Social commerce offers an exciting new way to attract customers, offer customer support and  increase purchasing opportunities for your brand. However, unless you look at implementing social commerce in a strategic way, convincing key stakeholders on its value may not be easy.

Sam Decker at Clickz.com offers some sound advice on getting the buy-in you need, and he states that success requires the involvement of three different groups: C-level executives, employees, and your customers.

Each group will want to understand the value of social commerce participation from their own perspective and Decker indicates the key is to focus on results.

Decker states that C-level executives will want to see what kind of sales impact your social commerce initiative will have so it will be important to tie the project back to business objectives and sales targets.

...lay out a clear roadmap for which marketing methods you'll use to attract...people; which exact promotions and messages you'll use to turn those people into buyers; and how you'll integrate social programs with larger marketing and business goals.

With fellow employees, you'll need to demonstrate that success requires participation from all levels of the organization, from "the marketing department to operations, information technology, merchandising, store employees and anyone else who directly impacts the company's bottom line or interacts with customers." It will be important to share campaign progress with employees as a way to demonstrate how their involvement is contributing to the campaign's success.

Finally, you need to implement engagement tactics to attract and build customer interest. There are many examples of social commerce activities so you will need to investigate which ones are the most appropriate for your organization to implement. This involves careful evaluation of business objectives, available resources, and customer shopping and research preferences. After all, there is no sense offering a mobile app if you know the majority of your customers conduct research via desktop computers. Your messages will need to clearly demonstrate the value your customers receive by engaging with you via social commerce (think: what's in it for them).

Getting buy-in for your social commerce initiative is much the same as it is with any marketing-sales initiative. It requires careful planning, a solid understanding of your organization's business goals as well as an understanding of how and where your customers conduct product research and what motivates them to make purchasing decisions. Equally important is the ability to provide measurable results demonstrating how the campaign is impacting sales positively.