Everything seems to happen in Social media sites these days. The fact that social media sites are flooded with visitors all the time makes it a big time target for advertisers. Mobile commerce or simply m-commerce is also being heavily influenced by social media sites. In this post, we take a look at the impact of social media on mobile commerce and how it has shaped today’s businesses.
M-commerce does not just mean transactions over mobile phones. With the world going mobile today, thanks to number of mobile devices and their Internet compatibility, m-commerce has a greater role to play. Today, m-commerce has a part to play with sales, commerce, marketing and CRM. It is basically the use of mobile phones and other mobile devices to bring customers across all aspect of a sales element. Social networking sites are witnessing heavy traffic on cell phones, which naturally will power up mobile commerce. In this article, I would take you through the most popular social media sites and their impact on m-commerce.
Impact of Social Media on Mobile Commerce
Facebook is the most popular and the number one social media site. With launch of Facebook places in USA and Europe, the leading social networking site joined hands with a group of brands that provided discount deals to visitor for checking-in into various places. This idea influenced a number of other brands to make marketing strategies using Facebook places.
Here is an example, Dallas airport provided discounts for hospitality products inside the airport.
Facebook’s second initiative was to facilitate mobile payment via Facebook credit purchase. According to this plan users will buy Facebook credits and the charges will be shown in their mobile bills.
43% of twitter accounts are being operated from mobile phones and 9% from tablets. That makes it very important for Twitter to device a mobile strategy for their m-commerce. Twitter has its own set of tools to help different brands in marketing through mobile phones. A perfect example of such tool is the FastFollow tool.
Location Tagging is another strategy followed by Twitter to develop their m-Commerce standards. This feature allows users to tweet their locations. It is available with on the browsers of Android phones or iPhone or any browser that supports HTML 5 and geographic location. With these, followers will be able to identify where users are tweeting from.
The popularity of Twitter combined with its SMS features makes it one of the greatest marketing tools for brands and retailers. For example, Kogi Barbeque uses Twitter to indicate users about the location of food truck.
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FourSquare
Foursquare is the smartest of social media sites when it comes to mobile operation for social networks. It is the most efficient power tool for mobile commerce and marketing. A lot of partner brands reward customers as they check in to the respective stores. Customers can show loyalty by frequently checking-in as brands will reward their regular and loyal customers.
Foursquare also offers its popular ‘Foursquare pages for business’. With this tool, different brands and retailers can add tips for their regular customers from various locations. These tips can act like a source for different brands to share expertise with followers or engage them with more interesting offers.
Various brands have made use of Foursquare services for innovative campaigns to highlight their promotions and sales. The New York Times for example guided visitors to different tourist spots using the services of Foursquare.
Foursquare List is yet another Foursquare service that has helped potential marketing and sales.
Many other social networking sites like Groupon have also contributed their bit to m-commerce. There is absolutely no doubt about the fact that social media sites have had big impact on mobile commerce.
About the Author
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