I’m hon­ored to be host­ing today’s hash­tag #social­me­dia #sm104 chat on Twit­ter, from 12pm — 1pm ET.

The topic will be “Re-Shaping the Pur­chas­ing Process: The Rise of Social Retailing”

Of course, social retail­ing has always existed at the local level, through people-based busi­nesses like the mar­ket and mom-and-pop con­ve­nience stores. Even larger retail­ers like Nordstrom’s under­stand the value of per­sonal rela­tion­ships and deliv­er­ing per­son­al­ized ser­vice (and here’s how one sales asso­ciate extends rela­tion­ships and ser­vice on Twit­ter). But for the most part, busi­nesses have not yet fig­ured out “how to take what they’re already doing in their local com­mu­ni­ties and trans­fer it to the new world of Face­book and the Web.” (see this TechCrunch post by Craig Donato)

The key to social com­merce is not automa­tion, but devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships, estab­lish­ing trust, and cre­at­ing conversations.

In today’s chat, we’ll be dis­cussing the fol­low­ing questions:

Q1: How is social impact­ing retail sales?
Q2: How does Face­book, LBS (Loca­tion), Group Buy­ing change brick & mor­tar?
Q3: What is most impor­tant with social com­merce — brand­ing, pro­mo­tions, expe­ri­ence — and why?

If we have time, we’ll also dis­cuss Q4: What is the future of the group buy­ing indus­try?

I hope you’ll join us! Just search for hash­tag #sm104 on Twit­ter between 12pm and 1pm, ET.