The study of 100 UK retailers by dotCommerce says retailers are losing out in the battle to boost sales and generate loyalty through social media. Half of the retailers generated less than £10m annual turnover, while the other half were large retailers turning over in excess of £100m.
Only 42% of retailers have some kind of social media presence with just 12% using more than one social media channel.
Among those that have a social media presence there is little in the way of integration with just 32% of retailers with a Twitter or Facebook account promoting this activity on their websites.
The report also highlighted the different strategies being pursued by larger and smaller retailers. As many as 42% of larger retailers for instance have a Twitter or Facebook account while among smaller brands only the number stands at only 12%.
Twitter has taken over from Facebook as the social media platform of choice despite Facebook's considerably larger user base.
The study suggests that the ease of setting up a Twitter account and its open nature could be behind this from a business standpoint.
Retailers using Twitter are mainly using it for push marketing with 73% using it for announcing product updates, 62% for marketing and 58% to promote company news.
Some retailers such as Sainsbury's are doing more interesting things with Twitter such as inspiring people to try out new recipes.
Blogging has failed to take hold in any significant way among either larger or smaller retailers although there are slightly more in the latter category than the former.
Around 10% of smaller retailers have a blog while only 6% of bigger players have gone down this route. Of those who do blog only 38% posted daily with updates comprising mostly product updates (50%) or company news (50%).
Overall only 8% of retailers have a blog on their website, making it the least used of all the main social media channels assessed.
As to whether there is much social networking life beyond Twitter and Facebook the answer among retailers, at least, appears to be no. Only 6% of retailers offered links to any other social media channels such as Youtube and Flickr
Simon Bird, technical director at dotCommerce, said: "We were surprised by the low levels of social media usage among the retailers we assessed. For those who had taken the plunge, there was a lack of sophistication and low levels of integration with their other online marketing efforts."
He added that retailers were missing "lucrative opportunities to engage with target markets and drive business through social media".
Bird said: "A surprisingly high number of brands with a social media presence on an external channel failed entirely to publicise this on their website. This is a significant missed opportunity for brands who want to adopt a joined up marketing strategy to maximise the effectiveness of their social media presence and deliver return on investment."
DotCommerce's five social tips for retailers:
- Publicise your social media presence – let your customers know where to find you on social networks by integrating all your web channels,
- Find out where your customers are – not every network will be right for every brand, so do some detective work and see which channel is being used by your customers.
- Quality content is key – social media success depends on creating great content that your followers or fans will want to share.
- Engage with your audience – most of the retailers using social media are just broadcasting information. Initiating conversations and engaging with your audience will help encourage loyalty and retention.
- Track your traffic – if you use a social channel to promote offers, make sure you use trackable tags in the links to your site, or an affiliate, to track the effectiveness of the offer.