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We have a superb panel line up and what promises to be a heated discussion on social commerce including a few case studies, insights and strong opinions.

Social Commerce, The New Normal Influence Economy 
Most customer interactions with your brand and the customer buying decisions that goes along with that – won’t happen on your brand’s website. In 2010, U.S. e-commerce sales totalled $165.4 billion, up 14.8%. Opportunities are burgeoning as the cost of eCommerce operations drops and customers procure more goods & services online. In this session see case studies of how innovation in social media can drive the overall commerce model and enable brands to connect with customers and their friends to create value in earned media.

The panelists included:

Rochelle Grayson, CEO of BookRiff Media Inc., and Program Advisor, Industry Chair for the University of British Columbia’s Social Media Program @RochelleGrayson

Rochelle Grayson is CEO of BookRiff.com. BookRiff let’s consumers creates and publish their own books by mixing and matching content from published books, BookRiff creators and the Internet. Anyone can create a book compiled of riffs from start to finish in 48 hours and make it available for sale as an ebook or in print through bookriff.com. Along the way every content creator get’s paid for their used piece of mirco-content. Rochelle is a serial entrepreneur. She’s also Industry Chair for the University of British Columbia’s Social Media Program and instructor of Social Media monetization at UBC. Welcome to you.

Harley Finkelstein, Chief Platform Officer at Shopify; Harley explains his role in Fast Company

Harley Finkelstein, is chief platform officer at Shopify.com. Shopify is an Ottawa based eCommerce DIY platform used world wide. Sopify lets anyone set up an eCommerce store in 15 minutes. In the last 5 years, the startup has grown to power 16,000 stores in 70 countries and generates over 100 million in annual sales and growing. Harley is also a busy entrepreneur, MBA and lawyer.

Matthew Bertulli, CEO and Founder at Demac Media and Co-founder, Socialgift.com

Matt Bertulli was one of the first angel investors in Socialgift.com – Socialgift is a group buying startup that makes is easy for your friends to decide on a group gift and chip in and buy you something they agreed you’d love from a participating retailer or allows friends to contribute whatever amount they’d like to your gift. Matt is also co-founder and CEO of Demac Media, an e-commerce professional services solution agency in Toronto.

SocialGift from Mango Studios on Vimeo.

Daniel Patricio, Founder and Product Manager at Pinpoint Social @danielpatricio

Daniel Patricio is founder and product manager of Poinpointsocial.com, Pinpoint Social, is a self service platform that makes marketing on Facebook simpler and more effective. Pinpoint Social enables you to create dynamic Facebook fan pages and allows you to create customized campaigns, promotions or contests without the need to write a line of code. Pinpoint Social also provides detailed customer analytics.

See you there!

-Marina Mann  LinkedIn or Twitter @marinamann

A few key principals from the video worth noting include the notion that Social Media has moved from a crisis tool to an amazing media to where brands can have real conversations with customers. Marketers have reached a common understanding that audiences have moved from broadcast media to web and social spaces where two-way convos are happening. LeBrun also notes that “it’s understood now that brands are participants in the conversations taking place about their brands” and that the customer is exercising more power in shaping and influencing those brand than they do. Well, I’m not sure it’s well-understood just yet. Regardless, the new questions enterprise should be asking in the context of Social Media:

• How do I operationalize social media within the enterprise?
• What roles do I need?
• What departements do I need? What departments are affected?
• What tools do I need?
• What level of engagement do I need? Should I be listening?
• Should I be participating? When level of response and participation should I have?
• Who within the enterprise should be participating and how?
• Should every person in the organization be participating in the conversation?
• What level of thought leadership can I provide and how can I engage customers by leading the conversations and adapting?
• What business function within the enterprise should be listening and responding with customers in social spaces?
• Should Product Management, Tech Support, PR, Marketing, Research & Development teams be listening and responding?
• How much should I invest in Social Media?

Radian6 is a listening tool used to measure Social Media activity and sentiment made by customers for brands. The company is somewhat of a Canadian success story nascent in New Brunswick. In March of 2011 the company was acquired by Salesforce.com for $326 million, netting The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation $9.25 million after selling its stake.

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Marina Mann, Strategy for Digital, Social Media and Mobile

Google search – a blank page with a search box; Groupon – get your friends together to take advantage of a good deal (and take a big bite out of the retailers profits); Craigslist – forget the limitations of newspapers and post classifieds online; Nabster – share you music with your friends online instead of passing around tapes. Netflix… The list goes on and on and on.

Disruptive and innovative businesses don’t reinvent the wheel, they just make things a bit easier and remove a few layers between the business and the customer.

