Most internet retailers know the importance of social media marketing as a direct channel to their consumers. And they’ve duly implemented the easy stuff to compliment standard retail marketing efforts: Facebook pages, Like buttons for products and Twitter accounts. But these services aren’t the only methods that can help increase consumer engagement and yield real rewards for retailers. What about all those bricks-and-mortar retail stores, for one thing?

In the fast-moving world of social media, there are a whole host of social and digital innovations that can help boost retailer efforts in the social sphere.

Here are our top 5 tips to supercharge your retail marketing.

The notion that mobile phones could replace cash and wallets has been bandied about in the mobile industry for years now. And Near field communications payments, otherwise known as NFC or contactless payments, has been one of the mobile payment methods that has long captured the imagination.

After all, what could be easier for consumers and retailers than paying for goods with a mere wave of an NFC enabled phone?

It appears, however, that Near Field Communications mobile payments faces a number of adoption hurdles and will have a very limited uptake for the next few years. One of the major challenges is education—for both retailers and the consumer.

Is Facebook treading on dangerous territory here? The ubiquitous social net is introducing a new ad format—Sponsored Stories—that turns the “likes” and other actions of their friends into promoted content. The ads–which will include the user’s name and profile photo–will appear on the pages of their Facebook friends in a strip on the right hand side of the newsfeed.

According to Mashable, advertisers can choose between four types of user actions to turn into a Sponsored Story: aside from “likes,” these include check-ins, actions within custom apps, and Page posts. For example, if a company has created an app, it can promote the actions users take inside them. Similarly, user postings to the walls of favourite brands can also be used.

Facebook has launched with some stellar partners, including Coke, Levi’s, Anheuser Busch and Playfish, and is to open up as a self-serve option in a few weeks.

As Mashable notes, Facebook is trying to do what Twitter has done: turn the content in their networks into ad dollars. The main difference between Promoted Tweets and Sponsored Stories, however, is that with Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, the advertiser still defines the content, while with Sponsored Stories its down to the user.

But with no opt out option, will users appreciate their actions being turned into ads?