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 Social Media Practices to Fuel Your Ecommerce Store

  Social media has been an effective marketing channel for years. Social commerce is the process of selling directly on social media, even without a store website. It’s an $89.4 billion market right now, expected to grow to $604.5 billion in the next few years. Social media is an incredible opportunity for businesses.

  But ways to use social media to grow business in 2022 go far beyond posting products with links, organizing paid advertisements and mentioning partners. Social media with the value of transparency and authenticity and recommendations from influencers would be preferred. Apart from that, due to the influence of Covid-19, we now enter into a normal. Your social content must also adapt to that.

  In this blog, I’ll share seven social media practices to fuel your ecommerce store.

1. Decide on Social Media Platforms

  With endless social media online, you couldn’t cover all. Focus on selecting the social media platform where you can post quality content that will really reach your target audience.

  Ask your customers. Find the right moment in the buyer experience to send out an email or survey to ask on which social network it’s best to connect. If you want to be more indirect, ask them where they heard about you.

 Create buyer personas. You could do some research on which social media platforms your existing customers are using. Some platforms are particularly popular with specific demographics.

 Follow your competitors. Who are they following? Who is following them? Examining a direct competitor’s customer base gives you a good idea of who you should be targeting. And chances are good that you would also perform well on platforms where they’re seeing engagement.

  Where are your customers talking? Use Google Alerts or Mention to keep tabs on your industry keywords or your competitors. Set up an Alert to receive notifications whenever your competitor is mentioned, and pay attention to which platforms come up the most.

2. Make a Schedule

  Once you’ve narrowed down which social media platforms get the most engagement from your audience, it’s time to think of a strategy. How frequently will you post? What topic may attract the audience?

  Analyze your competitors. You could research your competitors’ content, learn what works for them and avoid their mistakes.

  Get inspiration from your favorite brands. Why narrow your vision to the same industry? See what your favorite brands post. Why do you follow them? What content form do they use? Learn available cases and apply them to your business.

  Create a content calendar. Decide on the content you’ll post on social media and create a calendar to know when and what to post. Don’t make your social media fully filled with products promotions. Consider adding some informative, educational, and entertaining content.

3. Optimize Profile Page 

  Social media is about engaging and communicating your messages to the audience. When your posts attract people, the next thing they would do is follow your social media account. At this time, the first thing they would notice is your profile page. Optimizing the profile page could show your brand and encourage customers to act.

  A well-designed bio should be informative and eye-leasing. Consider optimizing your profile with complete business info, high-quality images, and actionable button, and your store link. Your contact information is also recommended to add so that when customers have any questions, they could contact you more directly and instantly.

4.  Decide on Your Message

  Consistency of message is something that I am no longer bothered to mention. When you sign up with a social media platform, keep your posts and tone consistent. Customers will get used to your voice and schedule, so keep it predictable for them.

  Besides, as users are tired of direct selling, they want to see more authenticity and transparency behind the brand. Try to make your words more story-telling. Below are a few ideas for your inspiration:

• Go live and share a teaser for an upcoming product
• Share behind-the-scenes footage of your store—show your audience your product creation process or how you’re brainstorming new ideas
• Give a tour of your workstation, whether it’s your dining room table, a study, your office, or any other place you work at
• Collaborate with an influencer or a partner—put together a story takeover, co-host a giveaway, etc.
• Spread holiday cheer and show people how you’re preparing for the festivities
• Pivot your tone of voice from ‘selling’ to ‘lifestyle’

Image Source: Lululemon

The image shows what we could still exercise at home even under the influence of epidemic.

5.  Be Human and Build Relationships

  Social media is the best channel for small business owners to talk directly to their customers. Be human and focus on nurturing relationships. Over time it will help build a loyal community for ongoing sales and acquire new customers.

  How can you build relationships on social media?

• Always reply quickly when users leave messages, even if their reviews are negative.
• Organize contests through branded hashtags, publish polls, repost UGC (user-generated content) with mentions and comments, use interactive stickers–all these encourage interaction and engage followers.

Image Source: sheinofficial

• Mention followers and brands you refer to in the posts.
• Co-post with influencers or some of your customers to enhance credibility.

6. Use the Right Tools

  Maximizing the value of social media is a multiple task. You need to generate strategies, publish consistent content, track and analyze the performance to adjust your strategy. Being tired of juggling all these things? Delegate some to the right tools:

  Canva to create visual social media posts

  Magisto to edit video

  Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule social media posts

  BuzzSumo to analyze your post

7. Track Performance

  Our ultimate goal of using social media is to bring conversion. So remember to analyze your performance to know what works and what does not. You could use tools like BuzzSumo to track. This will help you make adjustments. Sometimes, even a minor difference in picture color could make difference. You could set two different forms for the same content to check which one works better. Based on data, you’ll see what to improve and gain more engagement and new followers.

Conclusion

   Now you have attained some practices on how to utilize social media to fuel your eCommerce store. Come on and give it a try. No effort will be in vain under a reasonable plan.

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