Your social commerce strategy will include your goals, how you’ll reach those goals, and what constitutes success. You’ll need to ask yourself a few questions to help develop your social commerce strategy. These are questions like:

1. “What is my overall goal?” – Is your social commerce goal to earn more money, or get more shares and more people talking about your product or service via social media?

2. “What resources do I have to reach the goals?” – Can you do everything yourself or do you need to outsource some of it? What is your budget? What technology do you need?

3. “What are my strengths and weaknesses?” – Are you great at producing content, or are you great at technology but weak in other areas? How can you leverage your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses?

4. “Who is my audience?” – How well do you know your audience? Do you know what their hope and fears are and how you can help them reach their own goals? Do you know what social media networks they use?

5. “What is my product or service?” – Do you already know what your product or service is? How does it help your audience? In what ways can you see it or promote it on social media?

6. “Who are my competitors?” – It’s always important to figure out who your competitors are so that you can work out what you can do different than them.

By evaluating those factors, you’ll be able to determine your social commerce strategy better because you’ll have options from which to consider. Once you’ve identified several different strategies, you can evaluate them to determine which one you want to proceed with. Don’t place any judgments on the different ideas until you get to the evaluation stage. Judgments stifle creativity. Let the ideas flow.

In addition, it’s important to consider these factors when developing your social commerce strategy:

* Legal compliance – Depending on your niche, you may need to determine whether you are in legal compliance. This could include the checkout process or the privacy of information. Ensure that you understand the laws and how they relate to your particular business.

* Site security – Social commerce means buying online, and you want to ensure that your site and any sites you recommend are secure so that none of your recommendations or clients are ripped off by scammers.

* Your availability – If you sell a service, how much time do you really have, and is it worth it to sell from multiple locations if you only have finite time to sell? Do a cost benefit analysis to determine how important social commerce is in your particular niche.

* Technology choice – What are the choices you have when it comes to technology due to your budget, knowledge or other factors?

* Inventory – If you are marketing a physical product, can you get enough inventory to create the type of success you need once you implement a social ecommerce strategy? How many widgets do you need to sell to break even?

By considering all these factors you’ll be able to create a top-notch social commerce strategy that is not only profitable, but works.