Facebook Shopping Means Never Having to Leave the Site

WalletPop
By Barbara Thau

It's a no-brainer why more and more retailers -- from J.C. Penney and apparel chain Express to 1-800-FLOWERS -- are selling to consumers directly on Facebook. The social network has become the portal to people's worlds -- and where they wile way the hours.

But what do shoppers get out of buying from retailers' Facebook pages vs. the company's own e-commerce sites?

For one, Facebook addicts don't have to pull themselves away from the social network in order to shop. And as retailers enhance the interactive appeal of their e-commerce pages on Facebook, shopping on the site is quickly becoming a social outlet for consumers, merchants say.

"Convenience is certainly number one," Lisa Gavales, chief marketing officer of Express, told WalletPop. "We feel if customers are already in the middle of their Facebook experience, why should they have to go somewhere else if they want to shop?"

To that end, the retailer has made their entire merchandise assortment available for purchase on Facebook. And, the inventory updates in real time, Gavales says.

"The second benefit of Facebook shopping is the ease with which you can share and get information from friends," says Gavales. "Customers can 'like' individual items and see what others are liking and why."

J.C. Penney put its entire e-commerce assortment on its Facebook page right before the holidays.

"Our Facebook page hosts a 'Shop' tab, providing a full shopping experience...including checkout, without having to leave the Facebook environment," Kate Coultas, corporate communications senior manager for J.C. Penney, told WalletPop. "By introducing commerce capability, we're able to take our Facebook experience to the next level, providing convenient features that encourage social integration and user contribution as our customers shop," she says.

Like Express, J.C. Penney's Facebook page enables users to "like" and share items and purchases with their friends. In addition, product display pages are integrated with Facebook reviews, allowing Facebook users to comment on products -- which sounds like something akin to community shopping.

For instance, now you can ask your fashionista friend, who always seems to be sporting an effortlessly put-together look, if that slouchy tunic you're eyeing is worth buying -- or bailing.

Indeed, says Gavales, "Facebook shopping has the additional appeal of being a seamless transition from chatting with friends about shopping to actually doing it!"

LinkedIn Doubles It's Price In IPO Debut

New York Times
By Evelyn M. Rusli
Published: May 19, 2011

Shares of the professional social network more than doubled their offering price -- heightening expectations for Facebook, Groupon and other Internet companies weighing initial offerings.

Although The New York Times is charging for some of their content, readers coming through links from search engines, blogs and LinkedIn will be able to read any article without restriction.
Click here to read the entire article at www.nytimes.com:
LinkeIn Doubles It's Price In IPO Debut

Retailers "Like" Facebook, Twitter

Wall Street Journal
By Dana Mattioli

Retailers are trying to get customers to spend more than just time on Facebook Inc.

In the past six months, such companies as Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., J.C. Penney Co. and GNC Holdings have invited customers to spend money by shopping on company fan pages without ever leaving Facebook.

The move to attract sales through social-networking sites comes as people are spending more time online and less time at the mall. E-commerce has been one of the biggest drivers of retail sales in recent quarters, with online sales rising 28% in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 4% for bricks-and-mortar stores, according tosurveys by the National Retail Federation.

J.C. Penney launched a Facebook shop in December, allowing its 1.6 million fans to shop directly from the social-media site. The Facebook store offers the same products as Penney's mobile store, a company spokeswoman said. But the Penney Facebook shop lets fans "share" items they like with friends with a simple click.

Fans are able to browse categories in J.C. Penney's Facebook store such as women, shoes and baby, and then narrow down each department by the types of product they are seeking.

"We need to go where our customers are," says Jeff Hennion, chief branding officer at vitamin-retailer GNC, which has been directing fans to the Facebook shop it launched in February through emails and its Twitter feed. The company recently sent an email blast that said, "Why leave the social scene to shop? Get what you need right on Facebook!" and then prompted recipients to "like" its page.

Revenue from the GNC Facebook store is slim, but Mr. Hennion believes it could become a "significant" source of online revenue in the future. "We have a very young demographic that is multitasking, and this gives them the comfort that they aren't leaving Facebook behind," he says.

