White Paper about Social Commerce

Everything You Need to Know About Social Commerce The ins and outs to selling and marketing on Facebook

Table of Contents Diagram of Social Commerce............................................................................................3 3 Things You MUST Know About Social Commerce.....................................................4 Social Commerce: A Brief History....................................................................................6 Facebook Commerce (F-Commerce): The Importace....................................................8 Real-World Examples of F-Commerce...........................................................................10 An Inside look at Fanpage Toolkit..................................................................................11

“If I had to guess, social commerce is the next area to really blow up�

- Mark Zuckerberg - Feb. 2011 socialcommercetoday.com

Social Media

E-Commerce

Social Commerce

What happens when you combine the 900+ million users that are currently using Facebook with the millions of eBay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, ZenCart, Magento, etc... online store owners? The answer is social commerce. Social commerce is the latest way to sell online. While E-Commerce was popular and selling online has done nothing but grow, it is all now spiraling into social commerce. Using Facebook’s social plugins to not only buy online through Facebook but discover products and become informed of sales, promotions, etc... by your own personal social networks and graphs.

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3 Things You MUST Know About Social Commerce

What is Social Commerce?

In its bare elements, social commerce is an online storefront fueled by social networks, particularly Facebook. While the notion of social commerce is still relatively new, being introduced in 20071, the notion of social media and E-Commerce is not. Social media, sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. are ways to communicate, network and connect with people from all over the world. While many people believe that social media started in February 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg launched the site from his Harvard dorm room2; the real beginning to social media and networking was in the late 70s when the BBS, short for Bulletin Board System was created as an online meeting place to send files back and forth.

From the BBS, social media has exploded across the world. So much, that over 900 million people have accounts on Facebook. 3 E-Commerce, the buying and selling of products online has been around since 1979 and has millions of stores online selling products.4 The number of online shops is nearly impossible to hone in on because new shops are added and deleted every second. Anyways, enough about social media and E-Commerce, let’s get back to social commerce.

In order to understand the true meaning of social commerce, here are three things everyone MUST understand in order to utilize social commerce for all its worth.

1. Social Commerce is for everyone 2. Social Commerce is not just selling 3. Social Commerce capitalizes on your networks

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http://www.fanpagetoolkit.com/blog/ http://thefacebookblog.com/ http://thefacebookblog.com/ http://sellitontheweb.com/blog/history-of-e-commerce/

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1. Social Commerce is for everyone Social commerce is not just for small business owners, large business owners and online store owners. Social commerce is for musicians, students, artists, SOHO, job seekers, B2B, media companies and many more. Social commerce is a platform that provides the essential tools that businesses, artists, managers, students and people can use to market themselves to the world. Social commerce does not just go out to businesses and fixate themselves on promoting the selling of products and goods. Social commerce is for celebrities to promote themselves or for a band to put their music on a social network to increase visibility and access. Everyone can and should use social commerce.

2. Social Commerce is not just selling Despite the word “commerce” in social commerce, social commerce is not just about pushing sales and selling products. Social commerce is about using promotional tools and marketing to sell items, improve customer service and receive analytical data. Social commerce platforms retrieve countless forms of analytical data from who is interacting with your social media page, and puts all data in graphs and charts.

Social commerce is all about networking with what your friends and followers are buying so it can inform you to buy the same items too. By seeing what your friends bought and if they liked it or not, that influences you on whether you will buy the item too! A true social commerce solution MUST have the reinforcement of promotional marketing, analytical and customer management tools, all wrapped within an online storefront which is of course fully integrated.

3. Social Commerce capitalizes on your networks The final MUST KNOW about social commerce is that social commerce works to capitalize and influence you, based on your previous social networks and graphs. Social commerce acts to turn products into conversations. While a business might not specifically try to influence you (the customer), to buy a certain item... by talking with your friends via a social network, about the product and “liking” products, the business is succeeding in marketing. Also, social commerce offers discounts, promotions and deals to people who buy products similar to their friends... showing that it is better to shop via social media then on their site. Social commerce gives reviews and testimonies about products. However, instead of being from strangers, they are from friends, family and acquaintances. People tend to trust their social networks on the quality of a product then a bunch of stars and names on a store’s website. Customers enjoy knowing that they are using the same brands and products as their friends because it gives them a connection and relationship. Social commerce uses this network to market themselves to5 people and uses the links between people to sell products.

Social Commerce: When did it all begin?

A Brief History Today we are just turning 2012 and there are more sales are on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin then are not.

2007 February - the first virtual gifts were sold on Facebook. It was in late May that platform apps were being launched to make social commerce possible

2008

December - Dell contributes over $1 million in revenue to Twitter sales alerts.

2009 Fanpage toolkit offers social commerce and marketing platform

The first transaction was 100% completed on social media.

Google starts a

Group Buy space called Offers

2011

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$34 was spent on 1-800-FLOWERS Facebook page in the first retail transaction on social media.

Pamper’s Facebook store recorded over 1,000 transactions per hour.

Disney starts launching a group ticketing store on Facebook for all Disney movies.

