Facebook and Twitter see the highest adoption rate in social media marketing while customer reviews rank No. 1 for increasing sales and customer engagement, according to a study released Wednesday.
Retailers are revving up their social media marketing efforts as the past six months show aggressive adoption of the emerging trend with Facebook and Twitter leading the way, according to the report, "Community and Social Media Study," conducted by the e-commerce consulting firm the e-tailing group and online customer review firm PowerReviews.
The findings come at a time when recession-strapped companies are increasingly looking to social media marketing as a more affordable way to promote their products and services as compared to standard online advertising, and as interactive marketing overall gains purchase on traditional offline advertising.
The trend coincides with the uptick in the community base of these sites -- Facebook just passed the 300 million mark -- providing a large audience for retailers to tap with branding efforts.The integration of community and social networking within e-commerce has reached critical mass and as such is now a benchmark that we will be tracking annually," said Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group, in a statement. "Customer engagement has become a metric to be reckoned with, where failing to engage consumers via community and social media will have brand and bottom-line implications.
"All merchants must test and understand how to effectively deploy it for their brands to retain customers, encourage sales, and avoid abandonment to competitors who've better embraced its marketing potential."(InternetNews.com, 2009)
