Many people are successful using social commerce to boost sales in their business. But, some businesses aren’t so successful. The thing that separates the two is whether or not they’ve done their homework and planned well for their social commerce experience. Social commerce isn’t a “build it and they will buy” experience. It’s an ongoing long-term investment in the overall health of your business. Follow these tips consistently, and you will have social commerce success.
1. Be responsive – You’ll notice on social media that your customers will be more likely to ask questions and engage with you. Be sure to answer them. Whether positive or negative, it’s imperative that you communicate with your customers on social media or you’ll be seen as unresponsive.
2. Choose tech wisely – Evaluate the different technology available to create and merge current stores with stores on social networking sites. If you don’t already have an online store, evaluate the technology in terms of how long it’s been around and whether or not you can expand to your own site rather than only through the social network.
3. Create engaging content – Like with any online presence, you need to always be creating engaging content for your customers and potential customers to attract them to your social commerce sites. No matter what, content will always be king.
4. Create urgency – People will act faster if they think they might lose out on an offer. Remember to make it exclusive, unique and compelling to your audience on the network in which you are engaging.
5. Keep it simple – If you already have a store using another platform, don’t feel like you need to duplicate this effort. Instead, you can integrate and sync your current store onto social media networks like Facebook.
6. Measure results – Once you have clear goals, you will be able to accurately measure the results of your actions. You can even change course midway through if you can tell something is obviously not working out.
7. Put share buttons everywhere – You should have all your social network buttons on all blog posts, and anyplace else that you are allowed to put them. This encourages and helps your audience share your content.
8. Put users first – It’s more important to make the experience a good one for your users than complicated and overwhelming. Consider the tools on the social platform that are made specifically for it rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
9. Remember the CTA – If you don’t ask your readers, followers, and connections to share, buy, or do something…they won’t. Your call to action is one of the most important elements in all your content, regardless of where you are putting it.
10. Set clear goals – If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you ever get there? Create goals with real steps toward achieving those goals, just like you create a map when you travel to a specific destination.
11. Time it right – Check with different providers like AWeber, MailChimp, Bitly, and others that keep records. What are the best times to promote? You can also take an educated guess based on how well you know your audience, or by trying different times of the day to promote something and recording the results.
12. Use the tools available – Each social media network has its own tools that you can use such as Facebook Ads, Promoted Posts, Offers, etc. where you can easily boost what you wish to promote. However you can increase the likelihood of content being seen, do it.
Social media isn’t something to replace your other internet real-estate. It’s simply a new tool at your disposal to expand your reach, increase your sales, and make your mark. It’s a necessary component in any type of online marketing success.