E-commerce businesses today cannot afford to sell products on their website only. Social media platforms form another vital area in which retailers need to promote their products and even sell them directly.
Many brands and individuals host their online stores only on social media. Or they rely too heavily on their Facebook and Instagram stories and use their websites to support their activities.
Whichever eCommerce business model you work with, it is essential to use social media to develop your business. This is especially true if you have a B2C business, as a significant portion of your target market is present and active on social media.
In this article, we will take a look at some useful social media strategies for eCommerce businesses. Using these tips, you can develop a solid social media strategy that increases engagement and sales.
1. Start with a social media content calendar.
Your social media presence is as good as the posts you create. Scheduling and creating text messages, pictures, and videos is a complex task you need to do daily. For best results, you should plan your social media content using the content calendar.
Even a simple content calendar using an Excel worksheet is better than no planner. A digital marketing study found that 33% of all marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. The best metrics were those that planned and documented their content strategy.
2. How to set up a social media content calendar
One of the main ways to optimize your calendar is to create an Excel sheet with rows and columns for the week’s days and various social networks. This setup gives you a general idea of how your content will look over time. If you use a cloud service like Google Drive, you can share your documents with others and edit content in real-time.
It is also worth subscribing to project management platforms and social media management tools. You will be able to provide access to these platforms to many employees. The main benefits of using social media management tools include post scheduling and brand monitoring. You can use hashtags and brand mentions to create channels. These feeds will be populated automatically with tweets, posts, comments, and other content whenever they are made up of your chosen keywords. Whatever option you choose, it is planning your content.
Another useful calendar that you can customize is the annual holiday calendar. Important events such as Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday are displayed in the holiday calendar. When you use a holiday calendar for reference and create a social media calendar, you will not miss an important event.
3. Share your positive reviews and ratings.
It is well known that achieving positive reviews and ratings is essential for an eCommerce platform’s success. Here are some vital eCommerce marketing stats you should know:
- Seventy percent of consumers are tested before purchasing.
- 90% of people reading online reviews say that reviews affect their purchasing decisions.
- People rely on 12 times more product reviews than brand descriptions and advertisements.
If you want to build trust through your social media profile, it is essential to post your ratings and reviews on social media. You create social evidence and convince your audience that your brand can be trusted. Take screenshots of positive customer reviews and post them on your social media pages.
It is essential to ask existing customers to rate their brand on multiple platforms. Facebook allows people to see the ranking of your business page. Your Google My Business page also provides ratings and reviews from people who have visited your business. Encourage reviews and ratings by emailing users a few days after submitting your product. Some businesses also add loyalty points to provide reviews.
Customer videos are the most effective way to build your online reputation by getting testimonials. Posting videos on social media is a sure way to attract attention and build trust. We will explore this in more detail in the next section.
Another tip for creating social proof on social media: Browse for brand mentions and relevant hashtags related to your products or business. You will receive content created by your customers. Share their message on your page, and you can save yourself from the hassle of creating content from scratch and help people trust your e-commerce brand.
4. Use video
Do not underestimate the importance of video in your social media marketing. Today’s two most significant technological developments are worldwide mobile Internet availability and smartphone availability.
People worldwide can rely on their phones to get as much information as possible on their desktops. Mobile devices are used for search, grocery shopping, and even banking.
With this shift towards greater use of mobile devices, videos have become the dominant content format due to how easy it is to view them on small mobile screens. Creating videos is the best way to succeed in social media marketing. Here are some ideas you can use:
Create short videos inspired by popular Tik Tok and Snapchat content. This works well when targeting a younger audience and can use a playful tone for marketing their products.
Use specially designed social media story tools to create engaging social media posts and videos. Use emoticons, music, colorful text, and other interactive elements that social networks allow you to add to your messages.
Create a live video to capture your audience’s attention in real-time. People speak very well about live content. They will interact with you and connect the person to the brand, helping to build trust.
