Those that know me, know I have been both fascinated and excited by this video for a while now and this could be the vision for our future – and I for one can’t wait!

The video depicts a world in which interactive surfaces help you stay connected through a seamless delivery of real-time information – whether you’re working, traveling, shopping, eating or relaxing. Real-time information like this will depend on communication networks and massive bandwidth capacities being up to scratch.

Okay, so the world showcased in “A Day Made of Glass” may seem like something out of a fantasy movie, but it is a very real possibility that this could be our future. Only less than a decade ago mobiles, blue ray players and HD movie cameras were commonplace. Today, we’re accustomed to movies streaming on demand to a 60-inch television hanging on the wall and to video calls on notebook computers and mobiles, not to mention a personal assistant in our pocket, essentially for free.

The consumer trend is clear, we all want to be connected with what we want… when we want…anywhere…and easily.

Recently Microsoft have also released an example of their vision, although this is not as cool:

We’ll I’ll stick my neck out and say that one of the areas I’m tipping to see exponential growth next is Social Commerce.

We’ll no longer have to search for products and services, they’ll soon start to find us! We know ‘word of mouth’ is one of the most powerful tools in a marketers armoury, and the technology is now in place for customers to see what their friends, colleagues and wider networks have purchased, found relevant, liked or commented on.

Imaging looking to book that summer holiday but noticing in your social network, news feed or status update, that one of your friends have booked a holiday to destination ‘A’ and another five of your friends and colleagues with similar imterests have liked or left positive comments about their choice. Imagine then being able to book the same holiday or similar through the same companywithout having to leave the site you are on! This could apply to any type of product or service. It would be fully trasactional, secure, searchable, marketable and be conveniently integrated in to the sites you visit most – your social network.

The trust you have in your network would be so much more powerful, than anything we have seen before such as blind reviews or testimonials, and the benefits this would bring for customers would include peace of mind, saved time, energy, fustration and money.

Now granted we have seen some steps in to this area with success stories such as Dells ‘Outlet’ store on Twitter, but I’m envisaging a much wider adoption which will be fully transactional with increased viral awareness across social networks – think referral programmes on steriods!

So what form do I think this will take? Well, the most ovious place and the social network most geared up to this currently, would be Facebook. Perhaps this will be in the form of custom tabs or canvases on a companies page and feature a secure shopping cart and checkout process.

Does this mean I’m predicting the end of the standalone e-commerce site? Of course not. Well, not in the short term anyway, there are numerous benefits for having multiple online precence across the web but this is another example of how companies should now be thinking, engaging with and leveraging the power of the customer, providing them with a choice of how to interact with your brand.

For those wanting to know more about how the best to implement social-commerce in to your social media presences, feel free to get in touch.

The brand in question is of course Nike who managed to leverage the relationships they have built with many of the worlds top footballers such as Christiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba and Robinho, effectively showcasing a number of their products without a single reference to the World Cup in their communications and more importantly any Official Sponsor fees to FIFA.

Who could have failed to notice that the majority of the worlds top players were wearing Nike’s distinctive CTR360 Maestri Elite FG boots! Now whilst I’m sure Nike’s endorsement fees are considerable, these will have been dwarfed by the figure required for the equivalent airtime, ad space or the figures paid to become an official sponsor. And despite rival Adidas being an official sponsor, kitting out more teams (12 to Nikes 9) and providing the infamous Jubulani ball their brand awareness throughout the whole tournament ranks at only 14.4% of the ‘official and competitor buzz’ provided by Nielsen, compared to Nike’s 30.2%!

I make that Nike 1 Adidas 0 in the battle of the sports brands and there’s now certain pair of new boots on my birthday list for next month!

I was recently contacted by the Head of Ecommerce for leading clothing retailer Superdry and asked to carry out an appraisal of their website and propose a digital marketing strategy for the super-cool brand.

Now, it’s not everyday you are contacted directly by such a well known fashion brand, let alone one which is currently going from strength to strength. The company recently floated with a value of £395m and have posted sales of £139m with profits up 83% on the year before. Not bad ehy for a company who has only been around for 7 years! However, there digital presence could be working much harder for them.

