Retailers have wracked their brains to answer the question that has plagued them since the advent of the Social Network: we want to capitalize on Facebook’s 618 million daily active users, but how?

Companies across the board have attempted to jump on this social media bandwagon. If you build it, they will come… right? Not quite.

Sure, the customers are online, but that does not mean that they are shopping. They are engaging. With friends, with games and inevitably, with the brand pages they have “liked.” The ability to engage their fan base in the social stratosphere, however, will ultimately determine whether they will reach the multi-channel holy grail, or find their social strategy fall short.

In the below presentation, Daniel Neukomm, EVP for Corporate Strategy at the La Jolla Group (O’Neill, Metal Mulisha) discussed this very challenge. Using the success of La Jolla’s social strategy through engagement as a guide, he made the case that despite Facebook’s drawbacks, social media will be the key to coming out on top in e-commerce.

In the presentation, Neukomm stressed that in order to bring your fans into the buying funnel, you need to remember:

• People just want to see some type of engagement, especially for the products they’re buying.
• Engagement with consumers can be enhanced by using user-generated content like testimonials.
• The use of user-generated content increased user-experience, increased traffic and ultimately increased conversion of bottom line revenue overall.

If you’d like the full transcript to Neukomm’s presentation, you can download it here.