PowerReviews, a provider of customer reviews and social commerce solutions recently launched BrandConnect, a new suite of relationship-building products, designed for brand owners and merchants.

The BrandConnect tools follow on the heels of the “Community and Social Media Study” findings. The study, released by The E-Tailing Group was commissioned by PowerReviews.  Darby Williams, vice president of marketing at PowerReviews said that the research helps the company to better understand how much adoption of social media marketing has taken place in the retail industry.

Your customers’ friends can follow a link from Facebook or Twitter to read the user-review, super-imposed right on the product page. (Click for larger image).

The study, which assessed the attitudes and actions of brands and retailers as they make their way through the world of social media, found that five out of ten social media tools have been adopted by more than 50 percent of brands and retailers, and that the Facebook Fan Page was the most popular social media platform

BrandConnect lets you Track, Analyze and Shout Out

Today, many experts believe that standard marketing and merchandising tactics are becoming outdated and more brands are looking to social media to engage consumers.

“Retail is embracing and adopting social media rather quickly, said Williams, “The problem is that in embracing social media you can’t lose control of your brand in the socialsphere.”

PowerReviews’ new BrandConnect Suite is designed to help merchants listen to what is being said about their brand in the socialsphere, and it consists of two offerings:  Listener and Megaphone.  Listener is a social monitoring and analytics tool and Megaphone is a tool that can be used to harness customers—and their followers—to quickly and effectively spread the word about the brand and the company’s products.

Listen For and Shout Out About Your Brand

BrandConnect Listener is a social monitoring and analytical tool that aggregates customer feedback to help you better market and position your brand and products. For example, if you currently market a product as a “novice” device, yet consumers are calling it an “amateur” device, you can quickly restructure your branding of the product to react to the real-time customer feedback.

Listener will also show similar results for your competitor’s products and allow you to track negative-word-of mouth feedback so you can minimize the impact on your brand.

Megaphone leverages the power of your brand’s loyal customers and their friends and followers. Since customers are more likely to purchase products they learn about through social media (65 percent according to a 2009 Powered Inc. survey), Megaphone is designed to encourage consumers to publish product reviews on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Here, when someone publishes snippets of his or her product review to Facebook, for example, it would appear on the person’s Facebook Wall and when friends click to read more, they’re taken to the actual product page with the review shown over top. This helps retailers take advantage of immediate sales by having the cart-enabled product page visible.

Social Media Adoption Will Continue to Grow

While you might think that getting word of a brand out in the socialsphere is most important, according to Darby Williams, the Community and Social Media Study found that being able to track and analyze social media data was just as important to merchants.

The study found that one of the biggest concerns merchants had about social media trends was people’s ability to trash their products in front of a large audience.  Tools like BrandConnect can ultimately help you see and understand how consumers talk about your brand, and you can engage those customers and build brand loyalty within different online social communities.

The study results also showed that the Facebook Fan Page is the most popular social media platform with an adoption rate of 86 percent among brands and merchants. Other top social media tools include Twitter (65 percent), Customer Reviews (55 percent), Blogs (55 percent) and Viral Videos (50 percent).

The study also indicated that over the next 12 months the highest growth in social media adoption is expected to occur in Facebook Connect, Social Listening tools, Customer Reviews and also Product Suggestions.

Pricing and Availability

The BrandConnect Suit is currently available to brand managers and owners.  While no public pricing rate card is available, merchants can request a demo on the PowerReviews Web site.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.