A giant leap for social commerce

A start-up in California has introduced their answer to successful brand integration with social media, an idea which could see the world of social commerce really take-off.

Focusing on connecting friends on the actual retail sites rather than social media sites, Sociable Labs are showing brands how to correctly incorporate social media in order to ultimately enhance sales.

Currently, a brand’s involvement in social media seems slightly limited to gaining Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers, and so the idea to implement more directly at the point of sale may be a lucrative idea.

The vision is that customers will be able to connect with friends and family on retail sites, influencing their choices about purchasing a product or service.

So, for example, if a customer was on a hotel booking site, they’d be able to see which of their Facebook friends had booked a hotel before, and what they thought of it. The idea is that it’s much more helpful for customers to make decisions based on the opinions of friends and family.

At the moment, a Facebook friend could ‘like’ or ‘share’ a particular hotel which would then show up in your news feed, but it’ll only be there for a matter of hours, and will have disappeared months later when you’re looking to book a hotel.

The idea from Sociable Labs would mean that you could always see what’s been booked by your friends previously, and it’s all there in one place on the retail site.

Obviously there’ll be privacy issues around this cataloguing of consumer products, but with a recent $7million investment in the 25-strong team; it might not be long before this idea becomes a reality.

Whilst the social media services we offer have always been far from limited, we’ll be interested to see how this method pans out, and whether any of the big names in retail decide to give it a go.

We find that the brands who come to us often don’t know what social media could do for them, but they want a Facebook page or a Twitter account because it’s the ‘in thing’. We always start with a thorough consultation period to explore whether these platforms would actually be beneficial to the company, as it varies brand on brand.

Having created our very own innovative methods for brands to use social media effectively; such as Competwition, our fun prize draw application; we’re always exploring and experimenting with new ideas, and we reckon this one from Sociable Labs could not only transform the way brands use social media, but the kick-start the sluggish world of social commerce.