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Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is taking the world of social media by storm. Instead of relying on traditional marketing and communication methods, hundreds of Best Buy employees are chirping on Twitter.com to assist in technology advice. The retailer is becoming more transparent and communicative on its own online forums. And, it's producing video blogs to engage its consumers beyond the world of text.
What does all this add up to? As the last national big-box consumer electronics retailing chain left in the U.S., Best Buy's "community managers" will be speaking at the Engage! to explain why they are doing what they are doing. Best Buy's strategy here is to adopt the communication and networking arenas its existing and potential customers are already in -- and win more sales that way. Its "Twelpforce" effort of offering advice is just a start.
Is social media's relationship with big business just a flash in the pan? By looking at Best Buy's ongoing implementation, the answer would be no. Talking with (not to) your customers, becoming more open and transparent, and having dialogues instead of marketing call-to-actions that are hardly innovative is Best Buy's goal.
Instead of ceding online sales to e-tailers like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), Best Buy is trying to build that audience to buy from it, when ready, either online or in one of its hundreds of national brick-n-mortar locations. Grabbing that audience online and offline in the world of social networking could give Best Buy an even bigger market share boost in the future.
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