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Social Media an Essential Tool Behind Hot Holiday Gifts »
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Social Media an Essential Tool Behind Hot Holiday Gifts

Social media are essential marketing tools for connecting with an online audience and optimizing presence during the 2007 holiday shopping rush, according to a study released by Oneupweb.

The study, “Secrets of Social Marketing Success: How 2007 Hot Holiday Products are Being Marketed Online,” is the first in a two-part series that explores the roles of social media in online marketing.

Social media have already begun to make an impact: The top 4 social media in used by enterprises are message boards, social networks, online video and blogs, according to a study by the University Of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

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Moreover, considering that search engines were responsible for over 25% of online retail traffic during the 2006 holiday season, according to Hitwise, improving search rankings can make an enormous impact on your holiday sales, Oneupweb said, citing Google’s Universal Search, which return social media search results.

“By combining results into a unified search engine results page, “Universal Search has made it more important than ever (for marketers) to include as much information as possible, especially in the form of online social media, to improve search rankings and increase traffic. This can make an enormous impact on…holiday sales,” said Oneupweb CEO Lisa Wehr.

Oneupweb reviewed 12 consumer products and well-known consumer brands that are already creating buzz online and off and are likely to emerge as the 2007 holiday season’s hottest gifts: Nintendo Wii, Taryn Rose, Coach, Pronto.com, Webkinz, Starbucks, Casio Exilim Camcorder, iPod Touch, PLEO, A Thousand Splendid Suns (novel), Sephora, and Target.

For its study, Oneupweb examined the websites behind those products and brands, as well as those of their competitors, to provide a snapshot of what they’re doing within the realms of social media.

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