Delta airlines was the first airlines to sell flights and tickets on Facebook Target started selling gift cards on their Facebook page

2010

Source: www.socialtimes.com

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Social Commerce: When did it all begin?

Facts & Figures

28% of Facebook users have purchased something online via a Facebook link, and of these users, 57% have spent over $100.

In 2011, it was recorded that

In 2011, 8th Bridge released a report, analyzing 200 of the top United States retailers on Facebook.

The top 5 brands were:

GameStop, Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, Clinique and Sephora.

According to users and fans the top three brands on Facebook are: Coca-Cola, Walt Disney and Starbucks Coffee.

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The Importance of Understanding the purpose and strategies of this emerging market According to econsultancy.com over 90% of purchases are subject to some sort of social influence. The act of on-site selling facilitated by Facebook plugins is essentially F-Commerce. Creating an iFrame or native app to complete transactions within the Facebook page is what companies and marketplaces throughout the world are utilizing. By allowing users and customers to stay within the contents of Facebook, “without linking them to their E-Commerce site to check out”, is what true F-Commerce apps are conveying and making available to businesses. A recent study by JWT found that 48% of Facebook users between the ages of 20-33 would like to see an option to buy products directly on Facebook. This means that people enjoy the convenience of staying within Facebook and are more likely to buy a product if they can buy it through the Facebook page. The usage of F-Commerce is incredible because it allows the user and seller to connect, listen, understand and engage to improve the shopping experience. Also, F-Commerce allows users to “like” stores and pages that they actually like and are likely to go to. F-Commerce is not pop ups that will bombard you to buy things or sign up for things you don’t want or need. F-Commerce lets the shopper chose where they want to stay updated on. It is the ultimate personal shopping guide.

“Instead of asking how can I get people to find my products, in the world of social commerce you ask- How can I get my products to find people?”

-Paul Marsden www.slideshare.net 8

How F-Commerce increases your customers and product sales Customers

Customers

+ YOUR STORE

=

FACEBOOK & PUBLISHER WEBSITES

YOUR STORE FACEBOOK & PUBLISHER WEBSITES 9

The Importance of While F-Commerce on the surface may seem like a new shopping tool, it really isn’t. True social commerce with its largest catalyst, F-Commerce, is about integrating that online storefront within Facebook. While reinforcing it with promotions and marketing all wrapped into one platform. F-Commerce uses marketing tools such as: videos, discounts, sweepstakes, promotions, group buying, limited time offers and much more. All to attract customers and visitors to it’s Facebook page in order to persuade them to take that next step and buy something. F-Commerce allows stores to reward members for checking into their store or buying an item the same as a friend. F-Commerce uses networking and social graphs to showcase products that others are talking about. Creating a buzz about a product through friends liking items, creates this “like to buy” motto.

Stores using f-commerce

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An inside look at Fanpage Toolkit Fanpage Toolkit is the #1 Social Commerce and Marketing Platform for Facebook.

Fanpage Toolkit strives to provide all users, the best applications needed to sell their products within the Facebook platform, while branding and marketing their company and products using promotions and unique marketing tools.

ANALYTICS

A feature within analytics is status tagging.

Status tagging gives the user an exact listing of what keywords are being discussed on their Facebook page. By clicking on a specific keyword in the generated tag cloud, wall posts will appear from users using that specific keyword. Additional features allow for direct engaging with the users that made the wall posts.

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ANALYTICS

This anayltics page shows the user an overview of how many people are viewing their pages and if the views are from likes

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ANALYTICS

The graphs show users how many page views their Facebook pages are getting over a certain time period. This enables easy viewing and analyzing what months or years were more productive than others.

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ANALYTICS The analytics tool, geomapping shows you a world map of where all your fan are located. It will even show you a specific person from the country along with a picture, name, location and client type. This analytical feature helps the user zero in on people from all over the world... giving you yet another way to engage the user directly.

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MESSAGING Messaging allows the user to send a mass wall posting to Facebook fans, or a direct email campaign to promote offerings on a users Facebook page. Messages can be customized and can include attachments. With one click the message can be potentially sent to millions of Facebook and non-Facebook users..

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TEMPLATES

Fanpage Toolkit offers many template options for users Facebook pages. Allowing graphics, banners, headers, links and videos to be apart of the page that are all fully integrated.

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TEMPLATES

Fanpage Toolkit offers pre-designed templates for the F-Commerce pages too! Templates that place the products and items being sold in the front and placed within the best spots visually for selling. Everything is completely customizable so the user can confugure their entire F-Commerce store within the matter of a few clicks.

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TEMPLATES

This is the template set up page for Digital Downloads. With Fanpage Toolkit, Facebook pages can offer digital dowloads to users where they can download PDFs (such as this!) about their company and/or products! These templates are designed for the user to fill out a contact form in order to download the digital offering.

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TEMPLATES

These are templates for promotions that appear on the Promotions page. The Promotions page can act as a landing page to attract people and get “likes�. The templates are designed for a large banner or graphic imag, while providing a content area about the promotion.

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