“Social shopping” is the intriguing offspring of social networking and online shopping, and it can offer your growing business just the marketing leg up it needs. Insiders know that listing their own products on the right social shopping sites can build buzz that leads to sales. This accessible form of word-of-mouth marketing offers a wealth of opportunities for entrepreneurs with limited budgets.

We've been hacking our way through a few of the peer-to-peer websites like MySpace and Facebook so far with modest, yet measurable success. And while commenting on people's profiles, decorating contact pages with picture slideshows, and "poking" him/her late night still keeps us entertained, we're also getting our tails wet (and finding joy in doing so) in a fairly new trend called Social Shopping.

Social Shopping sites serves the role of social networking sites like MySpace by helping online companies like DM build up trust and understanding between them and their customers. The really cool thing about this emerging crop of social websites however is its potential for providing small guys the ability to create buzz for their brand and products. Not buzz that comes indirectly from an editor's opinion or anything like that, but the really honest, effective buzz that originates from the people that matter, the young shoppers online that influence the buying habits of others.

Some of the popular social shopping websites out there are:

ThisNext.com
Crowdstorm.com
Kaboodle.com
Stylehive.com
Wists.com

You can help DressMonkey's word-of-mouth campaign by visiting these sites and sharing/commenting on our products. These sites are actually pretty cool to check out, as they reflect a wide range of personal tastes and allows for an enormous amount of online conversation to take place. You can set up a profile, meet new friends, build/share wishlists, give/receive recommendations and rate products you're thinking of buying, learn what's popular, find customer-specific information on all the crap that's out there to buy, and much more. We just recently became a part of this online community. With what appears to be a breeding ground for consumer mavens, there's a great opportunity for DressMonkey and its limited marketing/PR budget to leverage these social shopping websites by sharing its premium products and services and dishing out something for people to buzz about.

From the March edition of Entrepreneur Magazine