Social Media
Our social media marketing coverage addresses management tools, educational courses, platform tips, social analytics, and strategies for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. We’ve interviewed merchants who rely on social media traffic, and vendors who provide specialized services.
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Social Media
Four Apps to Create Facebook ‘Welcome’ Pages
August 31, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Thousands of ecommerce businesses have Facebook Fan pages. But making those pages stand out from competitors' pages is a challenge. One of the ways to distinguish yours is through the use of a custom landing page, also known as a Welcome tab. In the past, to create a landing page you ...
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Social Media
Facebook ‘Places’ Helps Local Businesses
August 24, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Facebook recently rolled out "Places," a location-based sharing application popularized by such startups as Foursquare and Gowalla. Much has been written about Places, but in this article I'll review the possible business uses for it. When a user arrives at a given location–a physical ...
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Social Media
Profile: Retailer Spends Little Money for Big Social Media Impact
August 18, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Editor's Note: For the past few weeks, Paul Chaney, our social media director, has addressed the integration of Facebook with ecommerce. He has reviewed a number of applications, including Wildfire and Fan Appz, both of which provide sweepstakes and coupons. He's also reviewed fully-emb...
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Social Media
Social Bookmarking Helps with SEO, Product Sharing
August 11, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Social sharing and bookmarking have taken a back seat to Facebook and Twitter. For most of us, using sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, or Reddit rarely crosses our minds. Yet, these and other such services can provide a number of benefits to your ecommerce site, and here’s why....
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Social Media
Facebook Encourages Ecommerce; App-Makers Respond
August 4, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Facebook designates Fan pages for businesses to engage users. And to help these businesses, Facebook now provides a series of resource guides for Fan page development and Facebook Ads development. It has also greatly improved the Fan page analytics component (called Insights), and it ha...
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Social Media
Ecommerce News Around the Web for July 30, 2010
July 30, 2010 • Paul Chaney
"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. Ecommerce SSL is Broken, Says Conference Founder - The Inquirer Black Hat 2010 conference founder Jeff Moss is adamant that commerce's secure soc...
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Social Media
Six Facebook Applications to Sell Your Products
July 20, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Editor's Note: This is the third installment in our series on social commerce, the process of linking ecommerce with social media sites, such as Facebook. In the second installment, we reviewed the Facebook apps of a number of shopping cart providers. These apps extend the Facebook reac...
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Social Media
The PEC Review: Facebook Pay-Per-Click Ads
July 12, 2010 • Armando Roggio
There may be a positive relationship between ecommerce spending and social network participation. Internet trend tracking firm comScore recently reported that Facebook and Twitter users spend more money online than non-socialites, and that some 23 percent of Twitter users follow busine...
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Social Media
Twitter to Offer Early Bird Advertisements
July 8, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Twitter, the microblogging site, said that it would soon begin tweeting special, time-bound deals and offers from advertisers to its users. The program, called "@earlybird," would allow "select" advertisers to offer exclusive, short term deals on Twitter, potentially putting the social...
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Social Media
The PEC Review: Dlvr.it for Social Media Distribution
July 5, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Blogging, social marketing, email marketing, onsite merchandising, and search engine advertising are just some of the tasks that an ecommerce marketer must manage on any given day. Dlvr.it is a new online service that can help you automate at least one portion of that marketing worklo...
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Social Media
Social Commerce: Shopping Carts Extend Reach Into Facebook, Other Social Sites
June 23, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Editor's Note: This is part two of “Social Commerce Spotlight,” our series on the mix of ecommerce and social media. Part one, "Payvment, a Facebook Storefront Provider," we published previously. With the growth of social commerce, especially on Facebook with its 500 million members, a...
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Social Media
In Social Media Era, Nine Techniques to Improve Conversion Rates
June 21, 2010 • Pamela Hazelton
With the ever-growing popularity of social media, online sweepstakes and contests, just how important is the actual conversion rate of an online store going to be in the future? In simple terms, the conversion rate is a measure of the number of unique visitors (potential customers) tha...
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Social Media
Ecommerce News Around the Web for June 11, 2010
June 11, 2010 • Paul Chaney
"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. Shop.org and NRF Weigh in on Boucher Privacy Bill - Shop.org Online privacy is a hot topic these days, both among consumers and in Washington. Con...
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Social Media
Social Commerce Spotlight: Payvment, a Facebook Storefront Provider
June 8, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Social commerce, the use of social media in the context of ecommerce, is becoming commonplace. Over the next few weeks, Practical Ecommerce will examine ecommerce platforms and applications that allow merchants to take advantage of this new trend. In this installment, we will discuss ...
