By Erin Wawok

Feb

26

Using Social Media to Boost Your eCommerce Sales

When operating an eCommerce business, your social media presence is just as important as the design of your website. Between social influencers and integrated shopping tools, social media users are exposed to more eCommerce options via the platforms than ever before. If you want to boost your eCommerce sales, you have to use social media to boost your online presence.

Linking

In the early days of social media, it was difficult to like customers back to your website. Spaces like Instagram did not allow marketers to add links to their caption. While links still are not allowed on Instagram captions, the social media site has make process to become more eCommerce friendly.

Instead of adding a link to your website in the caption, you can add a link to buy a product directly onto your Insta post. These shoppable posts require you to connect your product catalog to your Instagram account, but that is easy and safe to do. Currently, only customers from the US, Canada, Brazil, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia can take part.

If you don’t feel comfortable connecting your Facebook catalog to your Instagram account, you can still lead customers to your website via the app. Instagram allows you to link directly to your website via your profile bio.

Instagram is not the only useful site to boost your eCommerce Sales. Facebook, which owns Instagram, is also extremely useful. On Facebook you can add a photo, link to your website, and caption about the photo all in one post. Both Facebook and Instagram allow you to purchase advertising space. If you aren’t reaching a wide enough audience based on your followers alone, you can reach more people through targeted ads.

Exposure

With social media, you are limited only by your creativity. Its estimated that over 200 million people utilize some form of social media, and many people use more than one platform. If you utilize this valuable resource correctly, you can easily reach thousands of potential customers.

Although selling products through social media is a great way to boost your eCommerce sales, the exposure you can receive online can also cause your bottom line to grow. To maximize your exposure, you bear a few things in mind so that you can craft a compelling, effective post. First, perform keyword research. Similar to SEO research, find which hashtags work best in your industry. If you sell sneakers, “#shoes” may provide too broad of search results to be successful. By finding the best keywords and hashtags for your brand, you can ensure you are reaching the most amount of people.

You should also plan content that you can post across multiple channels. Using analytics, you can find out what kind of content your audience reacts to. By crunching the numbers, you can find a type of post that will receive an active response by your audience on all platforms. If you create a post that is not suitable for one particular platform, you should have a solution that will slightly alter it enough to be cross-posted with minor adjustments.

By utilizing multi-channel posting, you are cutting down the number of posts you need to create, which saves your company man-hours. More importantly, it ensures you are receiving accurate exposure across all platforms. If your posts are relevant to your audience, they will hopefully share it with their own friends, increasing your overall exposure.

Building Community

Even in the digital age, customers want the friendliness of a face-to-face interaction. People may not be spending money in their community, but they want to feel like as though are part of something large and meaningful. Your social media account can help make this desire a reality.

A great way to post original content and make your customers feel like part of a community is by sharing user-generated posts. If you sell clothing, you can share photos of your customers wearing your clothing. This not only encourages customers to post about your brand, but it makes customers feel valued and appreciated.

You can also create a community feel by creating a hashtag specific to your brand. REI is a great example of this concept thriving. REI created the hashtag “#OptOutside” several years ago. When it first began, REI started sharing photos of customers who utilized the hashtag on their own posts. Since then, outdoor enthusiasts have become keenly aware of the REI brand and products. People who love the outdoors have turned to REI as an authority. They also continue to share the hashtag all these years later, because REI has created a community of nature lovers.

Social media eCommerce is complex. Like all marketing strategies, it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to have a successful campaign. However, if you can build a community on your social media platforms, you will be growing your base of loyal customers.

For more help launching a lucrative eCommerce endeavor, reach out to us at ListingMirror.com.

Sell More. Work Less.

Erin Wawok

Erin is the Co-Founder of Listing Mirror.