There is no sense of wandering through the aisles, watching others as they shop, or having someone with you to provide advice.

What is missing is the social aspect of buying something, which is one of the foundations of the Web 2.0 experience.  And for some online retailers who are not optimized to take advantage of this, this is a missed opportunity.

According to a recent Guidant\Synovate eNation study, more than 60% of respondents report being drawn to online retailers that employ Web 2.0 tools and techniques.

These social tools include soliciting feedback and providing recommendations on products and services, along with welcoming them and making them feel part of a community.

The reason why this is critical is that word of mouth is one of the primary influencers in having a consumer purchase one product over another.

According to this Nielsen Online Global Consumer study, recommendations from consumers are the most trusted form of advertising out there, along with consumer opinions posted online.

An enhanced online shopping experience isn’t necessarily fancier graphics or flash programs.

The best online retail experiences are the ones that lever one of the most important aspects of offline shopping, the social aspect and the opinions of others.

What is missing are good examples of how Social Media is being used effectively and, most importantly, how are they measuring that effectiveness to calculate ROI.

I’ve tracked down a couple of recent examples that I feel do a good job in both levering Social Media and tracking results from their efforts.

This case study of Sea World San Antonio (hat tip to Alex Nesbitt at Digital Podcast) shows how working with communities of roller coaster enthusiasts through YouTube videos and Flickr images the marketers at Sea World were able to create significant pre-launch buzz for a new water ride, Journey to Atlantis.

The best part of this example, as demonstrated in this video case study done by Shel Israel at FastCompany.tv, is how they were able to provide concrete measurement of results from the campaign through multiple sources, including use of custom surveys and online site statistics.

Through their research, they were able to clearly separate those visitors who came through their Social Media efforts, versus the rest of the people who visited the park on a daily basis.

Carnival Cruise Lines has had a track record of success in Social Media Marketing for some time now. Tameka Kee of Online Media daily shows how they built on that success through an online partnership with ScrapBlog.com (a community built around scrapbooking) that allows guests from their cruises to share snapshots and video clips with friends and family in a branded environment.

As Carlos Garcia, CEO and co-founder of Scrapblog says of the initiative:

“A Carnival cruiser comes back and has pics and video that are essentially already branded. When they share it with friends and family, they’re sharing the brand. Allowing them to create a scrapbook online increases the number of people that can interact with the brand exponentially.”

Additionally, like the Sea World Example, Carnival also was able to get a better understanding of their initiative through concrete performance metrics by tracking the number of scrapblogs created by their guests, visit stats to the created scrapblogs, and registered conversions at CarnivalConnections.com due to scrapblog visits.

Creating effective Social Media Marketing campaigns is good first step for brands. Measuring that effectiveness on the back end is the critical next step that all brands should be taking as well.

As this clip from Microsoft shows (hat tip to Joe Pulizzi), traditional media just doesn’t seem to get it:

Which is why reading “Traditional Media Not Dead Yet For Marketing” in the New York Times was all the more interesting to me.

According to a study of 16 types of media conducted by Yankelovich, in association with Sequent Partners, when consumers were asked what kind of an impression a particular type of ad made, 56 percent of survey respondents said traditional media ads made a positive impression, in contrast to 31 percent who said that about digital media ads.

Additionally, thirteen percent of viewers reported a negative impression of traditional media ads versus 21 percent for digital media ads

The main explanation is that in mediums such as print or TV, people are experiencing advertising when they are relaxing, versus most of the digital advertising they see that occurs when they are actively trying to do something else (searching for something, communicating, etc.).

As J. Walker Smith, president at the Yankelovich Monitor division of Yankelovich in Atlanta, explains:

“When I’m tracking down information or looking for an answer or trying to compare things or searching for a link, ads are irritating to a degree not true when I’m relaxed and unwinding with TV or a magazine and thus more open to diversion.”

However, this generalization makes universal sense only if you assume that the future of digital advertising is pop-up ads.

In reality, the more effective forms of digital advertising are based on engagement and providing something worthwhile for consumers, all in the context of a branded environment.

Whether it is Alternate Reality Games, what You Tube is doing with buzz marketing, or how Nike is building active communities of users, the sophistication and effectiveness of digital marketing is increasing daily.

Traditional media is certainly not dead. It’s still very effective today in exposing a wide range of consumers to a simple, common message.

However, believing that the future of marketing is still the 30 second spot or the full page print ad is a bit like believing vinyl records are the next big thing for the sagging music industry.

While all ages tend to use the Internet to search, shop, and even post photos, as this table from eMarketer shows, Social Networking tends to be mainly something for people under 40.