Creating video content will diversify your content calendar. You also have several options for making different videos. By using and tracking data, you will soon understand what your audience is responding to.
6. Add a social media feed to your eCommerce site.
The purpose of this strategy is to transfer content from social media to your website. Why should an e-commerce website add social channels to its website? Let’s take a look at several reasons:
- You have more control over the branding of your site.
- On platforms like YouTube, you run the risk of losing viewers with competing content. By hosting a YouTube feed on your site, you keep your audience on your page longer.
- It is a way of adding social evidence. Take a look at examples of cosmetic brands. You will see Instagram posts of users of their products on product pages. These channels serve as social testimonials and also show how people are working with your product.
You can manually code your site to display social media posts. Another option is to work with social media plugins. Adding social channels to your site brings visual content, interactivity together and builds trust in your brand. You will use social media creatively to support your email.
7. Build trust and authority through a blog
A blog is a digital asset that not only assists in SEO, but also facilitates the exchange of opinions and engaging content on social media channels. It also serves as a launch pad for new products and services and can redirect a lot of traffic to your site. Connecting your blog with attractive social media posts can form the basis of a great shopping trip for your customers. Finally, partnering with well-known bloggers and influential people can increase your audience growth and engagement.
Here are some inspiring examples of ecommerce companies that have made the best use of their blogs.
- Myntra, India’s largest fashion and lifestyle e-commerce portal, with its thought-provoking articles, has become an opinion leader in its industry. Strategically connecting products to your blog has resulted in higher conversion rates.
- Similarly, the growing fintech e-commerce company Gro has built its blog on the most common investment-related doubts and conversations, which has greatly expanded its reach.
To cite them, many organizations have started implementing these social media marketing strategies on their blogs to optimize engagement and conversion.
8. Creative Communication Design
Ensure that the aesthetic and color scheme of the entire post aligns with the core brand values. A / B testing is another effective method of a post or content to optimize conversions.
Using high-converting keywords in your social media posts can also significantly increase the visibility and reach of your product. It has already been proven that well-researched keywords can outrank your immediate customers. Likewise, using hashtags makes your content more visible on social media platforms.
9. Promotional offers for attractive campaigns
Discount and cheap campaigns can be a very effective social media ecommerce marketing strategy. A great example of this is Lenskart, an e-commerce for eye care and eyeglasses, which has had great success with their social media advertising campaigns, where they offer coupons for free. 150 for any new registration. They are quite successful in promoting about their products on social media. One of his campaigns tweeted 1.6 million on Facebook and more than 6,000 on Twitter, which is no small feat.
Likewise, incorporating elections into your positions will not only increase engagement, but will also give you a deeper understanding of the thought process and behavior of your audience.
10. Invest in social media marketing advertisements.
According to leading social media management consulting company Sprout Social, “89% of marketers use Facebook in their brand marketing campaigns.” This large-scale use of Facebook ads by marketers confirms that social media advertising is extremely useful to increase engagement and outreach.
Before investing in social media advertising, make sure that the audience of this platform matches your ideal customer base. The platform should be able to enhance your brand image and increase the level of communication with your target audience.
Almost every social media platform today offers a variety of advertising options. Facebook and Instagram have recently added dynamic product ads to their portfolio of ad formats. Dynamic shopping ads automatically start promoting your products to people who have shown interest in the products on your website, app or anywhere on the Internet. Thanks to these advertisements, the popular travel site Airbnb was able to reduce its acquisition cost by 47% and reach 238 million people worldwide.
12. Harnessing the power of data
Social media platforms are rooted in analytics tools like Facebook Insights, YouTube Analytics, and more, where you can track your audience’s thought process, behavior, attribution and many other aspects that track your paid advertising campaigns. Today is the era of performance-driven communication, where before publishing anything or starting any new advertising campaign, you can use your historical data, such as which type of post got the most attention or the day of What most shoppers do online. Today’s marketers strive to connect all the points together and create a customized customer journey.