Social eCommerce

Preface

We’ve taught a lot of people how to be more successful on the Web. The definitions of “the Web” and “success” have changed a lot over the years, but many of the low-level principles and theories remain the same. We dreamed up this book as a way to communicate those concepts to our friends, colleagues, and clients (current and future). Our goal was to create the definitive guide to selling things on social media. In support of that, we agreed to take a radical, personalized approach.

One strategy does not fit all businesses. If you’re trying to establish a successful social media presence for your local restaurant, you’re going to use different tactics than Coca-Cola uses for its worldwide branding efforts. Or if you’re really good at restaurant marketing but now want to get into selling ebooks or custom guitars, you’ll find that a lot of your “guaranteed” tactics no longer work in a different context. Some of them even seem to make things worse for you. We understand that perfectly!

In order for a strategy to be effective, it must have three components: intention, context, and tactics. Most books on this subject assume the intention, give a broad context (“Sell ALL the things!”), and concentrate on good tactics. Sun Tzu said in The Art of War that tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat; this applies equally in war and ecommerce. There are a lot of tactics in this book, but they are presented with a context in mind. The idea is to form or modify a marketing strategy ...