Cheaper prices for the social media savvy?

The tie up between social media and retail buying/selling has moved on apace this week.

Gilt Groupe, a discount – and more latterly not-so-discount – designer goods ecommerce trailblazer has done a deal with Klout. I expected discounts to be available based on a Klout score – perhaps the idea being the more influential you are more the more likely you’ll be to shout about a purchase and attract more users. (I almost wrote about ‘social amplification’ then. Close one.)

However, when I clicked through yesterday from a very obvious banner atop their daily email…

…it seemed more like they’d got hold of half a dozen trendy New Yorkers, from various fields but all with high Klout scores, to suggest what the rest of us might buy. (I should point out that I’ve yet to buy anything, just like when I wrote about content+commerce and Gilt/guilt).

Correction: I’ve just come across this other Gilt email:

Indeed it does show money off according to Klout score. Here’s to those in the 81-100 bracket, eh. (And the trendy New Yorkers haven’t gone anywhere, if you were wondering.)

A day or so later I then heard about American Express doing a deal with Twitter so shoppers get discounts when they tweet using certain hashtags.

AmEx hasn’t been short on the digital innovation front in the past. It has worked with check-in specialists FourSquare previously and its content marketing gets top marks. In particular its OPEN Forum community for small businesses is a poster child for a brand doing content well, outstripping many of its PR or advertising efforts.

There will be lots of innovation in this area. It’s only just getting off the ground but large amounts of it will be related to location, social media scoring or both.