Social media is having a major impact on marketing. It is the glue that leverages the consumers views and opinions across all elements of a retailers business. Retailers are becoming aware that social media offers promising ways they can benefit from it, such as improving brand awareness, listening to consumer sentiments, creating incentives to drive cross-channel traffic and purchases, building content-focused communities to improve loyalty, enticing consumers to try new products, understanding assortment preferences and improving customer service. Analytics are essential to a retailers success in leveraging social media and mobility. The amount of data produced by these new channels is explosive. Quick and effective analysis of this data and resulting actions are essential to achieving business benefit. Analytical tools exist for retailers to listen, learn, react and engage with consumers within and across social media, mobility and other channels. The more a retailer engages with these tools, the savvier it becomes about consumers and their preferences. Written in a blog format to help retailers experience interactive dialog in this rapidly growing communication vehicle, this book will create awareness of social networking and mobile technologies and the significant impact these channels are already having on retailers; provide specific examples of social media and mobility business applications ; explain why companies need to act now; describe the analytical tools necessary to make informed decisions on the data; demonstrate how to use social media to leverage brand equity across the entire business; and recommend a process for building a comprehensive strategy and action plan.