The live Music business, like a few other entertainment businesses (Broadcast TV, Movies), don’t like to innovate because the major players own the ‘complicated business process’ otherwise known as the ‘supply chain’. For the live music business that includes the concert events, the venues, the tour promoters, the ticketing and sometimes even the acts – you get the idea. According to the NYTimes, the touring market (live music) is the fastest growing sector of the music business.

Enter Songkick.com a site that’s been around since 2007, backed and staffed by some big hitting talent and built with well executed social dynamics combined with concert listings.  The founders took existing technologies and connected a key customer insight (finding reliable concert listings and info about bands in one place) and a key business insight (40% of most concert tickets go unsold). For the fan, it’s pretty straightforward: search for a band you want to see and Songkick will send you a note when that act is touring in your area. No more scouring for listings on blogs, MySpace sites and Ticketmaster. Search a location and find concert listings, photos, music, merch and talk to fans about past shows. And buy your tickets online – currently the website operates on a affiliate marketing model with no paid adverts trafficked.

Funny, there’s no reason MySpace could not have been Songkick. A lost and extremely obvious opportunity.

Songkick is not alone but at the top of it’s game. For similar models that, I believe, are not as well executed, see:  Pollstar, the concert industry trade publication, JamBase for live music and concert listings (right away, the user interface puts it at a disadvantage) and Bandsintown which is similar to Songkick, but loaded with adverts.

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Nevertheless, it’s increasingly clear to Marketers that lifestyle and behaviour changes born of economic abundance and endless borrowing have translated into values of thrift, and conscious choices by consumers. This new dynamic is described by SAI Marketing as the “New Normal”.

The “new normal” leads to a more cautious approach by consumers to personal fiance management. We see that by a reduction in the appetite for credit and the ongoing rise in savings in both Canada and the US. This trend has impacted not only the way consumers “buy” but also must explicitly imapct way Marketers “sell”.

Changes in consumption patters are undeniable. Marketers continue to resort to extreme discounting and product bundling, but consumers are reluctant to spend money outside of their tightly defined needs. This phenomenon will only worsen as gas prices continue to climb in Q1 2011 and consumers’ disposable income continue to dwindle.

“I don’t trust the Marketers, but I’ll trust my friends.” Enter Social Commerce.

Among the many definitions of Social Commerce documented by Paul Marsden of Social Commerce Today here’s a few I liked for their simplicity and matter-of-fact-ness…

Definition 15: Paul Dunay (Avaya) (October 2009)

• Social commerce: Working with or using your social graph, which is defined as your followers or your friends, and allowing them to help you make buying decisions.

Definition 17: IBM (October 2009)

• Social Commerce: Connect and foster active participation with customers to help improve your customer experience… including ratings and reviews, blogs, micro-blogging as well as forums and communities
• 17a Social Commerce: The concept of word of mouth in the context of e-commerce

Definition 20: John Jackson (DecisionStep) (February 2010)

• Social Commerce: The ability of two or more people to collaborate online, to share opinions and influence each other’s buying decisions

Here is Jeremiah Owyang’s Keynote Social Business Forecast: 2011 The Year of Integration

140 Corporate Social Strategists were asked how they currently handle social media within their corporation which lead to insights on how social media will be coordinated by corporations large and small into the future of this new frontier. Key points include:

- Different ways companies organize for Social Media
- Social Media spend breakdown among all SM activities and advertising
- Measurement + ROI
- How you should invest in 2011

• Should financial institutions bother with Social Media?
• Is Social Media a revolution?
• Do communities dominate brands? And who is generation-C?
• What is a Social Media strategy?
• Will the combination of technology and strategy change the basis of competition?
• What are the next practices for Social Media in financial services?

Highlights include:

• You can’t control Social Media, but you can have access to your customers directly in a real time conversation.

• The days of marketers pushing out their message is over.

• Now your brand is the sum of conversations about it.

• As a brand you can have a significant influence, but your customers have a very significant voice of changing your brand.

We’ve come a long way in mobile technology since Nokia introduced it’s first mobile phone in 1982. Today, we know every business needs a mobile application but not many marketers know how to make it work for them. Yes, Mobile will opened radical new business opportunities and transform our economy in a way unimaginable in an earlier age, but how? Marketing and technology consultant Marina Mann will demonstrate how companies are successfully leveraging mobile to their advantage and show you how these apps are influencing the mobile supply-chain of carriers, developers, advertisers, publishers and users in today’s mobile economy.

Presented by Marina Mann, Consultant, Digital Marketing, eCommerce & Mobile; in Partnership with nextMEDIA and the Mobile Entertainment Forum.

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