The question is why?

Respondents to the JWT Boom/ThirdAge study cited by eMarketer said the main concerns were privacy, time and just not seeing the point of Social Networking.

Although each of these barriers may eventually be overcome, it will probably be a tough road, since things like lack of time or perceived irrelevance are not simply matters to be solved by broader awareness or easier user interfaces.

What I believe may actually have a significant impact on the broader adoption of Social Networking is if it moves out from the home and becomes fully integrated into people’s work lives.

Chris Heuer at Insytes has written a very thought provoking post that touches on how Social Media can foster stronger internal communication and collaboration within companies. Companies can then think about Social Media in new ways, even in areas such as organizational development.

“Social Media is not just about how an enterprise does its marketing, but how all the people in the enterprise talks with its market.“

Internal Social Networking is already being experimented with in companies such as the Beehive project at IBM and N-Square at Nissan. As McKinsey & Co. consultant Leigh Weiss says about the benefits of the Nissan initiative:

“What we know from research is that one of the primary reasons people stay at the same company is that they’re well tied into the social fabric of the place…Companies will often lose top performers because they aren’t sufficiently mentored or connected.”

With Social Networking established in companies as a tool for internal discussion and work groups, I think the perceived value of the medium will increase for everyone, even for those people who are currently watching from the sidelines.

At that point the relevancy of Social Media in general will also increase, which will then likely lead to broader adoption and usage across all ages, potentially closing the Social Networking age gap as it exists today.

The problem with this type of thinking is that when content providers or marketers start to develop Social Media strategies, they quickly realize that generalized “Social Media” thinking leads to one size fits all ideas and a lack of focus.

In actuality, Social Media comes in many distinct forms, which I think of as different faces of the same general concept. Understanding the nuance behind each of these faces is critical to understanding Social Media as a whole.

Social Knowledge networks such as Yahoo! Answers allows users to ask questions about a wide range of topics and then allow other users to answer them. As I have written about before, they are also one of the fastest growing forms of Social Media.

Social Bookmarking sites, such as De.licio.us are mostly about saving and tagging web pages for future reference. They become social by allowing others to read your profile and access other pages that you have tagged and saved.

Social Content, as seen in sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and most forms of blogging, is the most pure form of Social Media. In fact if we didn’t use Social Media as a catch all term for all the above types, it would be a good way to describe this group, which focuses on the submission and discussion of user generated content such as videos, music, photos, and the written word.

Social Networking is a form of Social Media that enables people to connect with other people. While there is a user generated content aspect to social networking, it is less about the content and more about collections and connections of friends, and keeping up with what they are thinking and doing. This is where sites such as Facebook and MySpace reside.

Social News sites such as Mixx, Stumbleupon, and Digg facilitate the sharing of news and different forms of social content by allowing members to share, comment and vote on what they like or don’t like. These sites are heavily involved in the viral aspect of Social Media.

Social Gaming is a form of online gaming that moves beyond the personal experience and adds a layer of social interaction. Two of the most well known examples are World of Warcraft and Second Life. While WoW has built upon a PC game by taking it online and adding a huge world centered on collaboration and social interaction, Second Life makes a game of social interactions by the simple fact of allowing people to fully act out self-created avatars and allowing them to interact with other avatars in a virtual world.

Social Collaboration has many different aspects, but I see it primarily being less a form of media and more a form of crowdsourcing. It can range anywhere from wikis to prediction markets to something like Wikipedia.

I’m sure there are some distinct faces of Social Media I may have missed, or that I’ve grouped together into one of the above. Are there any others out there that people could suggest?

As the viewership of YouTube becomes more mainstream, its potential for buzz marketing is becoming more viable as well. Unlike something like Facebook and their Beacon program, the buzz marketing potential for YouTube seems more organic and less intrusive, since in many ways it falls along the lines of traditional television advertising.

As this article by Tameka Kee at Online Media Daily outlines, Google is piloting some very interesting tools, including the placement of in-video ads through use of their buzz targeting algorithmn:

“YouTube buzz targeting works on an algorithm that looks at a number of viewer activities, including how many times a video is chosen as a favorite, how favorably it’s rated, and how quickly it picks up views, to determine which clips are about to ‘go viral.’”

One of the pilot participants was Lionsgate, which utilized buzz targeting for its April 18th launch of the movie, “The Forbidden Kingdom”. Danielle DePalma, Lionsgate’s director of digital media feels the potential of buzz targeting with YouTube will be strong:

“With so many videos going viral on YouTube at any given time, buzz targeting allowed us to reach a very large, diverse audience….It) was an amazing opportunity for us to capitalize on the most popular videos on the site.”

