However, for the B2B space it is a much tougher proposition. After all, many B2B organizations do not have locations that are open to the public. A financial services firm is unlikely to be interested in rewarding a visitor for becoming mayor of their offices. They might, however, want to be a part of the location revolution and include it in their marketing mix, but how?

The challenge here is to resist the “buzz” and understand the “why”. Why would this be an appropriate marketing channel for a lender, software company or office supply company? All too often, organizations feel that they should be “doing” something in social media and every time some new platform comes along they feel the pressure to add that to their mix.  While understandable, it is also very unrealistic. Not all businesses are suited to all forms of marketing, and especially not all forms of social media.

The most common point of entry at present for B2B organizations is through events. These give them a temporary physical location that can be “checked into” and that they can build a reward system around. However, given the short term nature of events, they have to be well thought through and ensure that the data captured around the rewards and check-ins are maximized in a way that benefits the organization.

In the past, this type of event marketing might have been as simple as a fishbowl draw, where attendees dropped their business card into a bowl and got the opportunity to win a prize (iPad anyone?). Now the same type of draw can be operated with broader messaging behind it. By creating a “game” that has people checking in and adding a specific comment to be qualified to enter, an organization can leverage attendees’ sharing habits to promote their company message, and all without additional cost.

Another method of entering any of these spaces, and Social Location Sharing/marketing in particular, is to expand the vision. By altering the point of entry to the process, many B2B organizations can find opportunities that they would have otherwise overlooked. For example, an office supply company might not have an offering directly to the end users of Social Location Sharing tools, but their customers might.

Obviously, this is only the briefest of overviews of how the B2B space can leverage social location marketing, but the opportunities are definitely there, and for those willing to make a few leaps, so are the rewards.

Traditional advertising is not going to go away any time soon. TV viewing is rising in some segments of society, and its ability to engage is unparalleled. But mobile advertising, although multinationals have dipped their toe in the water, innovations such as Apple’s iAds, is set to herald a new era.

Companies such as Sears and Nissan, have already committed to spending $60m this year in Apple’s iAds. Adverts released by Apple have video and interactive components, which it hopes will combine the emotional punch of television commercials with the engagement of the best internet pitches.

Mobile devices now vastly outnumber fixed-line broadband connections. Mobile ad spending is forecast by PwC to more than triple from $2.2bn last year to $7.7bn in 2014, 0r 7.4% of total online marketing.

Consumers’ increasing appetite for mobile applications is driving online retailers to speed up their mobile marketing initiatives. Most retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy. One in five boasts having a fully-implemented mobile strategy in place already.

It’s imperative for online retailers to stay on top of what their customers want and these days it’s all about the mobile phone. Mobile commerce has tremendous potential and will no doubt grow to become a significant part of overall sales volume in years to come. whether to increase customer satisfaction, grow their brand or drive traffic and sales, online retailers are in this game to stay.

Mobile investment is modest now, but we see that it will pick up in the future, especially among the biggest brands that have already invested significant amounts in their mobile operations.

Have you bought anything from your mobile device yet? How would you feel about mobile advertising? Intrusive or useful.

Without an understanding of, and participation in, social networks, you can miss shaping and contributing to the decision-making process of those who define the success of your business.

While social media cheat-sheets and short cuts are available almost everywhere you look, the truth is that we have some work ahead of us. To help, I’ve assembled a list of five best practices to help you build, cultivate, and measure success in the new web right now.

1. Dedicate the time

Because time is a big concern, think about social media as an opportunity cost. Will your investment in identifying and connecting with prospects, customers, and influencers outperform your other activities? The answer is yes for most businesses, so carve out time for strategic experimentation. In short, you get out of it, what you invest.

2. Conquer your fears

Many business owners believe that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business. That’s true, but avoiding social media doesn’t mean that their opinions will never see the light of day.

Your brand is at the mercy of those who take to social media to share their experiences, so you might as well take an active role to contributes to the stature and perception of your brand. You might even learn how to improve your product and service in the process.

