Point of View: JCPenney

JCPenney has a whopping 782,000 fans on Facebook (vs. about 4,000 on Twitter).

One of the ways they differentiate themselves from others is their "Weekly Obsession", where Penney features certain items on a weekly basis.

Here's another tip. It's a lot cheaper to have a conversation with customers via Facebook than it is to tell customers what to purchase via a catalog --- assuming you have the ability to obtain a mass of fans on Facebook (hint: not easy, not easy at all).

It's interesting to see the evolution of marketing. JCP was the final holdout in the "Big Book" world of catalog marketing. Of course, today, the website is the "Big Book".

We've gone from big books to targeted catalogs, targeted catalogs to websites, websites to e-mail campaigns, e-mail campaigns to search marketing, search marketing to social marketing, search marketing to mobile marketing. Things are branching out, folks. We no longer have the luxury of marketing one message to one big audience.