While the portion of overall retail transactions coming from Facebook remains small—Forrester Research estimates Facebook accounts for less than 1% of overall e-commerce—companies like GNC believe so-called "social commerce" could become an important sales driver in the future. Americans spent 22 minutes and 10 seconds on Facebook in April, more than twice the amount of time they spent on the Web's top 500 retail sites combined.

Yet most analysts remain skeptical that consumers will want to spend money while they are socializing online. Forrester Research issued a report earlier this year that said there is little evidence that social commerce is a profitable growth strategy.

Without "measurable success" for large brands over the course of the next year, Forrester said, companies that herald Facebook as the next big thing in e-commerce have "the credence of a cultist who insists that the world will end next year."

Sucharita Mulpuru, the Forrester retail analyst who led the report, says people often don't revisit fan pages after initially "liking" them, though she suggests that consumers might be lured back by offers of exclusive merchandise or special sales.

Mark Beccue, a senior analyst at ABI Research Inc., says that consumers buying goods online are very purposeful, and they typically rely on search engines or go directly to a company's website.

"People are just starting to engage with this concept and are testing it," concedes David Godsman, vice president of global Web services at Starwood, which added a shopping tab for its Westin brand in January after fans wrote on the company's Facebook wall suggesting the idea.

Mr. Godsman says only a handful of the hotel's branded "Heavenly Beds," which sell for $1,100 to $1,700, have been purchased through Facebook, but he says that smaller-ticket items like its $36 candles are gaining traction.

The Westin Facebook shop is identical to its online shop, but it doesn't have the same advanced search capabilities, Mr. Godsman says.

Visitors to Facebook fan pages can find shopping tabs on the left-hand side of the page, typically under the photo. Clicking the tab directs consumers to a shopping site built on the Facebook platform, which is often similar to a company's main e-commerce site.

Facebook doesn't charge retailers a fee to add the shopping function, nor does it take a cut of transactions that occur on its site. However, companies typically outsource the project to developers that charge at least $10,000 to add the feature.

"Rather than simply bringing their existing Web experiences to Facebook, we believe retailers who provide deeply social shopping experiences will see the most success," said a Facebook spokeswoman in an email.

Facebook also makes it easy for customers to trumpet their purchases by sharing them with friends in their personal news feeds. Most customers are given the option to post purchases to their news feeds automatically.

For retailers, selling on Facebook is also compelling as a market-research tool. Facebook offers retailers detailed information on customers, including "demographic information like age, sex, how popular people are and how much they share and 'like,' " says Jason Taylor, vice president of platform strategy for Usablenet, which develops Facebook shopping tabs for retailers.

Retailers Push Sales Through Facebook – And Succeed

Will social media make traditional e-commerce obsolete?

InvestorPlace
By Cynthia Wilson

Everyday millions of people catch up with a buddy on Facebook, play games or just share something that’s own their minds with the world. So why not do a little shopping while you’re there?

That’s what GameStop Corp., Express, Inc. and J.C. Penney Company, Inc. are hoping. The video game and apparel retailers are among the latest vendors to join the Facebook family, setting up online storefronts on the world’s most popular social network in hopes of boosting sales.

Express Inc. joined the Facebook family about two weeks ago. GameStop did it last month and J.C. Penney came on board just prior to the Christmas holidays. All three have made most, if not all, of their inventory available for purchase from their Facebook page and some social media gurus think it’s just a matter of time before traditional retailer websites become obsolete.

“Expecting people to come to your website is expecting them to make an extra effort,” Janet Fouts, a social media coach told USA Today. “They’re already on Facebook.”

Whether or not that happens, retailers can’t deny that they are not likely to ever have as much access to consumers through their websites on a daily basis as they could through Facebook. The social network, which is toying with an IPO, has in the neighborhood of 500 million members, with roughly 250 million of them on the site every day. Collectively, Facebook visitors spend about 700 billion minutes on the network and the average user has about 130 friends they can share information about retailers’ products with.

Marketed properly, a retailer’s Facebook page could be perfect place to target specific demographics and drum up sales on items before they even reach their warehouse. The page could also be used to unload an overstock of merchandise fairly quickly with the right sales incentive.

Because shoppers who access retailer’s stores through Facebook never have to leave the social network, they could easily get an opinion on an outfit or product from their friends before they buy it. If they find a good deal, they could easily let their friends know about it.

