The large retailer is part of the retailing elite and so, blinded by their own hubris, they sometimes forget that the opportunity to view their products or discuss their products in itself does not improve one’s standard of life. Wal-Mart might sell everything ever invented, but that does not mean that teens what log on to discuss the back to school clothes they bought recently at their store. Social media and networking is hard for some to understand, mainly for generational reasons, but despite this fact larger retailers are making efforts to participate in the online discussions, and lucky are the few that achieve real success. It is this ability to take risks that will help these companies survive in the new economy, but this must be coupled with the understanding that despite the wonderful catalogue of products and services they might offering consumers, social media and networking users require a high level of value added. There must be a clear advantage to participating in a discussion online with the retailer, and while the advantage might be trivial but if the consumer views it as an advantage, then it is so.
DO :
- Identify free services you offer in-store that add value to the consumer. Can you mimic these and enhance them online?
- Know what makes a specific online channel unique and learn what makes users return again and again. Keep this is mind.
- Be willing to take risks, or more manageable risklets. There are no prizes for being uncreative.
- Consider who is using the channels you are considering participating in. Just because it is there, does not mean you that you have found a niche for your products.
DO NOT :
- Rely on your product offering to be enough to garner interest.
- Underestimate your users. In many cases, the digital channels are dealing with a user base that is very web savvy, and very ad-cautious.
- Do the same thing in all channels – while cross-channel alignment is important across multiple channels you do not want your strategies in social media and social networking to be a sequence of mirror images.
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