Today I am speaking at the Internet Retailer conference at a session called ‘New Frontiers: Marketing and Merchandising on Social Media’. Since the discussion could never be complete without a look at the traffic on social networks, I checked to see how everyone’s favorite category is doing (c’mon you love it or hate it). When traffic levels began to decline in January & February, many naysayers were the first to jump on the ‘social networks are dying’ bandwagon (or something like that). Good news for those who were not so quick to knock them – school is out for the summer & the traffic is on the rise.
The weekly market share of visits for a custom category of Social Networking websites reached 6.82% for the week ending June 6, 2008. This is still lower than the traffic peak in June of last year, but is the highest level since the Christmas holidays.

Since this is a retail conference & all, let’s also see what the direct impact of social networks is on various product categories:

Overall, the share of upstream traffic coming from social networks to each of the product categories is small, but it does show that people are visiting retail websites afterwards. Its no surprise that online music & ticketing stores are the most frequently visited since entertainment is one of the most popular character traits & profile mentions on social networks. Apparel is also a great example as many people also view their personal style as an important component of their personalities – highlighting a great opportunity for the coming back to school selling season. It should also be noted that these categories tend to be more active with social networks in terms of applications and fan groups.
Is your category at the bottom? What can be done to change that???