At this year’s ad:tech conference in Sydney, I am moderating the session ‘What is the Impact of Social Content on e-Commerce?’

With the majority of businesses working out what their connection between social content and e-Commerce is, I suspect the most valuable session outcome will be the diverse points of view offered through the presentations and the Q&A.

So to kick off the discussion, I’d like to float out the idea that you can’t discuss the impact between social content and e-Commerce without first recognising where the connection exists.

Here’s the thinking:

A business needs to successfully plug social media and the content generated into existing strategy/marketing frameworks, resources and processes.

By overlapping the intended use of social content on top of an existing strategy/marketing framework, only then can a business identify the impact social content has on e-Commerce.

The attached Forrester Research (Justifying Social Marketing Spending, Forrester Research, February 2009) chart is an example how a corporation could create social media tools/content to support business objectives.

As the Forrester chart highlights, businesses using the marketing funnel could identify areas of weakness and create social content intended to bolster targeted sections.

Regardless if you do or don’t agree with the marketing funnel, at the very least, it should highlight the need to align the intent of social content into an existing e-Commerce framework.

Without adopting a pragmatic approach to the creation of social content, businesses can very easily find themselves getting lost in the aspirational outcomes associated with social media marketing.

How successful do you think Australian businesses are at making the connection between social content and e-Commerce?