But dissatisfied customers who have had bad shopping experiences could also share their miserable experiences, opening a retailer up to unprecedented consumer scrutiny and criticism that it may not be able to control or respond to quickly enough before it does serious damage.

Whatever happens, one might say that in the age of the social network and retail sales, it would seem that good customer service is about to take on a whole new meaning.

Top Tweeters: Social Media Champs

This group of companies is all about Tweeting, Facebook Liking and Linking In -- among other social media tools -- in order to better connect with and serve their customers.

Fortune

@google
Followers: 3,012,238
Google hasn't been able to come up with its own killer social platform, but there's not much else the masters of search haven't taken advantage of on the social media front. With nearly as many Facebook fans as Twitter followers, Google's approach seems to follow the same strategy as its search engine business: Attract a critical mass of users and engage them by any means possible
Follow Google on Twitter

@WholeFoods
Followers: 1,916,179
Whole Foods is using social media to engage its customers across the nation in conversations about food -- the kind customers used to have across their local butcher's counter -- without missing a step.
With over 300 Twitter accounts and 250 local-store Facebook accounts, Whole Foods Market has created an online community for useful exchanges between shoppers and their grocers. Beyond those accounts, Whole Foods' blog, online newsletter, mobile apps and flickr account all contribute to their booming online voice.
Follow Whole Foods on Twitter

@Dell, @DellCares, @Direct2Dell (and many more)
Followers: 1,584,837
There's a trend emerging among the savvy: social media listening. CEO Michael Dell is all about keeping an ear to the ground -- his company has an entire department dedicated to social media and community -- and connecting with customers all around the world.
With their Social Media & Community University, Dell now has 1,000 people certified to tweet, blog and post on behalf of the company (you need 4 out of the 14 courses at the university to become certified). Dell also launched the Social Media Listening Command Center, making sure the company is in tune with the 25,000 conversations happening a day focused on Dell, in any of 11 languages.
Dell's forward looking vision: "social radio." Every employee -- all 100,000 -- will in the future have a social radio (think widgets and smartphone apps) to tune to their specific part of business on a smartphone, notebook or desktop.
Follow Dell On Twitter

@SouthwestAir
Followers: 1,107,156
Most airlines are still just testing the waters with their social media initiatives. But Southwest's already figured something out -- they're the first airline with over 1 million fans on their Facebook fan page.
Maybe it's the Nuts About Southwest blog (Happy 5th birthday), their Luv campaign that launched on Twitter, or whatever catchy promotional phrases they've blasted across the Internet, but their small but growing social media team has earned airline bragging rights. With one person dedicated to Twitter and one dedicated to Facebook, they've managed pretty well thus far without a room full of social media gurus.
The fans and followers Southwest attracts ultimately become field reporters who submit feedback on travel experiences, weather conditions, and other real-time information.
Follow Southwest On Twitter

@CocaCola
Followers : 254,618
Coca Cola's social media strategy is, simply put, fans first. In fact, their Facebook page is completely run by fans. In late 2008, there were a ton of unofficial fan pages, but one that seemed to take off was run by Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski. Curious as to where this would go, the company watched the page grow to have millions of fans, until Facebook, concerned about the copyright violations, was about to step in.
Rather than allow Facebook shut down the page, Coke claimed ownership, then approached Dusty and Michael and asked them to continue running it without interference. Today, the page has over 25 million fans, all dedicated to the brands behind the company making the fizzy drinks.
Follow Coca Cola On Twitter

@Delta, @DeltaAssist
Followers: 180,000
@DeltaAssist was a, um, pilot program for the airline to delve into the world of social media. Only a few weeks later they realized that their customers were clamoring for more. Demand took off, and @DeltaAssist evolved into offering a suite of services for customers who contact the company via Twitter.
From a virtual information booth to a full-service Delta customer outreach program, travelers can make reservations directly through Delta's Facebook fan page, 24/7. In their social media lab, Delta brings marketing, customer service and reservation agents in one space to craft their social media strategy, which the company says is evolving everyday.
Follow Delta On Twitter

