Many businesses rely heavily on their Facebook and Instagram stores and use them to support their websites.
Whatever e-commerce business model you work with, it’s crucial to leverage social media to grow your business.
In this article, we will explore some useful social media strategies for ecommerce businesses. Using these tips, you can develop a solid social media strategy that builds engagement and sales.
Start With a Social Media Content Calendar
Your social media presence is as good as the posts you create. Planning and designing text posts, images and videos are difficult tasks that you need to perform on an ongoing basis. For best results, it would be good to plan your social media content using a content calendar.
Even a simple content calendar using an Excel spreadsheet is better than any kind of planning. In a digital marketing study, it was found that 33% of all marketers have a content marketing strategy. The top performing brands were also those who planned and documented their content creation strategy.
How to Set up a Social Media Content Calendar
An easy way to set up the calendar is to create an Excel sheet with rows and columns for the days of the week and the different social networks. A setup like this gives you an overview of how your content will look over time. If you use a cloud-based service like Google Drive, you will be able to share your documents with other people and edit their content and schedule in real time.
It’s also worth signing up for project management platforms and social media management tools. You will be able to grant multiple collaborators access to these platforms. The main benefits of using a social media management tool are of course, post scheduling and brand tracking.
You can use hashtags and brand mentions to create feeds. These feeds will automatically populate with tweets, posts, comments, and other content whenever they consist of keywords you have chosen. Whichever option you choose, planning your content is important.
Another useful calendar you can set up is a holiday calendar for the year. A holiday calendar shows major events such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Cyber Monday, Black Fiday and others. When you use a holiday calendar as a reference and build your social media calendar, you won’t miss an important event.
Share Positive Reviews and Ratings
It is well known that getting positive reviews and ratings plays a vital role in driving the success of an ecommerce platform. Here are some key ecommerce marketing statistics you should know:
- 70% of consumers check product reviews before making a purchase
- 90% of people who remembered reading reviews online say that reviews influence their decision to buy.
- People trust product reviews 12 times more than brand-created descriptions and sales descriptions.
If you want to build trust through your social media profile, it is important to display your social media ratings and reviews. Take screenshots of positive customer feedback and post them on your social media pages.
It’s also vital to ask your existing customers to rate your brand across different platforms. Facebook allows people to see your business page’s star ratings.
Your Google My Business page also displays ratings and reviews from people who have visited your business. Encourage your users to leave reviews and ratings by sending an email a few days after your product is delivered. Some companies also add loyalty points for leaving reviews.
One of the most powerful ways to boost your online reputation is to get video testimonials from customers. Sharing videos on social media is a surefire way to gain engagement and build trust.
One final tip for creating social proof on social media: Look for relevant brand mentions and hashtags, related to your products or business. You will find content made by your customers.
Share their posts on your page and you’ll reduce the need to create content from scratch, plus you’ll help people trust your ecommerce sales brand.
Use Videos
The importance of videos in your social media marketing cannot be underestimated. Two of the most significant changes in technology today are the availability of mobile Internet around the world and the affordability of smartphone devices.
Through their phones, people access information and rely on these devices more than they do on desktop computers.
Mobile devices are used to research, purchase products, and even carry out banking activities.
With this shift towards greater use of mobile devices, videos have emerged as the dominant content format due to the ease with which they are usable on small mobile screens.
The best solution to win the Social Media Marketing challenge is to create videos. Something you can use:
- Create short videos in the manner of popular Tik Tok and Snapchat content. It works well when you’re targeting a young audience and you can adopt a playful tone to sell your products.
- Use specially developed social media storytelling tools to create highly engaging social media posts and videos.
- Welcome the use of emojis, colorful text, Music, and other interactive elements that social media allows you to add to your posts.
- Create live video to engage your audience in real time. People respond very well to live content. They will interact with you personally and associate a face with the brand, helping to build trust.
- Creating video content will create variety in the content calendar. You also have a lot of flexibility to make different types of videos.
With a little experimentation and data monitoring, you’ll soon find out what your audience responds best to.
Add Social Media Feeds to Your Ecommerce Site
This strategy focuses on bringing social media content to yours website. Why should an ecommerce site choose to add social feeds to their site?
Let’s take a look at some reasons why you should do this:
- You have more control over how you brand your website. On platforms like YouTube, you risk losing your viewers due to competing content displayed after yours.
- By presenting YouTube feeds on your site, you keep your audience on your page for longer.
- It’s a way to add social proof. See examples of cosmetic brands. You will find that customer testimonials from Instagram often appear on their product pages. These feeds serve as social proof and also highlight how real people work with your product.
- Social media is an indispensable platform for end customer sales activities. Ecommerce businesses rely heavily on images to showcase their products and persuade potential customers to buy them.
- Since social networks are primarily visual platforms, they are important places to engage your audience.
These are some important points of reference for approaching Social as a company. Work through these tips and establish long-term relationships with your customers.