Ok, the title is actually a little misleading, in reality it is, “Enabling your customers to easily share your products.”
You pushing your merch to people is not nearly as effective as your visitors doing it for you. (they don’t even have to be customers)
The question many business are asking is how they can use this trendy nifty new set of gizmos called “social media.” Here is a great real-life example of how an Ecommerce site can make their products easily shareable.
Here is the item that popped into my Facebook home feed from my good buddy Mark.
Mark had found a cool product from JCPenny (great price BTW) and he thought it was cool enough to pass along to all his friends.
This is the kind of organic marketing for which JCPenny would pay a king’s ransom to a marketing agency.
Those little icons at the bottom of each product detail page allow someone to share something in one click. [ I question their choice of icons/sites but they may have good reason. (Where’s Twitter?!?!) ]
If you are not making it easy as pie for your audience to share your content, products, etc., then you are missing out on a huge low cost way to increase exposure.
Here’s why you should get in the game:
- Your customers are already on these networks, why aren’t you?
- It is a few easy lines of code.
- You will appear “current”, nay cutting edge.
Update: good tangential post: What Social Buttons Should Go On Your Site?
Do you use links like these to share? Should you?
of course if its some total fruitcake posting it on his facebook it might actually have a negative effect. but that's definitely true, people are more likely to buy from their friends than some sleazy salesman.