Social media to influence ecommerce

Various retailers have begun to hop on the social media train and market themselves online through the creation of community and user-generated content (UGC) campaigns. Companies are pulling traditional advertising dollars from television, print and out-of-home campaigns and moving them online.

Before you do that, it would be wise to take a look at when and where you are going to gain the most traffic and the longest attention span. And depending on your targeted demographic, that can easily vary.

According to a study done by Lightspeed Research and the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK, the largest percentage of users in all age groups said that they were most likely to pay attention to an online advertisement in the evening, after 6 p.m.

Another factor that greatly influenced when a user engaged with a brand and its ads, was what activities they were doing at the time. The greatest proportion of users said they were most likely to process an ad while researching deals, followed by shopping, gambling and searching online.

Considering the fact that less than five per cent of retail traffic is being pushed from social networks, according to a study done by Forrester Research, marketers still need to study what sites will best compliment their message and are in line with their branding.

Each month more blogs pop up online, and more users join social networking sites. These users can push more traffic into the ecommerce space if handled correctly. Reviews and pricing are becoming the greatest draw for visitors and have the highest impact on purchasing.

Social networking can be a big help to your companies branding power, but it can just as easily hinder your success.