@Target
Followers: 126,563
There's something for everyone on Target's Facebook page -- good since the chain curiously lacks national-retailer level heft on Twitter. Target's page holds apps designed for all types of shoppers -- newlyweds, bargain hunters and gadget geeks -- and has appealed to over 4 million fans to date.
One such feature is the MyTargetWeekly app, which allows fans to choose their interests from a list to help Target create a customized shopping list. The list will change from week to week, based on the company's deals and offers.
The app asks you to "love" items rather than "like," and if you don't want them showing up in your offers in the future, that's an option as well -- it essentially is like Pandora, but for Target merchandise, rather than music. The fan page has 4.2 million fans, and counting.
Follow Target On Twitter

@AmericanExpress
Followers: 120,343
The global charge card and service company has a duo of tweeps that constantly update and @reply followers of the company's Twitter page.
Whether they're redirecting cardholders to customer service or tweeting a hashtag for an AmEx member contest, Mona Hamouly (M) and Shari Forman (S) keep the conversation going with over 130,000 followers.
AmEx also maintains a Facebook Fan page which has over 500,000 fans who visit the page for deals of the week, member rewards specials, and other promotions and features. The company also runs a Small Business Saturday fan page with nearly 1,500,000 fans.
AmEx recently launched a partnership with Foursquare to drive commerce. Cardmembers simply check in to a business (restaurant, groceries, hotels etc.) and they'll unlock "spend $5, save $5" deals for their users. Foursquare and AmEx will be rolling out a national package of these deals so customers don't leave home without their credit card OR smartphone.
Follow American Express On Twitter

@McDonalds
Followers: 120,277
The home of the Big Mac has active Twitter presence, averaging 2,000 @replies to followers every week. McDonald's has more than seven million Facebook fans as well.
One recent campaign that was on social media's center stage was the introduction of the McRib, with ordinary users pressed into service as McRib Superfan spokespeople, and a video contest across the U.S. for fans to share their passion for the meaty sandwich. The sandwich launch ultimately boosted the company's presence across all social media, despite a small backlash among fans and followers who thought the McRib didn't taste that good, in real life. The lesson there is: No matter how good a company's social media presence is, it can't fix everything.
Follow McDonald's On Twitter

Hashable: What LinkedIn Would Look Like If It Were Built Now

Mike Yavonditte's new service, backed by Union Square Ventures, adds the social-media dimensions to business connections that LinkedIn lacks

Bloomberg Businessweek
By Mathew Ingram

The name doesn't tell you a lot about what it does, and if you see the hash tags on Twitter you might think it's just about "hooking up," but Hashable has a serious business purpose, says founder and Chief Executive Mike Yavonditte. It is about helping users—particularly business users—keep track of their connections, both professional and personal, and about creating a real-time social graph around those connections. In a lot of ways, the app and the service are what LinkedIn might look like if it were being created now. It is a professional social network that's all about mobile, social, real-time, and geo-specific—in other words, many of the things that LinkedIn and other professional networks aren't doing or have only recently started to do.

Yavonditte is the former CEO of Quigo, a Web-based advertising company acquired by AOL (AOL) in 2007 for $340 million. After the sale, the Hashable founder says he sat around for a while wondering what to do—and eventually started a company called Tracked, which he described in a recent interview at the company's New York offices as "a more focused version of Yahoo Finance (YHOO)." But when Twitter and Facebook both started pulling in substantial amounts of investment, Yavonditte says it finally dawned on him that the social Web was here to stay, and he realized there was nothing really social about Tracked. "I knew I was going to be on the wrong side of those trends," he says.

Out of that focus on social came the idea for Hashable: a lightweight app and service that would allow business people like himself to keep track of their professional connections easily—whether those connections involved introducing two contacts to each other, bumping into a fellow angel investor on the street, or having lunch with a former partner. The idea of the hash tag "was kind of a hack," he says, based on the trend of using keywords on Twitter (something Chris Messina, currently at Google (GOOG), came up with originally). Using a tag like #intro or #justmet effectively connects a user's activity to Hashable and creates a relationship—and also tracks, geo-tags, and indexes that relationship.

How to Use It

So typing #justmet and then a user's Twitter name, for example, automatically sends other users your Hashable business card (if you have signed up for Hashable and connected it to Twitter) and gives them the option of sending theirs to you. You can choose to post this to Twitter publicly or not, and you can simultaneously check in at the location where you met that person on Foursquare as well. Hashable also adds the person to your address book, which it creates using your Twitter connections and any Web-mail or phone contacts.