3. Listen and research to learn and contribute

Social networking is far more effective when you realize that creating profiles and updating social networks aren’t arbitrary. There’s an art and science to all of this, and the process begins with listening and research.

Step one: create a list of keywords that represent your market and then use the search box in each social network to see what people are saying about you. As you examine the results, you’ll identify the people who are leading conversations and the dialogue that invites and inspires participation. If local business is paramount to success, use services such as Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, LinkedIn. Also monitor location-based networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt.

4. Establish an attractive and expansive presence

Your presence online is far more valuable than you may realize. While you may think that you should focus on your website, your social-media presence also represents you and what you offer. The ability to showcase your products and services to attract customers and spark conversation is arguably greater on social networking sites than your own website. In any case, connecting the dots between social networks, websites, and the real world is now as important as the service and products that you offer.

5. Use engagement as the new customer service and marketing

It’s not what you say about you, it’s what they say about you that counts. Customer service and engagement overall is a new and genuine form of unmarketing. Customers, prospects, and influencers are already engaging with others to contribute, learn, and discover.

They are forming and sharing opinions and making decisions based on the information they find online—with or without you. You should use engagement as a fast, free, and powerful way to reach and serve customers.

This is your time to engage! Doing so will earn you permanent residence in the hearts and minds of the people who make up your markets. This will expand market opportunities, build brand awareness, stimulate demand, and engender loyalty and advocacy.

Some executives are more optimistic. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has said on several occasions that e-commerce will account for up to 15 percent by 2016. The major catalyst for e-commerce growth in the short term seems to be in stimulating existing online shoppers to continue to buy and to shift a greater percentage of their total purchases to the web.

To do this, companies will employee online marketing initiatives but also stress the convenience, broader selection, and ostensible cost savings associated with buying online. In the longer term, teenagers already spending online will acquire more purchasing power and independence and will invigorate the online channel.

More than half of online retailers believe that the outlook for the retail industry as a whole is gloomy and that retail sales will continue to slow in the coming 12 months. But 8o percent of online retailers said that they believe that the Web channel is better suited than other channels to withstand an extended economic downturn. (But more than half also think that multi-channel retailers are better suited to weather the economic turbulence than single-channel retailers).

E-commerce retailers report that their conversion rates continue to range from 3% to 3.5% as they have for years, which is another indication that the Web has not been as adversely impacted as other channels.

Going forward, online retailers will continue investing heavily in interactive marketing, a significant expenditure for e-commerce groups. In this vein, companies will experiment with social commerce initiatives, even though questions still remain for social marketing ROI, such as blogs and social networks.

Acquiring new customers is still the number one goal of online marketing efforts. While other retail channels struggle to innovate and perform, e-commerce managers have a unique opportunity to drive more sales and to test different tactics that resonate with consumers. Even more so now than in fatter times, retailers must strictly segment their customer groups and create messaging that speaks directly and powerfully to these groups.

Facebook’s plan to introduce a currency called Facebook Credits will encourage people to spend on social networks but is a long way from becoming an activitymost people are comfortable with.

In February, Facebook announced in a blog post the beta test of Facebook Credits – a virtual currency that it aims to roll out across all applications, and which it hopes will increase the amount users spend on virtual goods. Only a few developers have so far been allowed access to the service to integrate it into their applications, but Facebook is slowly increasing the number of developers in the testing phase.

If an online currency makes people more interested in spending online, then this will only be good news for brands starting to look into social commerce. In the US, Disney has been the first brand to allow people to transact directly from Facebook by creating an app that lets them buy tickets to see Toy Story 3 at the cinema. In the UK, no brands have yet created an app where you can buy directly from Facebook, but the likes of easyJet and Dell are looking into ways to socialise their ecommerce experience.

Similarly, media owners looking at the possibility of micropayments could look to social networks and create apps in which people can access content using their Facebook Credits.

The majority of people are now comfortable shopping online, but the bad press about social networks and issues of privacy will prove hugely detrimental when inviting people to part with credit card or PayPal details.

