Product Research Web 2.0 – Using Social Media to Become a Smart Buyer

This is a guest post from Ann Smarty

I strongly believe that being thrifty is not about counting pennies – it is more about developing a smart spending strategy. If you take time to consider your every purchase, if you thoroughly research every product you are willing to buy, chances are your money won’t be wasted.

Nowadays, the Internet provides for a wealth of opportunities to find useful, impartial information on anything you need. And “social media” tools are the best ones to start with:

Web 2.0 sites feature discussions from real people;
Web 2.0 sites feature most recent (even real-time) news and updates;
Web 2.0 is hard to control and manipulate, thus the users’ feedback is impartial and fair.

Use Twitter Search

Twitter Advanced search provides for a number of really great options you may want to try to see people talk about anything:

Find Tweets asking question: use question mark (?) within the search query, e.g. [godaddy ?];
Find Tweets nearby: sample search [near:"New York" within:15mi iphone];
Find negative reviews (those expressing dissatisfaction): use :( within the search query, e.g. [godaddy :(].

Try Shopping Social Communities

Topical web 2.0 communities are great places to find experienced people share thoughts and help each other. So if you are serious about making good choices, be sure to choose a few social shopping sites to join.

How to choose is really up to you. My criteria are as follows:

The shopping community should be clutter-free;
The shopping community should be spam-free;
The shopping community should be focused and targeted.

Buxr is my personal choice because it only offers quality updates and is attentively moderated to ensure there is no spam or self-promotion:

But then again, I welcome you to share your favorites in the comments.

See What Your Facebook Friends Have to Say

For me Facebook has long been a place where all my friends from all my stages of life are connected. It is quite natural, there are many people who I can trust – and who can help me by advising for or against any product you plan to buy.

SideStripe is a handy gadget that connects your facebook search with Google search: so each time you search Google, you know what your friends have to say:

What I Want Facebook application is another way to connect your friends to your shopping and saving activities. The app offers to add items to your wishlist from any store and notify your friends for them to come and share their opinion:

Use Product Reviews Aggregators

I don’t recommend focusing to much effort on investigating product reviews because they are much abused and manipulated by the sellers but checking a few sites is not bad idea. Here is a good list of sites aggregating expert and user reviews from a number of sites. PriceGrabber and BizRate are two possible options to try:

Do you leverage social media for product research? What are your tricks?
——–
The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a blogger and stay-at-home mom and entrepreneur.