AddThis, one of the largest social sharing platforms, understands the relationship between social media and commerce – and it’s realistic about what you retailers can do.

In a presentation at eTail Boston today, during the Social Media Summit, Key Compton, the SVP of Corporate Development, outlined 5 facts and 5 actions that retailers can take around social commerce. Here they are (and forgive us, these are rough notes):

1. Fact: The most valuable share is not always on the most visible platform
Action: Know your most valuable share. News sites, for instance, tend to have fewer shares but very large click backs and their share action is also different. The largest share action is url copy and pasting, the second largest is Facebook. When it comes to certain big food brands though, Pinterest gets the greatest number of clickbacks

2. Fact: It’s all about the follow through – social doesn’t stop at the first share
Action: Build content strategy based on conversions

3. Fact: Social behaviors reveal insights you can use on your own domain
Action: Use personalization in response to your customers’ social behaviors, such as personalized welcome bars to greet users

4. Fact: Social data is a key data point
Action: Add scaled but precise audience to your targeted ad models

5. Fact: Social is in the fabric of your users’ lives and should be
Action: Move social to the Paid Owned Earned model for building audience, engagement, advocacy