I fall in to the target market for the brand and already own a number of their products. Together with my unhealthy appetite for all things digital, I have a relevant personal as well as a professional interest in their online efforts.

A copy of the presentation can be found here, but for those short on time, 5 key online areas of opportunity for the brand include:

- Optimise site user experience
- Allow users to filter & share products
- Enhanced eCRM programme
- Integrate offline & in-store digital strategy
- Embrace social media & ‘outside looking in’ thinking

Now don’t get me wrong, Superdry have a fantastic product (which is often half the battle), as mentioned I already own a number of their products, they do have a cult following (no pun intended!) and you don’t achieve the success they have without being on top of your game. However, if we specifically look at their digital communications, they really do have an unbelievable opportunity to take their business to the next level and maximising online revenue simply through re-assessing their digital strategy.

They are guilty of ‘inside looking out’ thinking as opposed to ‘outside looking in’ thinking, which of course is nothing new for a business. But the marketer’s job has changed from creating and pushing messages to one that now requires listening, engaging and reacting to both potential and existing customer needs. However the rewards are there for those who embrace this shift.

One example of the current approach can be found by carrying out a product search. For example, clicking on ‘t shirts’, generates 135 results with no option for the user to filter by colour, size, in-stock, style or even to ‘view all’ filtered results on one page. Instead users are expected to scroll through all the results.

One suggestion would be to make it easier for the customer to find exactly what they are looking for, which will ultimately make it easier to purchase, result in a more pleasant user experience, reducing shopping cart abandonment and increase the likelihood of repeat purchases.

Another example is through the existing email programme, where recipients are currently sent details on non-gender specific items – a more beneficial and targeted approach would be to segment the database so that recipient ‘A’ who is Male – only receives details on products for men along with the details of the nearest stores, thus making the communication more relevant and work harder. A nice touch would be to also allow the recipient to share the email with their social network on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ultimately SuperGroup are in a fantastic position, there are vast opportunities to do some really cool, unique and interesting digital comms with this brand whilst making a fundamental and positive return on investment. By making a few tweaks here and there and adapting their digital strategy the brand could really take their online presence to the next level and continue to experience phenomenal growth.

I for one will be watching with fascination over the coming months and hope this has provided some food for thought for others with a similar product or offering.

The Marketers job has changed from creating and pushing hard-sell messages to one that is now fundamentally about listening, engaging and reacting to existing and potentially new customer needs.

The Old Mantra

- Push messaging , good marketer’s can sell anything
- We know what’s right for the customers
- Products and messaging developed in house & pushed to customers
- Brand guidelines and key message critical

The New Mantra

- It’s critical to listen and respond to customer needs
- The product/service is paramount
- We may not know what is exactly right for the customer, but we will engage in dialogue with them and fine tune our offering
- Customers can often market the products better than we can, utilising one of their ideas or influence is beneficial to everyone

The marketers job has changed, it is important to realise that a fundamental shift is now required throughout all departments if organisations are to succeed. And whilst this may concern some, there are many benefits to this new approach such as being able to identify and adapt to changes in your market place quicker and building stronger customer relationships.

Ultimately, the customer is now more powerful than ever before! They won’t let you force them in to your database and communicate through traditional channels such as phone, direct mail and email.

I was recently asked by a colleague ‘How do we get more followers to our blog? It’s on Facebook and Twitter, now we don’t know what to do!’. As this is an issue likely to be experienced by many a blog owner, I thought I would post my initial response below;

- It may sound obvious, but give the audience a reason to follow your blog and return for more (Think, what’s in it for them to read/follow you?)
– Create interesting content that isn’t necessarily about you, but the market/sector in which you operate
– Include your blog address / Twitter name in all communications including email signatures/press releases etc.
– Follow others/likeminded people and groups and they may be inclined to follow you in return
– Similarly look to target an influential blogger who could re-tweet your content and thus increase the likelihood of their followers following
– Get active! Start engaging and leaving comments (and of course include your url in your email signature) on other relevant blogs/forums/sites, remembering to be open & honest about who you are
– Think about generating some kind of buzz like x amount of followers will be entered in to a prize draw or selected to receive a pre-launch content/advanced VIP access – (if you select the right people they may even review the content or product/offering site and post it online!

