Incentivisation Strategies for Social Sharing of Product Pages

[LukeyJamo]

Hey,

What are some great tips for gaining social shares on ecommerce product or category pages?

I understand great images and video will go along way, but it's difficult on a large scale ecommerce store.

Receiving an offer for sharing something is great - I honestly cant think of a way to track this strategy in a large scale manner. I can send an email after a purchase making an offer to go back to the page to share, but how would I track this?

Thanks.

[Alex-Harford]

Give people a discount/loyalty points/competition entry or something like that if they share an item?

Couldn't you track it using a query string on the link that goes back to the page? Or add tracking links to the share buttons on your website?

[swgolf123]

How about adding a button to every product page to search on facebook/twitter/etc? Basically you want to make it as easy as possible to share, so with a button right there, it encourages people to share with friends. americangolf.co.uk does this well.

[junioruf]

You can have a facebook like button and a twitter button on (1) your website and (2) in each product page.

It seems that you are looking to gain more facebook users to like your page? If so, you can create contests on the page. My client just created a competition where you send in your email to join. She then puts your name on her wall and whoever gets the most likes to their name gets a $500 gift certificate to the store. So far, she went from 200 fans to over 1,100 fans in two days. Remember, in order for someone to like your page or your post; they have to like your page first.

I know that groupon and hautelook have an invite appreciation thing; when you invite friends and they join, you then get a discount. Each person has their own unique link and that's how it is tracked. There are some good email tracking systems out there, you just have to look.

I hope this helps!

[LukeyJamo]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for you response. Im not entirely sure how much freedom you have in the code of the facebook share button etc.

Ill have to research this as it seems to be exactly my problem

[LukeyJamo]

What do you mean by " to search on facebook/twitter/etc?" Yes, I want a sharing buttons on everypage. Im talking about how do you track the incentivisation.

[LukeyJamo]

No. I dont want more likes on the Fanpage.

I want to know incentivisation and tracking strategies for social sharing.

[junioruf]

Have you heard about infusionsoft? I personally haven't used them, but my chiropractor uses them and he loves them. He says that they track everything in your email and they track it by person; unlike other email marketing software programs. That's the only way that I can think of when you are tracking it by email. They also have filters; if a person does not share your facebook link, they will send them a second email that is more appealing. Hopefully this helps you out a little.

[LukeyJamo]

Hi Juniouf.

Thanks for the advice from the email marketing perspective and individually tracking.

This has been helpful

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingSocial.html

The social sharing actions will occur in Google Analytics. Maybe if I dynamically tag each link I will see results in GA for the action.

Although, customers might be a bit freaked out if they land on a URL that has their own name!: www.companyname.com.au/facebook-like-offer?=utm_FB=utm_customer_name

[swgolf123]

Sorry - meant to share on facebook/twitter/etc. If you have a button on each page, you can add tracking code to it, similar to how you track the clicks on your emails.

[Alex-Harford]

I've been able to add Google Analytics tracking code to Facebook and Tweet buttons. The only one I haven't is Google Plus but activity on that can be monitored in Webmaster Tools.