iPhone Apps - The latest entrant in Social Media Marketing
It all changed a couple of years back when Social Media began to rear its head and retailers started participating in Blogosphere and launching their own blogs. Since then it has been a gigantic rush to keep up with the ever emerging mediums and the online marketers have been pushing out the boundaries and leaping forward with the latest trends.
I decided to pick a few retailers randomly and see how they are keeping up with the emergence of these new channels.
Almost everybody seems to have a presence on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter whereas only a couple of the retailers seem to be using Flickr. In the past few months, Twitter is seen to be highly utilized and is becoming a favorite of everybody. Last week, Twitter turned 3 year old; There are some great examples of companies using Twitter in the US; Zappos used it to communicate with customers and for marketing purposes, while Dell claims to have made $1m in sales from using Twitter.
So what is next after Twitter?
Recent entry to this gamut of channels is the launch of iPhone App Store which brings in a new range of marketing opportunities. Since its launch in last July, retailers like Gap, Target, and Wal-Mart have launched their own iPhone Apps and going by the current trend analysis, it looks like many more will join the club soon. Recently, we also saw Facebook connect getting integrated with iPhone. iPhone apps present a great potential if integrated with Facebook to get a quick social network on your mobile. That way Facebook can gain from iPhone’s location aware capabilities and iPhone users can get their social networks on their phone with no hassle - A truly exciting opportunity for the retailers to consolidate and rethink on how they want to use these channels to realize their full potential. What is your take on this? Is iphone app going to be the next social quotient scorer for the retailers?
Comments
I feel social media works well for some segments in retail - probably not so much for larger retailers; but more for niche retailers with a strong ecommerce presence or an online brand presence. When Wal-mart tried FB to revitalize its back to school campaign, it ended up in a whole lot of brand trashing in its wall posts - and it spawned hate groups and hate campaigns! They just didn't fit in. In contrast, Skittles has a strong social presence. It has FB pages and a good online community. On Mar 2nd, they replaced their home page with a "twitter search for skittles" - and later with their FB page! It created a lot of positive buzz with #skittles being the top keyword.
Posted by: Thomas | April 8, 2009 08:48 PM