For it to be worthwhile for brands to invest in social commerce on third-party sites, enough users need to be happy to part with their cash in social networks. Sites such as Facebook have a lot of work to do in gaining users’ trust before social commerce comes even close to being mass-market.

Social Commerce is defined as the relationship and fusion of eCommerce and social media together to help buyers and sellers make better purchasing decisions online. This combination is the next generation of interaction between buyers and sellers.

Take a look at these studies and see for yourself what respondents had to say.  And then ask yourself if you feel the same way.

According to Bazaarvoice:

“81 percent of respondents said they’d received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision. 90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know…

Friends still play an important role in influencing consumers; 83 percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place…

Users put great trust in their social networks…respondents said they considered information shared on their networks when making a decision…

Facebook, blogs, Twitter and customer reviews are considered the most effective tactics for mobilizing consumers to talk up products online…

Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touch points when it comes to influencing purchases …Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendation”

Users are finding the value in sharing online. They feel safer and they can trust that their friends can help them make better buying decisions. Helping a friend and/or follower make a purchase online is one of the best ways to build advocacy online and throughout your social networks. Try sharing one of your listings with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers and watch the interactions that happen. People are interested in what you are buying and selling and if they need it they are going to feel more comfortable buying it from you. What’s even more powerful is sharing a purchase you made with friends, pointing them in the right direction for the next purchase they may make online.

People love to share themselves and share their experiences with those who care to listen. It is human nature. In the eCommerce space buyers want to feel comfortable buying from sellers and sellers want to feel confident that they are targeting qualified buyers who want what they have to sell. Being uncomfortable has been one of the most important inhibitors that have existed over the last 10 years in the e-commerce space.

Your Homework for the Weekend: Ask a friend online or follower for some advice on a purchase or a product and see how they respond. Check and see who else responds too.

1. Start selling on Social Platforms – Open a Facebook store and simply experiment. It’s fast, inexpensive and simple to implement. It should not only drive your online sales; but will doubtless increase your Facebook followers too.

2. Add Mobile into the social mix – Allow users to share content to mobile via SMS. This is one of the fastest areas of growth in the market. If you implement a share by SMS icon to your site, your sales will jump.

3. Implement Facebook Social Plugins – start by adding the Like button to product pages on your e-commerce site. By doing this, you get your product onto Facebook walls – where click through rates are a fantastic 6.5%. This drives traffic to your e-commerce site. The Like button is the new mini review. See Tripadvisor.

4.  Cross-sell/Up-sell with personal recommendations – 90% of people trust recommendations from people they know vs. 70% who trust anonymous reviews, and 67% of people spend more online after recommendations from friends. Therefore make allowing people to make personal recommendation on your site a priority! See Levi’s.

5. Integrate chat on your e-commerce site – so friends can shop together and discuss products. Luggage brand JanSport saw a 59% increase in product views and a 147% increase in time on site after integrating a Chat feature on its site.

6. Make your website your social flagship – social features are not just for social media platforms. You should use them on your website, by adding social media conversation feeds to your site, whilst exporting your content to social media platforms. Give your customers a multitude of reasons to keep coming back!

7. Bring the in-store experience online to social media platforms – to make all your channels social. Such examples could be live webcasts of in-store events.

Businesses have been jumping onto the social media train, with Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, in addition to traditional Web pages. And it seems that if you and your business are not on social media, then your friends and colleagues see you as behind the times, not connected, and generally out of touch. It’s true that social media can be a useful tool for any business. However, the effectiveness and value of social media to your business varies greatly based on the type of product or service that you sell and how you use the resource.

Like any business activity, Facebook requires the investment of time and money by someone at your company. It is important that whatever your company might do on social media provide a good return on the investment. Should your company use social media, say Facebook? There are some key questions to ask before making a decision.

