Here’s a short interview (7 mins) just published of the ever-insightful Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, on social commerce and social media ROI (Mitch also recently presented at the Bazaarvoice 2010 social commerce conference). Interviewed by Mark Smiciklas of Canadian agency DIG360 at this month’s STORE2010 conference in Toronto. Top takeouts below.
Top Takeouts: The focus of the interview is on the use of social media for retail, and Mitch offers up some interesting insights (Mark also offers his own key takeouts, but for us, these are the points we we found interesting)
- Social media might be conversational media, but it above all else, about sharing and collaboration
- The focus of social media strategy should be to enable customers and employees to make smarter decisions
- Shoppers want to make informed decisions, the role of the retailer should be to help them make that informed decision
- The ROI on social media are the savings made on achieving business objective – ‘the longtail of content and relationship” is an added bonus
- In a world where the web is the primary channel where people go to find out about brands, marketers need to learn to become publishers, not advertisers.
- The transformation of marketing from advertising to publishing is a challenge for traditional brands