I am often asked by friends who have ecommerce sites what they can do to improve sales.  They have noticed current E-Commerce tools like SEO and Pay-Per-Click advertising are no longer delivering the bang they once did.  And my friends also know that “social marketing” has become a valuable marketing tool, but they are not sure what terms like word of mouth, grass roots, and viral marketing even mean – much less what they can do to drive business. 

As I wrote in the article, these tools are … “all free … all powerful … to help drive your business.” 

1) Create an online community. 
Why is an online community important for E-Commerce?  It allows a company to utilize their customers as evangelists; enlisting them to advocate your brand to potential customers.  Additionally, this expands your ability to engage with existing or potential customers.  For example, take a look at a case study put together by Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) about how customer recommendations influence buying products and services. 

2) Stay abreast of your category by subscribing to Google Alerts. 
This is a totally free service that allows a business owner to track trends in their industry.  Simply list which keywords you are interested in, and Google will send you news, blogs, web pages, etc…that include those words. 

Why is this important?  It’s because social marketing is about participating in the conversation.  Once you see which articles and reporters are relevant to your category, you can participate – and in a meaningful way. 

3) Deploy a Customer Feedback platform
E-merchants can also take advantage of free customer feedback platforms.  One such platform is UserTrust offered by Comodo, a leading provider in online verification and security infrastructure services.  UserTrust is a free tool which allows online merchants to gather customer feedback.  Just as important, site visitors can see other user’s real experiences.  These testimonials provide one of the most powerful social marketing technologies available on the market. 

4) Utilize free digital PR
In order to create additional SEO rich content, online merchants can create press releases and distribute them using free digital PR sites such as i-Newswire.com, PR-inside.com, PRLog.org, Free-Press-Release.com and 24-7pressrelease.com.  Don’t be intimidated to write these releases yourself – they need not be brilliant works of literary art.  Your press releases should reflect news that your customers or prospects care about (even if the NYTimes will not).  You can announce a new product or a big customer win or even a great review. 

The point is that this tactic is mainly about driving improved SEO rankings and ultimately traffic to your site. 

5) Blog it
Creating and regularly posting on a blog is another good way to increase SEO value.  WordPress.com is a free platform that lets users quickly and easily create a blog. 

6) “Birds of a feather” affinity marketing
It’s useful to know what your customer profile looks like, not to mention those of your competitors.  Quantcast is a free service that gives you a demographic profile of a website’s visitors.  Their reports also include a fair amount of detail on what your audience likes and even other sites they visit.  This information can be invaluable in helping businesses identify opportunities. 

So there you have it – my top 6.  I will keep adding to this list as I uncover new tools that really work.  If you have had great success with a social marketing technology – I’d love to hear about it.  Share the knowledge –

I admit it – I am probably one of the only people on the planet who does not like American Idol (or Britain’s Got Talent version).  It requires too much of the entertainment value to come from the inevitable humiliation that hopefuls are willing to subject themselves to. 

But Susan Boyle gave me a reason to believe in human potential again and it was a breathtaking moment.  Her triumph was the vicarious triumph of anyone who was written off just because of how they looked or because of who their parents were. 

It was a moment of triumph for many of us.  This is where the social media shows its true power and influence.  Within minutes, uTube had the footage.  Within hours, there were blogs posts and interviews and Susan Boyle became an overnight digital brand. 

Astonishing was the speed of her rise.  Astonishing was the speed of her broad reach.  Most astonishing still, was the desire so many people had to relive and share her amazing experience.  And the new digital social media … from Twitter to Paltalk to uTube … lets us share more broadly and more spontaneously than ever before. 

I can hear some techno-therapist reassuring his reclining client that Multiple Digital Personality Syndrome (MDPS), while serious if not properly managed, is a perfectly normal response to our unending ability to become anyone we want – whenever we want — in cyber space. 

This new techno-malady started innocently enough about 5 years ago when we all needed to create zillion of different accounts with different emails and passwords for the sites we wanted to enter.  To organize this potentially chaotic situation, we evolved different personas. 

I, for one, have my generic email, my personal email, my work email, my linkedin and so forth.  This seemingly innocent fracturing of our digital personality driven by a short term need has mutated into this new syndrome, MDPS, so that now, many of us have complex multiple personalities reflected in well designed profile pages on multiple social networking sites. 

Now while many would look at this MDPS as a slightly amusing by-product of Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace et al, I see danger lurking in these multiple profiles. 

If I want good advice about a computer problem from someone I met online, it would be useful to know if this person has credentials to warrant my trust.  If I enter a chat room to discuss a topic that I am passionate about, I want to chat with real people – not bots. 

I wonder how will we learn to balance the need for accountability with the right we have to reveal only as much about ourselves as we choose.  I see that this issue will play itself out over and over again in the next few years as social networks dominate how we search, how we shop, how we even meet other people. 

Perhaps, we must create a new type of balance that starts with the human element.  We must start by introducing mutual trust and authentication into the digital ID environment.  Much as we have it in the real world where, dependent on the circumstance, different types of identification are used to gain different levels of access.  We must translate that model into the digital world too. 

The technologies are here … now.  Web 3.0 needs to become The Trusted Web; otherwise the web will soon feel like what today many experience in inferior, bot filled chat rooms – a pseudo experience meant to emulate real interaction between real people. 

Colleagues constantly ask me; “what’s the deal with twitter”, “I don’t get it”, “how can I use it”.  Behind the question lurks a slight embarrassment because they feel they should “get it”. 

So dear friends, not to worry, of course you don’t get it – no one does yet – not really.  And anyone that claims to know, well they’re kinda of making it up as they go.  We all are, even Twitter (anyone see a solid Twitter monetization model yet lately?) 

But here is how I answer my friends about what Twitter is good for – it is the perfect digital sweet treat for our compressed, sound bite, social casting world. 

Twitter makes you reduce your life to a mere 140 characters at a time. A quick digital snack to share with your world about what’s going on or where you can see what’s going on with others. 

Ok – but what does that mean?  Well, if you are in sales, you can see what’s on your prospect’s mind.  Conversely, you can share a new insight about your service quickly.  In the end, Twitter acts like mini candy store letting you consume and share little info treats (or should I say tweets) on the net. 

Yet, Twitter is not for everyone.  While the cool pundits might make you feel insecure if you are not high on Twitter sweets, and corporate offices buzz about Twitter (anyone remember the Second Life frenzy?),  its useful to realize that as Twitter matures, they will reach a realistic market niche or “set point”.  And then the buzz will move onto to the next best thing because Twitter appeal will level off given it limited “nutritional value”. 

So if you don’t get Twitter, fear not.  It’s not that you’re not cool – you just may not like the Twitter snack.  But if Twittering satisfies your sweet tooth – tweeting can be sweet.