Here’s a short paper from the latest McKinsey Quarterly on how businesses can use social networks effectively to promote their products and services (direct download here).  Bottom line, treat social networks as enablers and amplifiers of word of mouth, which can only be truly ignited by delivering real and authentic value to users. Sure, the [...]

With group buying moving mainstream – with on the one hand popular purveyors of local deals such as Groupon and LivingSocial, and on the other, private flash-sale clubs, such as Gilt and Ideeli - we’re seeing the emergence of a new breed of group-buy sites focusing on narrow “verticals” – i.e. niche categories. One such start-up [...]

Here’s an interesting Forbes video with Chris Sacca, ex-Google backer of Twitter, Gowalla and Swipely on the future of social networking and social commerce… Top takeout People will do more real stuff with social nets…. Making online surfing and shopping more social – linking the stuff you do and watch online to your social networks, [...]

Here’s a short interview (7 mins) just published of the ever-insightful Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, on social commerce and social media ROI (Mitch also recently presented at the Bazaarvoice 2010 social commerce conference).  Interviewed by Mark Smiciklas of Canadian agency DIG360 at this month’s STORE2010 conference in Toronto.  Top takeouts below. Top Takeouts: The focus [...]

Here’s our latest presentation on social commerce – focusing on the key opportunities for brands, with recent examples from Apple, Diesel, Disney, P&G, Dell, Starbucks and others.  The deck can be downloaded by clicking through to slideshare.  Feedback welcome! Social commerce the opportunity for brands View more presentations from Paul Marsden.

In their white paper, Social Commerce Defined, IBM snappily define social commerce as the “concept of word of mouth applied to e-commerce.” So it follows that a basic understanding in the science of word of mouth is a useful pre-condtion for building a social commerce strategy. So here’s a new infographic from data visualization experts Column [...]

Interesting post by Christina Warren over at Mashable and even more interesting comment thread on “Which Department Owns Social Media?” Christina asks who actually owns social media in practice, and the comment thread discusses who “should” own it, if anybody. In practice, it seems (from an econsultancy survey) that digital marketing (35%) and PR departments (21%) [...]

Here’s a useful overview of the social commerce field by Jurgen Appelo, CIO at Dutch internet agency ISM eCompany & manager at social media agency Sociotoco. The presentation was given at a keynote speech at the GlobalCollect conference lat week in Prague. Social Commerce – What Are We Waiting For?

On the back of social commerce conversations at the recent New York TechCrunch Disrupt event, Leena Rao asks over at TechCrunch whether Amazon missed the boat on social commerce. Leena agrees with Etsy’s Rob Kalin that whilst Amazon regins supreme in commodity commerce, it’s a laggard in social commerce. On Leena’s social commerce boat you’ll find companies [...]

So here’s a summary of, and link to, what in our view is probably the best webinar to date on social commerce, from the good folks at the digital retail agency pioneering social commerce, Fluid. Presented by Andrew Sirotnik (Fluid’s chief experience officer) and Amy Lanigan (Fluid VP Strategy), the 30 minute webinar is a field report [...]