Tech Bytes: Three Reasons Retailers Should Launch Their Own Social Platforms

Social retailing is nothing new, but more retailers are starting to experiment with launching their own proprietary social media offerings.



Even this idea is not really new. Sears has long offered its ShopYourWay social platform, which grew out of the retailer’s 2009 purchase of the Israeli social media engine Delver. More recently, Amazon.com included social engagement functionality in its streamed “Style Code Live” original TV programming, and Wayfair launched a social “Idea Boards” features that could be described as “Pinterest-esque.”



A proprietary social platform will not replace the need for a retailer to be active on major third-party social networks. But it can offer a lot of advantages as a complementary facet of a broader social strategy. Here are three:



Discovery Channel

By offering a proprietary social platform, retailers can capture customers much earlier in the shopping and discovery process. Consumers frequently begin their shopping journey in social media, where they can browse a wide range of products and also check on what friends, family and fellow shoppers think.



Social media also offers customer-friendly features such as photos and videos of consumers using products in a “real life” setting and the chance to curate items by rankings such as most liked and commented.



A well-designed in-house social network enables retailers to capture shoppers in their early discovery phase in a controlled environment (see more below). In addition to providing much greater influence on what the customer sees, this also allows retailers to eliminate the chance a consumer will discover a product offered by a competitor or perform comparative pricing/shopping.



Know Your Customer

Every click a consumer makes online is a permanent piece of data that can be analyzed for individual targeting or aggregated to uncover broader demographic trends. While retailers may be able to track customer behavior on their own third-party social media pages, they do not necessarily have the same access to everything else customers do on social media.



A proprietary social network is a veritable treasure trove of customer data. Retailers can get a much better sense of how customers perform social searches for products, whose opinions and comments drive their shopping activities, and what products they browse but do not buy, to name just a few valuable social data points.



This same data may ultimately be available on third-party social networks. However, by operating their own social networks, retailers have real-time, unfettered access to detailed customer behavioral data that otherwise may only become available at a later time and/or at an additional cost.



Good Vibrations

As mentioned above, retailers have full control of their proprietary social networks. This means negative and inappropriate comments can be removed and screened out as needed. In addition, posting effective responses and remedies to potentially negative comments is one good way to acknowledge customer complaints while maintaining a positive spin.



In addition, consumers who sign up for a retailer’s social network likely already have a favorable view of that retailer and shop there at least occasionally. This makes proprietary social platforms an ideal mechanism for identifying and developing brand advocates. Retailers can even throw in a little gamification, such as a special discount for customers who post a certain number of positive reviews or hit a quota for in-network social purchases.