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Social Media
The PEC Review: Twitalyzer Offers Analytics for your Twitter Accounts
June 7, 2010 • Armando Roggio
As more online retailers invest marketing dollars and time into social marketing, it is becoming increasingly important to measure the return on that investment. As with any concerted marketing effort, social marketing has real costs in terms of hourly labor expenses for time spent twe...
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Social Media
The PEC Review: TwitPic, for Sharing Photos on Twitter
June 1, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Social media marketing is one of the most potent new promotional trends available to ecommerce businesses. Services like Twitter allow you to build two-way relationships with your customers wherein you can get nearly instant feedback about your product offerings and promotions, and gain...
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Social Media
6 Facebook Apps to Enhance Your Company’s Fan Page
May 26, 2010 • Paul Chaney
It was only a few years ago that businesses realized they needed a website. Now, everyone seems to be coming to the same conclusion about Facebook, and the best way for a business to establish a presence there is via a Fan page. We typically think of Facebook Fan pages as being a conv...
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Social Media
Ecommerce News Around the Web for May 21, 2010
May 21, 2010 • Paul Chaney
"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. Symantec Set to Acquire VeriSign Security Business - Symantec Symantec has apparently signed an agreement to acquire VeriSign’s security busines...
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Social Media
Practical eCommerce Extends Presence within Social Media
May 18, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Practical eCommerce recently hired me to help the company build a strong presence inside the social media universe. My initial efforts have been focused on building a solid foundation of participation inside Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Even though we are just getting started (or re...
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Social Media
Facebook Limits Fan Pages and Introduces Community Pages
April 20, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Facebook Fan pages are changing. This is due to the Facebook's desire to ensure that only individuals and organizations with official permission to do so create such pages. To replace those Fan pages created by, well, fans, Facebook has now introduced what it is referring to as Communit...
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Social Media
The PeC Review: Firefox TwitterBar Add-on
April 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Social media is one of the most cost effective ways that an online merchant can attract new customers and build relationships with existing ones. In social media, the aim is to become generally interested in your customers, including what they do and how they feel about the world. That...
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Social Media
Social Media: The Mississippi Gift Company Uses Multiple Channels
March 23, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Editor's Note: Each month we highlight how an ecommerce business uses social media. This is the second of the series. I hail from the great state of Mississippi. Not only is my native state noted for its arts and culture, it is also the home of a very successful, long-standing ecommerc...
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Social Media
Social Media: OTC Sports Uses Facebook, Twitter to Engage Like-minded Consumers
February 23, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Editor's Note: This is the first in series of interviews with ecommerce merchants on their use of social media. OTC Sports is a family-run specialty dealer of premium baseball and softball equipment. It targets serious, tournament-level ballplayers. We spoke with the owner, Jeff LeRic...
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Social Media
Ecommerce News Around the Web for February 5, 2010
February 5, 2010 • Paul Chaney
"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. 11 Outstanding Online Resources for Web Developers - Mashable A web developer's job is almost never done. You are always looking for ways to impr...
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Social Media
Accessibility and Social Media
January 21, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson
Social media can be a terrific way to share information with your customers, provide them with crucial support, and otherwise communicate with them. But almost all social media sites have accessibility problems. Though they are fairly accessible as a group, they do have a variety of i...
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Social Media
The PEC Review: The Social Media Marketing Book
January 18, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Some 70 percent of shoppers trust consumer opinions posted online. Facebook has more than 350 million users. By some estimates, Twitter will have 26 million users by the end of this year. And YouTube is the third most popular website on the Internet, bar none. Social media cannot be ig...
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Social Media
Social Media Webinar Sparks Hundreds of Questions
January 14, 2010 • Armando Roggio
There was news this week that Pepsi planned to forgo a Super Bowl Ad in favor of investing $2 million into social media marketing. With so much focus on connecting to customers via social communities, it was little wonder that attendees to the Practical Ecommerce "Social Media 201: Ho...
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Social Media
Facebook, Twitter Help Online Food Store Extend Its Reach
January 13, 2010 • Paul Chaney
Bill and Louise Bowers are ecommerce merchants and owners of Classic Golden Pecans, a specialty products company located in Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country. Classic Golden Pecans sells pecans, candied pecans and confectionary items native to the region. Customers includ...
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Social Media
‘New Community Rules’ Is An Introduction to Social Media Marketing
November 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio
An increasing number of online retailers are recognizing that it is possible to earn more money and have happier customers simply by engaging those customers in authentic and personal ways. When an industry is in its infancy (such as ecommerce was just a few years ago) it is possible t...
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Social Media
Ecommerce Know-How: Consider YouTube Promoted Video
October 7, 2009 • Armando Roggio
YouTube Promoted Video lets ecommerce merchants combine the power of television commercials with pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Internet video is one of the fastest growing media forms in the world. From June to August 2009, American Internet video consumption grew from 19.4 billion to...
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