The real power of the service, says Yavonditte, comes when you have built up a range of different connections, and you can see at a glance who you are connected to, as well as when, how and even where you have interacted with them—and the service ranks the strength of those connections based on how much you have interacted with that person. "It creates a memory bank for your social connections," he says. "This is social CRM [customer relationship management] with a fun interface."

While LinkedIn also keeps track of and shows you all your professional connections, it isn't really very social, and it isn't very real-time, either. You can see who you are connected to, but it doesn't show you how you met that person or when, or what you were doing at the time, or where you were. The service has been trying hard to add more social elements to the site, including the launch of Twitter-style functions and Facebook-style features, but it remains a very static service. Hashable, in contrast, is all about the social aspects of your connections—and Yavonditte notes the service is also accumulating tons of data about those social graphs that could be very valuable.

Hashable, which was launched as a private beta in June 2010, opened to the public a month ago and has been seeing steady growth, says Yavonditte, although he won't divulge specific numbers. The company is backed by Union Square Ventures, which led a Series A round that raised $3.8 million, and a consortium of other investors.

Click here to access the Hashable website.

Is Facebook Marketing Behind Macy's Online Sales Jump?

ClickZ
By Christopher Heine

Perhaps Macy's new online sales numbers are proof that Facebook "likes" do generate revenue.

The department store chain announced this morning that sales for its two key e-retail properties, Macys.com and Bloomingdales.com, were up 50.3 percent compared to the same month last year and 38.3 percent year-over-year for the entire first quarter. While improving consumer confidence and rising gas prices could be helping Macy's digital direct sales, the brand's Facebook and online marketing strategies likely also deserve credit.

Macy's Facebook page has picked up a whopping 800,000 "likes" in 2011 so far thanks to a handful of initiatives. It now has an audience of almost 1.8 million on the social site.

For Mother's Day, Macy's has been orchestrating a Facebook-driven goodwill marketing effort called "Thank A Mom". At the initiative's onset, it aimed to raise $400,000 for five charities, such as America Heart Association and Futures Without Violence, while sending 80,000 e-cards to mothers before this coming Sunday. Both objectives have already been accomplished.

A Mother's Day gift guide button has been prominently placed within the Facebook app page, and people clicking through are taken to a dedicated Macys.com landing page.

Consumers "Like" Makeover Contest
On Dec. 28, 2010, the retailer might have made its biggest Facebook play. It released a nationwide call for entries for so-called style makeovers as part of its ongoing partnership with fashion expert and cable TV star Clinton Kelly. Dubbed "Million Dollar Makeover," the contest ran through January, helping accrue thousands of new "likes" by the day.

Participants were required to "like" Macy's, provide URLs for their personal website, Facebook account, and YouTube page, and upload photos or a video. They were asked to detail their style; what was missing from it; how their wardrobes had been presenting challenges to their everyday lives; what their dream jobs were, and more.

Eight contestants were eventually chosen to go to New York for their makeovers. A second phase of "Million Dollar Makeover" has been launched, and two finalists will be announced May 9. For both phases, the contest has offered a $1 million grand prize.

Display Ads + Foursquare-Twitter Combo = Flowery Campaign
In April, Macy's looked to mass transit info website HopStop.com, Foursquare, and Twitter to target on-the-go consumers and tourists for its 37th annual flower show.

The retailer purchased takeover ads on HopStop.com's public transportation search pages for New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. Macy's offered guided "Tower of Flowers" tours in each city.

As part of a week-long buy, the retailer also appeared in a takeover ad on HopStop.com's general homepage. The display ad creative reflected the different floral offerings for each metropolitan market. For instance, Macy's ads on the Washington, D.C., page called out the capital's annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

Macy also utilized a Foursquare-Twitter combo throughout the festivities. When geo-social users checked in at a show, they received a tip on Foursquare that encouraged them to take a picture of the floral scene and share the image via Twitter. They were instructed to use city-specific hash tags, such as #MacysFlowerNY, #MacysFlowerPHI, and #MacysFlowerMIN. Macy's monitored the hash tags, while a limited number of gift cards were distributed daily to users who tweeted an image. Meanwhile, display ads ran on sites like MSN.com and Glam.com to push the flower show events.

New York-based Macy's declined to comment for this story.