The Social Power of User-Generated Content

Sam Decker of Bazaarvoice explains how retailers use customer reviews and stories to drive measurable business results:

At the highest level, we think of social commerce as a strategy that brings together the interests of customers to talk to each other, to share, to contribute in a way that is going to drive a measurable business result. It’s that simple and it’s that difficult.

I think Twitter and social media platforms are succeeding because they’re effective tools for connecting with other people and communicating. They’re being preferred over e-mail, especially by the younger generation. They have some capabilities that make them compelling also from a marketer’s standpoint. But people don’t think about going to social media when they’re thinking about shopping. They do a Google search, go to a brand or go to a retailer.

What we think about Twitter and social media platforms is that they become your home where you’re connected to all the people that you know and trust. Or, even if you don’t know them, you still trust it, because you trust strangers more than you do the company. We think that the play there is to be able to pull people in to contribute content, to share content that was created elsewhere. If I write a review on Home Depot, I can automatically share that to all my Facebook friends.

When someone’s thinking about shopping, they may go to a shopping site for different reasons. I think the best example of that is someone planning a wedding or party who needs to look at products from multiple retailers. They pull them together and say, “Hey, friends, what do you think?”

I also think this idea of participation chains is going to be important, in that when you have found someone who is willing to write content and share it with others, that is the new asset for tomorrow’s company. This focuses on the influencer. I’ve given a speech on the four faces of social commerce. The last phase is how do you do more with your influencers once they’ve contributed. But what we see is once someone has contributed, you can get them to contribute again, you can find more people like them, you can do other things with your influencers that really help propel the business forward. Instead of a retailer thinking very product-centric, they start to think influencer-centric, and therefore customer-centric.

Check out the entire interview with eMarketer’s Total Access subscription.