“How can brands and retailers make money from social media?” “What kinds of budgets do I need?” “I’m getting mixed messages about Social media – what is it?” “How do I harness all this potential traffic and revenue?” “Where do I begin?”. These are only a handful of the questions being asked globally. Social Commerce, the fusion of social media with e-commerce, may well be the solution.  With the mainstreaming of social networks, brands are establishing storefronts on Facebook, tweeting deals on Twitter, linking to social shopping sites, and integrating social media tools into their e-commerce platforms.  And they are seeing impressive returns.  Yesterday, uniquedigital and Syzygy UK organised a landmark event which went a long way to not only answering these questions but also explaining how to get more out of your marketing pound.

The combined Social conference initiative pulled in the largest international heavyweights within this sector and the digital hemisphere. Marketers and digital specialists from over 50 clients, of all shapes and sizes, were eagerly anticipating the insight and advice of Dr Paul Marsden and the elite from Google and Facebook. All three speakers tackled the various elements of Social Commerce with perfect symbiosis.  Dr Marsden delivered a well received manifesto on the history, future and psychology of Social interaction. This tied in very well with the technical insights and best practice in approaching Social delivered by Google. Whilst Facebook was the perfect follow-on, as one very successful media owner in this channel, on how marketers can successfully use their tools and advents in their technology.

Google’s piece complimented the psychology of Dr Marsden’s segment very well, as Chewy, a senior Google engineer, spoke authoritatively on the history and technical application of social strategies. He began by focusing on the history of social and the 5 areas of the social web: era of social relationships; being able to buy third party content; bringing it together, in the form of tools such as Facebook Connect; Social content; and finished by tackling Social Commerce. Google did not claim to have all the answers to the web, but their ethos was to try many things and to experiment – a model which has served this billionaire enterprise very well. Google spoke of the relative cheap and easily adopted ways in which companies of all sizes can achieve great ROI and branding prosperity.

Dr Paul Marsden is a consumer psychologist, freelance market researcher and author. He’s an ex-lecturer at London School of Economics and an owner of clickadvisor.com, an online market research agency specialising in digital ethnography and opinion leader research. His recent research is focused on the financial value of brand advocacy, the role of opinion leaders in product uptake and the impact of participatory media on marketing success. His clients include The British Government, The Economist, BBC, InBev, Orange and Nokia.  Paul has been collaborating with Syzygy/uniquedigital as a consultant lending his unique expertise.

uniquedigital has employed his expertise to develop our social offering and set out our stall as leaders in the UK for Social Commerce. Dr Marsden spoke of the emerging opportunities for all brands in Social Commerce and the cues which marketers should adopt when creating their Social strategy. Dr Marsden spoke of six cues in particular – scarcity, affinity, consistency, authority, reciprocity, and popularity. Each driver was exemplified by companies that had applied each well or poorly. Suggestions for each of these areas were also delivered.

Syzygy Group has commissioned and funded new research by Dr Paul Marsden in the form of a White Paper which can be purchased from the Syzygy facebook page. This white paper provides an introduction to the emerging trends of Social Commerce and social shopping; what they are, how they work, and why they should be part of your digital marketing strategy.