Transparency Essential as Online Retailers Embrace Social Media
Rosetta just came out with an interesting study covered by DMNews that really caught my attention.
According to the interactive marketing agency, 59 percent of the top 100 U.S. online retailers now have a page on Facebook. And, that’s nearly twice as many just since April.
Rosetta attributes the rush to social media sites to a desire by marketers to connect to customers in the myriad ways that social media provide—from updates, to promotional offers to customer service forums, etc.
But the agency cautions that if you decide to create a presence on a social media site, you must be committed to maintaining it and using it as a real forum for communicating with customers. For social media to work, you must be candid and open, and let people post negative comments as well as positive ones.
Along those lines, another study by Universal McCann found that 29 percent of Internet users surveyed had commented on a product or brand on a blog, and 27 percent had posted an opinion on a social networking profile.
According to the report’s author, the Internet age has given consumers a larger voice, and the ability of a single person to publish opinions of a brand has given rise to an “influence economy” where brands must become more transparent.
