By Bob Speyer and Janette Speyer, Web Success Team –

Social Media is the “great communicator” for brands trying to reach out to their consumer base. What they often overlook is using the social media platforms to effectively target and promote their etailers and retailers.

This cross-platform promotion can reap significant benefits for both the etailers and retailers that carry your brand. It helps brands communicate with their partners that they are helping promote their online properties and driving traffic to increase their sales. In turn, retailers and etailers will want to cross promote and push a brand’s products as well. It’s a win-win for both brands and vendors.

Here are just a few ways brands can use Twitter to promote their etailers and retailers.

The Upside

1. Offer joint contests and weekly specials (only at XYZ etailer or retailer) with a link to the web page.
2. Sponsor etailer Twitter parties – gain more visibility and top of mind brand recognition.
3. Send #FF on Fridays – Follow Fridays are a great way to show appreciation to both etailers and retailers
4. Retweet (RT) their specials to your followers
5. Work with the social media managers to create promotions that support their sales
6. Push people into their stores by sharing their coupons and promotions
7. Share your etailer and retailer blogs with a personal tweet – show them the love
8. Talk directly to your etailers and retailers by using their handler and getting up close and personal (for example @GelsonsMarkets, @Vitacost Good morning! Wishing you a great Monday).
9. Twitter Parties – you can monitor the Twitter Party feed as a non-participating brand to get marketing feedback as to what people want or are saying.

The Downside

1. Be careful not to share links that compete with your products
2. Read all blogs that you share and make sure they are relevant to your brand message
3. Don’t participate in Twitter parties unless you are invited by the etailer or retailer. Sometime these parties are for moms and families only.
4. You can be a sponsor or a guest on a Twitter party but as a brand you will have to pay to play. If someone else is sponsoring a Twitter party, you as a brand should not participate but you can monitor the feed

In the Final Analysis

Brands are in a partnership with their etailers and retailers. Supporting each other through Social Media, whether it be through Facebook or Twitter, can pay big dividends in boosting brand awareness, pushing out joint promotions and driving traffic to increase sales. Scratching each other’s back is a smart marketing tactic. Etailers, for example, will even compete with each other for consumer eyeballs by pushing out your brand’s specials to outsell their competitors. When that happens, brands benefit from all the competitive free advertising.

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