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Community Corner

How Social Media is Influencing Our Buying Habits

Social media is no longer purely social; it has become the new marketplace.

There's a new market in town and if you've been around Elk Grove Florin and Calvine in the past week, you probably know it. Fresh & Easy, the subsidiary of British giant Tesco Supermarkets, has opened four stores in the Sacramento area and one is in Elk Grove. How do I know this? 

As the editor of MidLifeBloggers, I am on a number of lists that PR people use to invite bloggers to promotional events. Mostly the invitations I get are to things in Los Angeles or San Francisco, because Sacramento is still a junior player in the blogger marketing game. That Fresh & Easy hosted a launch party for local bloggers and others at the California Museum speaks volumes to their understanding of the growing role social media now plays in commerce.

Right about now you may be going—huh? The role social media plays in commerce?  Like Twitter and Facebook actually have something to do with where I shop and what I buy?  Yes, they do, and if you want to exercise your informed choice as a consumer, you’ll do well to pay attention.  

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It used to be that all a retail establishment such as a supermarket had to do to advertise their weekly specials to the whole community was to buy an ad in the local newspaper.  The internet has changed all that, however.  The local newspapers are a dying breed and the ads that supported them have gone to Craigslist and other online resources. 

But that’s okay, because what market research now shows is that we consumers are most likely to buy something if it has been recommended to us by people we know.  That category—people we know—has grown exponentially as we participate more and more in social media.  Facebook friends, Twitter followers? Blogs we read, online communities we belong to? They all count as the people we know.  

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My email at MidLifeBloggers daily bring offers—to read a book, review a a CD, try a product.  All will be sent to me free of charge in exchange for which, if I choose, I will write a post detailing my response to said offer. Sometimes straight payment is offered; this is called a sponsored post. Sometimes, a retail establishment will provide a blogger with the wherewithal to fully furnish a room in her house, such as Ikea recently did with renowned blogger Dooce.

There is an industry that has grown up around this, bloggers whose sole reason for being is to review products and marketers whose sole reason for being is to help brands find and court these bloggers. The New York Times wrote of this several years ago, saying “sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as blogs, have offered companies new opportunities to pitch products with endorsements that carry a veneer of authenticity because they seem to be straight from the mouth—or keyboard—of an individual consumer.”

So ubiquitous has it become that in 2009, the FTC established specific regulations that bloggers must follow when writing about products or risk being fined. It’s pretty clear-cut for a blogger: full transparency, i.e., clear and up-front statements that you have received the product to review and/or are being compensated for it.  

Where it gets murkier, however, is when it comes to social media.  The ways and means by which creative marketers are using social media are, it would seem, endless.  Twitter parties, for example, and contest/giveaways are vehicles for getting your niche community talking about your brand.  Those conversations, prompted as they are (and sometimes paid for) become a basis for a particular brand’s “popularity," which is relevant to their position in the Google rankings.  XYZ Detergent, for example, wants their website to come up first when someone does a search for laundry soap. So significant is the social media engineering of commerce that no less an institution than USC is now offering a Master’s degree in New Media, Internet Marketing and Online Social Networking.

Of course social media marketing can backfire on a company as well.  Consumers' antipathy for a particular product can go viral, bringing a deluge of negative publicity. Bottom line, then, is this: those who think that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and Yelp and now Pinterest, is only for socializing are well behind the curve these days.  Social media is a marketer's dream, and you, the consumer, need to know the part you play.  You ignore its reach into your home—and your wallet—at your own peril.

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