Now for the first time, the team behind the Yahoo! Store platform has made it easy for Yahoo! Store merchants to “go social.” The official Yahoo! Store Blog just announced yesterday that “social share features” are now available to Yahoo! Store merchants as a standard Yahoo! Store social feature.

Enabling this feature allows your customers to easily spread the word about your products to their social media networks. This boost to your marketing efforts can help you reach a wider audience, which in turn can help to generate more quality traffic for your store.

The FastPivot team has been encouraging Yahoo! Store merchants to add social sharing features to their store for several months now and we are excited that Yahoo! has made it easier than ever to add. Many stores have taken advantage of social sharing and have used it successfully in many cases:

• eCreamery.com used the Facebook “Like” button for a social media contest.
• MixedChicks.net gained over 5,000 likes in just a few months.
• Punk.com has been growing their fan base with over 11,000 likes.

While it’s definitely helpful to have social media sharing features enabled on your Yahoo! Store, features do not define the social experience; they are merely the props which inspire your customers to begin the conversation. As a merchant you should be actively facilitating discussion with those customers in the social space where they are.