Buying Stuff with a HashTag

by: Melanie Libatique

Tweet and you shall receive!

The gist of this week’s big news for social media and finance is, American Express has finally made it possible for us to purchase products and services with just the use of a hashtag (#).

All you need to do is sync your Twitter with your Amex account and you’re all set to buy anything your hash-tagging fingers desire.

HOW IT WORKS

Once your order is in, you’ll just need to wait for a confirmation from Twitter, indicating that the sale has been made along with additional info you might need to redeem your item. You’ll know your card is good for buying via Twitter when you get this:

To get updates on offers, you’ll have to follow Amex on Twitter https://twitter.com/AmericanExpress/favorites. You’ll be able to see which hashtags to use to buy specific products—from Kindle Fires to dresses.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR LOCAL BUSINESSES?

While getting noticed and talked about is well and good, turning a tweet into a tangible sale is, needless to say, great. Letting people buy stuff directly through Twitter ensures more people will actually buy stuff than those customers willing to go through the trouble of redeeming promotional offers they find online (like on Facebook or Groupon).

Typing a hashtag is also much easier than punching in a credit card number on a website, which can only encourage more Twitter users to tap into any number of consumer feeding frenzies based on trending topics.

As more and more local businesses are beefing up their social media strategies, this partnership will definitely give them the leverage to hit two birds with one stone (traffic and sales). The question is, how can you fashion your campaigns to suit such a great market opportunity?

CALL-TO-ACTION

Here’s a list of stuff you have to do to make this all work for you (that is, you need to already have an active Twitter account):

• Integrate Twitter with your website. The Twitter button should be there an all your pages so visitors can immediately follow and see your page.
• Put your Twitter handles/names on all offsite content being created for you. If you have a separate blog page, the Twitter button should also be there for easy sharing.
• Be an active tweeter. Everything is real time on Twitter and one tweet a day just won’t do. Find the middle ground for frequency and bulk of tweets. Follow relevant people, react, retweet…be interactive, NOT PASSIVE.
• Be innovative with your campaigns. As we always say, “quality is king” and that applies to those 140 characters you put on Twitter.

There could be a few kinks to the system since it’s new and Twitter is now a highly congested environment. However, things look promising for businesses that plan to grab this e-commerce feature.

Image source:

www.marketingland.com