3 New Social Media Platforms Retailers Need to Know About

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Social media has changed the game for the retail industry – but there are ways to stay on top of things…

In the digital age, the game has changed for many industries – with the retail sector among the hardest hit. The combination of e-commerce and the shift to social media and online marketing (from point-of-sale marketing) has forced retailers to re-evaluate how they think about and approach marketing in particular, and running a business in general.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the world of social media develops exponentially each year, with more and more platforms, apps and technologies becoming available. While this presents greater opportunities for the clever retail marketer, it also represents an increasing number of pies that we don’t have our fingers in.

To help, Tick Yes has put together a list of what’s new in the social media space and how retailers can jump on board with their marketing strategies.

1. Instagram

If you have an iPhone, chances are you’ve come across this sepia-toned community of photographers. Instagram is, essentially, Twitter for iPhone photographers. It’s an app that allows you to snap, edit and share photographs all in the one place, and it has experienced incredible growth over the past year.
For retailers, this is a chance to showcase new products and styles in a fresh, funky forum. Hash tags (similar to those used in Twitter) are used to enable Instagram’s search functionality, meaning that retailers can target specific markets through clever labelling.

With its growing popularity and assurances that there are several improvements in the pipeline, Instagram is shaping as somewhere you really have to be as a retailer.

2. Pinterest

According to Mashable, Pinterest has become one of the leading referral sites for retailers in the relatively short time it’s been up and running. For those who may not have heard of it yet, the site is a kind of virtual pin board where users can peruse images and ‘re-pin’ on their own personalised boards to share with their followers. Importantly, the site has a widget that is applied to the user’s bookmarks bar which allows them to ‘pin’ any image they come across in their online travels. Obviously, this is huge for retailers. Many users create ‘wish list’ pin boards, and several major retailers are already prolific on the site.

3. YouTube

We know, we know… YouTube has been around for ages, but there are some changes happening elsewhere in the social sphere that mean YouTube is now more important than ever for retailers.
Firstly, video search is becoming more and more important in the grand scheme of how Google (the search giant that, by spooky coincidence, happens to own YouTube) ranks its results. The more video content you have online, the more likely it is that people will find what they’re looking for – at your store.

Secondly, Facebook’s new Timeline feature means that there is an increasingly visual slant to what kind of content we are consuming. Getting more creative with video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo can only be a good thing for business.

A Tick Yes digital and social media blog