To begin, what level of involvement do your customers have when buying your product? If a product is expensive, something that affects personal appearance, or will be used frequently and visible to others, you are probably selling a high-involvement product. Certain types of clothing, cars, computers and appliances fall into this category of goods. For products of this type, consumers search for information. They will seek out and visit your Web site to learn about your product. However, they will probably not be that interested in your Facebook page nor will they become a Facebook “fan” or “friend” or a Twitter “follower.”

In the case of lower involvement products like frequently purchased items such as groceries, certain types of clothing (like socks), or inexpensive items, consumers generally don’t search for much information. Purchase decisions are more likely to be made at the store, maybe on impulse, and are almost always made with little pre-purchase planning. Social media does not really enter the equation.

So Facebook has little value to businesses, right? Wrong. The question to ask is quite simple: Can Facebook (or Twitter or Linked-in) help you to add value for your customers and your business? If it can, then you should use it. The goal is to achieve “top of the mind” awareness.

One of the big advantages of social media and social marketing is the ability to keep your brand’s name in front of your customers and potential customers. And in the world of social media, they must want you to interact with them. How do you encourage that interaction? It is easy for a sports team like the Red Sox — fans seek them out. But how do you get customers to become a fan of your company?

One way to take advantage of social media is to provide information to your customers. News of upcoming sales, special events, and news they can use is valuable. Help them see how your brand adds value to their daily life. Make your brand special to them, even something upon which they rely.

There are a number of small retailers and other companies that are on my Facebook friends list or that I follow on Twitter. I am friends with them or follow them because I support their business but also because they provide me useful information. That information is not just about their company or products, but about things that interest me that fit with their image. Think about a restaurant that shares recipes or a good source of organic items, or what to look for in fresh vegetables. Consider a clothing retailer that offers suggestions on stain removal. These are not items on a Web site, but updates that go to all friends and fans on a regular basis.

An important element of building a social media network is to get people to “friend” you or to become a fan. Traditional media is actually helpful here. Advertising that provides a reason for customers to find you on Facebook or Twitter is important. Drive them to your social media site with a special coupon or other offer that makes it worthwhile. Then add value through your postings, offers and information.

On the subject of advertising, some social media sites allow you to advertise with banners. You can reach very specific target markets in this way, and that has considerable value. A company can target an age group, geographic location, and even segment by customer interests. This brings target marketing to a new level at a relatively low cost, with very little wasted coverage.

Once you set up Facebook, or Twitter, or some other social media site, keep it current! Use the site. There are many companies that have set up their pages and then just let them sit there. Or they were enthusiastic for a while and it faded away. Don’t let that happen. It is a wasted opportunity, especially after you have a number of established relationships.

In closing, recognize social media for what it is. It is another tool in your marketing toolbox, but it takes a full suite of marketing activities to succeed. Social media alone will not get the job done. And when using social media, be sure to add value for your friends and fans to keep them interested and to help your site to grow.

The Aim-listed business is trying to find ways of improving its service without having to open stores. Alliance Boots, which is increasingly teaming up with fellow retailers – such as Mothercare and Waitrose – to bring more brands into its stores, is thought to have held informal talks with Asos. Retailers have also suggested that WH Smith and Argos might be in the frame., although Asos has refused to comment on any potential partners.

The driver behind this is more and more of the high street retailers are offering in-store pick-up, ever since Argos introduced “click and collect”.

It is a proven successful model that attracts higher spending customers. The reliance of online-only retailers has long been seen as a deterrent for some shoppers; but the perceived barrier seems to be slowly dropping away.

Any tie-up would likely be with a retailer that is not a direct competitor but would still benefit from extra footfall from Asos customers who are typically fashion-focused women between the ages of 16 and 34.

We have had our own ebay operation for some time now; and from time to time, customers do ask if they can pick up from our warehouse. This has been a problem for some time in the e-commerce world. But something like this could work, because it provides mutual benefit.

Perhaps something similar could be of benefit to your own e-commerce operation? Allowing customers to pick up from your office or from other companies that you do business with. Anything that could help the customer must always be considered!