In addition to their in-video advertising, Lionsgate went beyond the obligatory movie trailers and included an interactive video mixer tool, which allows viewers to create their own clips with sound and video transitions from provided footage from the movie.

It’s these type of viewer engagement tools that makes Google CEO Eric Schmidt bullish on the increased marketing potential for YouTube for 2008.

“We believe the best (YouTube) products are coming out this year,” Schmidt said, in an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. “And they’re new products…much more participative, much more creative…much more interesting in and of themselves.”

If 2007 was the year that the marketing potential of Facebook flashed on and off with Beacon, 2008 may be the year that YouTube gets it right with buzz targeting and other tools.

Especially during times of recessions, downturns, and economic stagnation, consumers tend to look for good value and deals. What’s different about this latest downturn in the economy, is that many are turning online to find them.

This behavior is leading to growth in online printable coupon sites such as RetailMeNot or Coupons.com. Viewed as a group, you can see the recent share growth in these type of sites in this graph from Heather Dougherty at Hitwise Intelligence:

During recessions, making sure that brands are providing a good value at shelf has always been a critical task for marketers when consumers are watching their dollars and cents.

What is new is that consumers are increasingly looking online as they look for good values in the brands they buy when budgets are tight.

Cell phones and smart devices are inherently social devices to begin with, and unlike home and office locked PCs, they can blend virtual and physical social networking in all environments.

While I’ve written previously that cell phone usability and their current data plans have held back full development of the Mobile Internet, the iPhone and the Blackberry (and all its clones) are beginning to turn the tide.

From a recent study, eMarketer is predicting that that mobile social networks will rise from 82 million users in 2007 to 800 million worldwide by 2012.

Much of this growth will come from existing social networks shifting their coverage to the mobile space.

According to Brandon Lucas at MySpace, who is their senior director of mobile business development, MySpace recorded over 7 million unique visitors to MySpace Mobile in the US in the six months since launch. “It wasn’t until we rolled out m.myspace.com that we got a sense of how powerful demand was for MySpace on cell phones”.

There are also dedicated mobile social networks that are growing as well. For a complete list of 38 different mobile social networks, check out this post by Social Media Trader.

With the ability of mobile devices to operate in many different social spaces, both virtual and real world, the expectation that mobile will be the future of social networking is not as far fetched as it seemed only one year ago.

The latest rankings just came out from Junta 42, which ranks the top content marketing blogs on the Net, and Insight Buzz just joined the list at a very respectable #30.

If you get a chance, check out the community that Joe Pulizzi is building at Junta 42. He has assembled a great resource for those involved in content marketing, which is the art of communicating with customers and consumers in a way that goes beyond just simple selling, in order to provide useful information to a loyal base of current and prospective users.

To use a quote from the Junta 42 site:

“Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent.”

And by rewarding consumers with valuable and relevant information, marketers themselves are rewarded with a consumer’s business and subsequent loyalty.

All of which are best practices in a Web 2.0 world.

Everyone from whom you’d expect (Method home products) to whom you wouldn’t expect (British Petroleum) are crafting messages that play off people’s growing awareness and concern around environmental issues.

However, as this study in Marketing Charts from Burst Media shows, consumers aren’t necessarily buying into all that green messaging:

• Only one in five respondents (22.7%) say they “usually” or ”always” believe green claims made in advertisements.
• Two-thirds of consumers (65.3%) of respondents say they “sometimes” believe green claims made in advertisements.

The reason for consumer skepticism is simple, and it has to do with authenticity. For the vast majority of products being marketed, “going green” is a tactic rather than something central to its brand or design.

Does that mean brands and products shouldn’t go green? And if they do, how should they make meaningful and believable communication?

Seth Godin suggests that marketers should give consumers a number:

Stick with the lightbulbs you have throughout your whole house until they burn out: 175.
Replace them all now with something better: 142.

or

Drive to Philadelphia: 150.
Take Amtrak: 22.

His reasoning is that seeing a number attached to environmental behavior gives people something to work towards, which then motivates them towards more green behavior.

“The power of a number is the effect we saw when they put a number on restaurants (Zagats) and wines (Parker) and gas mileage (the EPA). People notice a number, and they work to improve it. If every car sold in our country had a real-time gas consumption meter on the dashboard and the rear window, things would change very fast.”

Focusing on a tangible number is certainly more effective than some vague “green” platitudes.

However, until more transparency and authenticity permeates environmentally conscious marketing messages, consumer skepticism around “green” advertising will only continue to grow.