Five Digital Tools to Boost Your Brand’s Image in Social Commerce [infographic]

Online deals find website CheapSally.com has put together an infographic that outlines five digital tools, which, in her opinion (Sally is a real person), provide the most effective ways for brands to engage with their fans and improve their image.

The five tools are: social bookmarking, f-commerce, digital couponing, mobile photo sharing, and gamification. The infographic lists the benefits of each tool along with an example of a brand that is doing it right. Here’s a quick rundown of the tools, the benefits they provide and the company she uses as examples.

Social bookmarking – Sally points to Pinterest’s bookmarking feature, which allows users to create a catalog of online finds and share them with friends. The benefit to brands is that it enables them to gain more exposure and traffic, and showcase their personality (and products as well).

The brand that gets it right in this case is Etsy, due to the fact the site has automated the pinning process by populating the descriptions field with the item name and price. Clicking the pinned image takes users to the respective product on the Etsy website.

F-commerce – Brands using Facebook for commerce create purchasing opportunities by offering exclusive items and discounts to fans.

Sally suggests that Oscar de la Renta is a brand that understands this dynamic and we happen to agree. The brand’s use of Facebook as a channel to provide exclusive offers such as its direct from the runway Esprit d’Oscar fragrance is proof positive that the social network has the what it takes to help brands increase customer loyalty and advocacy. Oscar’s focus on creating a small group of highly engaged ambassadors and converting them into customers is what makes them a brand worth emulating.

Digital coupons – Gone are the days of waiting on newspaper coupons to get great deals. Instead, coupon codes offered online are the order of the day. Sally cites Autotrader as the brand to watch based on its use of discounts with promo codes to incentive customers to purchase products at a reduced rate.

Mobile photo sharing – Brands can use mobile devices to instantly share “behind the scenes” photos that fans and followers can Like, retweet and comment on.

Which brand gets this right? Starbucks says Sally, which uses Instagram to to share coffees found from around the world. The brand also encourages customers to use the app to share images of their favorite coffee drinks.

Gamification – People love to play, so brands can take advantage of that predisposition to turn real-world situations into games where people can compete with others for rewards.

Nike’s Tag game app, which merges running with social gaming and allows users to play a game of tag with other players, is the one Sally picks as the example.

In our opinion, Sally is the one who “gets it right.” Even though her focus is on brand-building, her insights about these five tools provide good advice that brands should consider when seeking to monetize social media and play the social commerce game.

With that said, here’s the infographic.