThisNext etc…?
Aug 22nd, 2007
Fidel Guajardo
I’d like to expand on your concept about selling sports cards. I envision an e-commerce social network would be a “myspace” type of network where all its members are buyers/sellers of sports cards. Each member would be allowed to upload pics, audio, video, etc. describing themselves and their products (sports cards) which are either for sale or just for showing others what they already own. In essence the site would enable anyone to sell their own stuff and upload videos, add tags, etc of their products. The owner of the entire network would be making money by keeping a small percentage of each sale and by selling advertising space on the site. Some sites which enable people to sell their own stuff are Etsy.com and eBay, but these sites lack all of the social network features we expect. There are turnkey solutions for building your own social network, such as KickApps.com and Ning.com, but these do not have built-in ecommerce. I’ve been trying to put my own together by combining KickApps or Ning with a generic shopping cart such as FatFreeCart.com or BlinkCart.com. I am trying to use jQuery to tie these together but I don’t have the time to dedicate to it to speed this up. If you know of anyone trying the same thing, plz let me know. Good luck.
Nov 30th, 2007
buy homes
Another very important task of a successful budget is keeping up with your expenses and all of your receipts. Now, I know this is difficult especially when buying what we think are small things but believe me it is very significant, especially for married couples. If one spouse is spending over 4. 00 a day 7 days a week on a cappuccino, that one purchase is costing your household 120. 00 a month. To help solve this difficult task, keep a box in a common area and commit to tossing all your daily receipts in…
Apr 9th, 2008
andrew
great article… but the challenge we need to solve is how to cost-effectively deploy either of your 2 approaches. For example, Ning.com seems the best white-label social networking site and, with a few premium services added, could fit into your second strategy.
But… the members would need two logins - one for your ning site and one for your other site. The lack of integration between the two kills the idea of using ning.
Any ideas for an integrated approach that doesn’t cost the earth?
Sep 20th, 2008
annojenny
Подскажите шооблончег под Wordpress 2.6.2, чтобы был похож на ваш www.dennisplucinik.com.
Заранее благодарю)
Oct 7th, 2008
Daniel
I really liked the way they came off
Mar 24th, 2009
Salim Mahmud
Thanks a lot. I really liked it…
Jul 10th, 2009
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