Social media has become an essential part of almost everyone’s day-to-day life. It has the popularity as a means of driving force to new customers to a website, yet there are many who have been dragging their feet back in setting up an eCommerce site.
Social media marketing is becoming increasingly popular with eCommerce businesses, but social media isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. What works on social media varies from business to business and social network to social network; some social sites may work better for your specific needs than others – research and understand your target social site/sites before you begin using them in your social marketing plan. Make sure that the entire organization understands its social media strategy and goals, and what social networks it should be focused on.
Lack of focus and a clear plan that needs to be laid out for social marketing. But before designing a complete strategy need to be set up to make your presence felt on social media, and also be able to decide if the effort, time, and money spent is worth your business. Here are a few tips below.
As social media is the new way to communicate with existing and potential customers, you need to come up with a plan on how social media fits into your overall e-commerce marketing strategy.
Some social networks that can be used for this purpose are:
– Facebook – social networking site where anyone can create a free account. By having an eCommerce store’s fan page, users can learn about your store and products, enter contests or promotions, become a follower to get special discounts on their social media pages.
– Twitter – social microblogging service that allows users to send ‘tweets’, similar to blog entries. Followers on Twitter receive live updates of social media pages they are following.
– LinkedIn – social networking site where members create a profile and connect with others in their field of expertise. You can advertise your products and services for free and increase customer awareness about your business while increasing brand engagement and social authority.
2. Find and engage with customers
To find customers go where they are, it’s a marketing jig. There are many social websites that can be used as a medium to interact with them also find new customers. Allow the customers to use their existing website profile to register to your site as well make sure the registration process is easy (with maybe just 2 basic steps: Name and Email Id) also including the homepage, product page, order confirmation page should have easy sharing buttons. Let your customers be the deciding factor and make it easy for them to give feedback or rate your product.
Make sure social media reaches out to potential customers and engages them in a conversation and not just something that is useful if they want to contact you or get your attention. Make your social presence visible and also let them know of any special promotions or sales going on, but also maintain a social persona and not just post-sales and discounts all the time.
It’s easy to get carried away with social media marketing actions, so before you launch into social media ask yourself some questions: What do I hope to achieve? How will I measure success? And also think harder social media is not just a place where you post links to your site, social media is interactive so there are no silver bullets when it comes to social media marketing.
Sure social networks are free but social media marketing also has costs in terms of time and effort. Keep your social media efforts focused – don’t post articles about sports and politics. You’re not going to convert people to buy your product by telling them the Republicans are rubbish!
Don’t try social media outsourcing it requires knowledge, social skills, and most of all time, social media is a time-consuming task and social marketing in a successful e-commerce business is also about being social with the customer.
Make sure that social media accounts are not stagnant, keep them updated and relevant. You can use social bookmarking sites such as stumble upon and Reddit to generate social traffic.
8. Abstain from overselling:
Many at times in the struggle of attaining the customers on to your social site end up being too self-servicing to the customers. Giving special offers and discounts are great but it should eat up only a small percentage of your content. It would be better if rather encourage the customers in discussions like sharing their views and ideas. As recommended by Experts recommend that 20% of your content can be promotional posts and the rest of the 80 % needs to be content that interests the customers and conversations.
9. Be Visually Creative:
With a bit of creative thinking, one can make any brand find a meaningful way to create meaningful and visually appealing content. As we all know photographs possess the highest potential when compared to social campaigns other types of to share to sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
Take Away-
Social media marketing is all about knowing your customers better. Never stop researching on other platforms because that is the best way you can redefine your strategy and improve yourself as an eCommerce retailer. Be focused, consistent, and smart in your efforts.
A successful eCommerce store will have an active presence across several different social networks! A successful eCommerce site also takes into account the cost of not only money invested in their products but social media promotion.
Your social marketing campaign will have a big impact on your social media strategy if you are an eCommerce store, so it is important that you don’t spend too much money or time building social presences for social networks unless they can benefit your business goals.