Now whilst there is much merit in the above recommendations, I can’t help but think that there is now a flawed approach to this king of strategy. Of course, these suggestions should still be undertaken and are great for SEO, awareness and PR. But the saying, ‘Fish where the fishes are’ could not be more apt! Perhap’s the question asked should now be ‘How can we engage with our target audience and build stronger more influential relationships?’

My response and suggested approach for this would be;

- Establish where your target market spend most there time online and are already discussing topics in your area/market
– Listen to there interests, needs, wants and concerns
– Engage and respond in a honest, open and relevant manner
– Add value, building trust and authority in the area/market

Ultimately brands who do this are more likely to build trust and become recognised as a leader in their field ensuring the audience are more likely to listen and value the opinion, increasing repeat visits and encouraging them to reference and share content across their social networks, thus increasing awareness and driving traffic to your blog for you.

Let me know if you have any tried and tested methods for driving relevant traffic and building stronger relationships with customers for your blogs.

One of your first strategies may be to engage with your customers, listening to what they are saying and adding your point of view, helping to resolve any issues they may have and improving your brand sentiment online.

But where do you start? Which comments do you respond too and which do you choose to ignore? And if you do decide to reply, how do you reply?

Well, I recently came across this great example of how to assess online posts when engaging in user to user dialogue from Dell. You know the guys who have made over $2 million in revenue just from their twitter account – so they obviously know a thing or too when it comes to effective social media return on investment.

Try using it in your efforts when engaging in online dialogue to make the whole process quicker and simpler.

Well after attending a recent presentation by Marshall Sponder at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp titled ‘How to Build Your Own Social Media Monitoring Service‘ there could actually be!

Well unfortunately in this case, it’s true that you only get what you pay for as these tools can’t really compare to the paid alternatives. However, the free ones mentioned can provide a useful starting point for any social media activity and act as a benchmark for further work, so with a little time and effort you could still benefit.

Limitations can include a lack of historical data, it’s usually impossible to go back further than a couple of weeks, multilingual support or the ability to really drill deep in to a specific issue if required.

But if you do decide to try them, please let me know how you get on.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp 2010 held at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London.

It was a fantastic day, which I really enjoyed and found fascinating to be around such likeminded people, as passionate about the possibilities of social media as I am. The key focus and aim for the day was to highlight the importance of tracking campaign achievements and results for clients through effective monitoring, reporting and analysis.

Although unfortunately the news wasn’t all positive, there is clearly someway still to go in terms of ensuring the accuracy of data measured. With different tools in the market using different algorithms the results obtained are undoubtedly different and can often be a little subjective. However we are clearly moving in the right direction with regards to establishing a clear set of metrics and KPI’s, which will enable us to analyse and plan this kind of activity, even more effectively moving forward. Making all our jobs easier when it comes to allocating budget for this kind of activity.

What hasn’t changed is that people are the essential aspect to this type of work! Whilst the tools may use different factors, the query used to define what you’re looking for is often difficult to form, taking a considerable amount of time and patience to perfect. This is a key area, which needs the attention and collaboration with clients that it really deserves – in this instance it couldn’t ring any truer, that you genuinely do only get out what you put in!

And for those with generic brand names, expect to have to work even harder to get the query just right – think to the likes of Orange, 3 or Next. Don’t be surprised to see queries like those below in order to get some meaningful data back.

And one thing clients should look to bear in mind if they whish to start engaging with customers in the ‘socialsphere’ or are looking to establish effective supplier relationships to help them achieve their goals, is that whilst some may claim to be social media guru’s, the medium is still relatively new for this to be true by definition and you should ignore the smoke and mirrors which are often used or as Philip Sheldrake concisely put it ‘Bullshit’ and look to turn around and walk away very quickly!

However, do take heart as there are those who do understand the medium better than others and for the clients who are brave, look to engage, listen and discuss with their customers the rewards are awaiting!

For a summary of the day and to view the presentations please click here.