"Man is by nature a social animal," quipped Aristotle in his Politics, and that astute observation has given rise, over 2.5 millennia later, to the combustive growth of social media marketing and social commerce. Any retail business with a web presence that isn't using social media in its marketing strategy is losing out on the chance to cultivate brand ambassadors and capture conversion rates from social network-derived site visits.

 

But in many ways, the world of social commerce is something of a Wild West, with few universal marketing best practices and a great deal of guesswork involved on what it takes to achieve a return on investment in social platforms. Many retailers think it's sufficient to ask their site's visitors to "Like" them on Facebook and that's the end of it—then they wonder why they see little year-over-year growth.

 

Successful retailers are ones that can leverage their social media presence to drive retail sales and enhance the customer experience with meaningful content and connectivity. So who are the leading pioneers in the quest to stake claims in this ever-growing swath of e-retailing territory—the retailers who are doing it right? Only Internet Retailer delivers the first publication of its kind with the debut of the 2013 Social Media 300, the inaugural resource that comprehensively ranks and analyzes 300 e-retailers' presences on the major social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) based on percentage of site traffic from those social media channels.

 

In what will surely be the definitive resource on social commerce, the 208-page 2013 Internet Retailer Social Media 300 delivers a wealth of data, including these key elements:

• Ranking of online retailers by percentage of 2012 traffic derived from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest
• 2012 social commerce sales figures
• Average conversion rates and order values for visits from social networks
• Data on visits to e-commerce sites that directly stem from the major social networks
• Breakdown of e-retailers' presences on the major social networks, including counts of Facebook fans, Twitter and Pinterest followers and YouTube video views
• An engagement analysis of merchants' fans and followers—i.e., how often consumers respond to, by sharing and taking action on, the content e-retailers push out on social networks
• A total breakdown of merchants' on-site social features and functions, as well as Facebook and social features and functions
• A comprehensive vendor section that profiles the leading social consultants, platform providers, app developers, analytics and other social networking and marketing providers
• How-to articles from social platform and analytics providers, as well as consultants and other social commerce technology companies
• An overview article that surveys the differences in e-retailers' strategies for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks
• In-depth interviews and analysis of what social commerce sales figures mean to online retailers