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In the hustle of holiday shopping, moving into social commerce may seem a little intimidating—but don’t let the ability to communicate freely with customers overwhelm you

One of the most underappreciated aspects of social mediums is their ability to set industry leaders apart. However, businesses today tend to shy away from social media engagement as they fear their efforts are time consuming, and insignificant—but that simply isn’t the case. Effectively managed, brands can utilize these mediums to garner client feedback, engage ambassadors, identify competitors, improve their products, and set themselves apart in the eyes of consumers.

When it comes to driving sales, the growing number of word-of-mouth marketing benefits should be considered. According to research by Nielsen, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family more than all other forms of marketing. The same study found that less than half of all customers consider traditional paid advertising to be credible—that’s a decrease of more than 20% since 2009! 

Does integrating social media into your emails really make a difference? After all, most people read their emails on Gmail or Outlook, not Facebook; so what can change just by bringing traditional email marketing online?

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word email? If you said Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan (à la the 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail), good effort! But this isn’t the ’90s. In 2013, email marketing is an essential part of not only romance, but also referral marketing strategies.

A lot of the attention surrounding the provision of customer service via social media tends to focus on B2C brands: How can I resolve shipping issues? Can I book tickets online? Et cetera. However, B2B customers are people too. Despite a longer and more complex lead-to-sale time, they also expect a strong customer service infrastructure from B2B brands.

Jon Henshaw isn’t exactly sure how he got here — an SEO expert with a background in human development and a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Oh, not to mention he’s a wild-eyed entrepreneur and co-founder of Nashville-based online marketing platform Raven. So how did he get here? How did he become an expert in search engine marketing? The same way anybody gets anywhere these days—pretty much by accident.