There’s no double that social media has become an integral part of many marketing plans.
With billions of users across numerous platforms, social media presents a massive opportunity for businesses to reach and engage with potential customers — think of how TikTok has exploded in popularity over the past few years.
But setting up a social media presence for your eCommerce store can be overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the world of social media marketing.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of setting up your eCommerce store’s social media presence for success.
From choosing the right platforms to creating a content strategy and measuring your success, we’ll cover all the essential steps to help you build a strong social media presence that drives sales and boosts your online reputation.
Are you ready to learn more?
Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
1. Leverage the platforms your audience is active on
Picture this: you are creating content on Twitter, regularly publishing it, hoping people will engage with the content and eventually get you more sales.
It’s time to come back down to reality — because it’s all silent here — no engagement on your posts and no messages enquiring about your products.
You need to ask yourself the big question: Why did this happen?
The simple answer: your audience isn’t active on the platform. And even if you gain engagement on the platform, it won’t come from your ideal customers. Your efforts invested in content creation on this platform will be futile.
That’s why it’s crucial to study the different social media platforms and select the right channel where your audience is present. Make sure to secure your accounts – use a password manager like LastPass to generate strong passwords.
Facebook is the ideal platform if your target audience falls in the 35–44 age bracket. And it’s the most popular social commerce platform among digital buyers.
Why? Facebook allows you to set up a shop and create product catalogs, which help streamline the purchasing process on social media.
For example, Norfolk florist has a wide catalog of flowers identified by the occasion on its Facebook page. The result? Higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates.
Instagram is a social media platform that caters to a broad age range, with the largest demographic being millennials and Gen Z. Most Instagram users are between the ages of 18 and 34.
As an eCommerce store, you should use Instagram because it provides a visually-driven platform that can help you showcase your products and build your brand’s identity.
The platform’s young demographic makes it an ideal space to connect with younger audiences and build a loyal following. And not to mention Instagram’s features, such as shoppable posts, make it easy for users to purchase products directly from the platform. Leveraging these features strategically can significantly contribute to the effort to grow Instagram followers.
If you need inspiration for how to set up your Instagram profile, take a page out of Ulta Beauty’s book.
Ulta has amassed over 7 million followers by creating a strong bio, adding Instagram Highlights, and using it as a platform to share their products.
Twitter is the perfect platform to help you strengthen your eCommerce brand identity and boost customer service.
Understand what people say about you, get feedback, and answer comments and concerns by leveraging social listening to improve your branding and encourage repeat customers.
For instance, Nike responds immediately to a customer complaint about receiving the wrong order.
LinkedIn is the ideal platform if you’re targeting B2B customers.
Beyond driving sales for your product, LinkedIn helps you land opportunities like participating in business events and finding collaborations. LinkedIn for business is a valuable resource for anyone looking to grow their professional network, build their brand, and find new business opportunities
Plus, it’s an excellent outlet for sharing exciting or important news about your brand. For instance, Olipop turns to LinkedIn to share the announcement of its new Lemon Lime flavor.
Do you have an audience that’s primarily women? Then Pinterest is the perfect platform for you, with women representing 76.7% of users.
Like Instagram, it’s a visual channel, but it’s extremely helpful for increasing your products’ discoverability and driving website traffic.
West Elm, a modern furniture company, has built a massive following on Pinterest with nearly a million followers and more than 10 million monthly views.
How? By sharing high-quality product photos that inspire people in their interior design process.
?Pro tip: You should be active on at least two social media platforms where your audience hangs out. It’s a surefire way to boost your reach and leverage different types of content.
One of the best examples of this is StudioSuits.
They’re active on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. And because they are active on these five main channels, their social activity is much higher, and the audience reach of potential customers is much wider.
Five is better than one, right? 100%.
2. Create engaging content
To set your eCommerce social media presence up for success, create engaging content that excites, educates, and entertains your audience. But what to create?
Every social media channel has its optimal content formats. For example:
- On Facebook, create text and image posts.
- On Instagram, create image posts, carousels, reels, and stories.
- On Twitter, create tweets and Twitter threads with text only, images, and videos
- On LinkedIn, create text posts, carousel, image, and video posts
- On Pinterest, create regular pins and idea pins — which can comprise multiple images and videos.
Once you identify the platform and content format, use a mix of content to engage your customers:
- News: Share announcements and your eCommerce store’s wins.
- Inspiration: Share content your audience can take inspiration from and implement it.
- Education: Talk about their pain points, problems, and challenges they face — teach them the concepts and take them closer to their solution.
- Promotional: Promote your products and sell them upfront.
- Contests and giveaways: Run fun contests and giveaways to get your audience to interact with you and increase your profile’s reach.
- Customer/ Influencer features: Feature customer testimonials, transformations, or influencer campaigns.
- Behind-the-scenes: Show people what goes behind your work process — the products you use and source, team members working on X things, etc.
- Q&A: Ask questions to your audience to increase the interaction, and then respond to them with a video or a simple text answer.
For example, look at how Glamnetic shares clean and aesthetic posts on their Instagram.
They leverage influencer and customer features and share educational posts to educate customers about their problems. Not to mention using a background remover tool to add custom pink colors in their product photos to match their brand identity.
3. Integrate videos into your content
Did you know 61% of video marketers say that the level of audience engagement — defined as things like shares, likes, and comments — are metrics by which they measure the ROI on their video content?
The analysis: you need to create video content to convey value, express your personality and address your customers.
But the big question is: how to use videos for leveraging your eCommerce store social media presence? Here are a few ideas to spark your creativity.
- Create byte-sized Instagram reels to showcase behind-the-scenes of your product and how the final product looks, and take a deep dive to show the product’s benefits.Similarly, to enhance your social media strategy, you can buy Instagram story views to increase visibility and engagement for your brand’s narrative. Download Instagram reels using various services to save these videos for future us
- Record customer testimonials — get the customers talking about their transformation before and after using your products.
- Create a video showcasing your eCommerce brand’s story — why did you start your business, what was the idea behind it, and how has the journey been? The idea is to weave in a story and evoke the audience’s emotions via the video.
- Create videos in 100 languages with the help of advanced text-to-speech tools to increase brand awareness across a border audience.
Now, let’s look at an example in action. Penn Tool Co specializes in selling power tools online. Instead of using static images, they focus on creating educational video content for their social channels.
This strategy allows them to demonstrate their products and discuss complex topics surrounding power tools and how to use them safely. And the format choice paid off tenfold, helping boost sales.
What’s the moral of the story? Content formats matter. Adding more context helps answer consumers’ questions and pushes them closer to the purchasing process.
4. Don’t forget to track metrics
You won’t know how well your strategy is working or where to improve without tracking and analyzing your performance metrics.
Some essential metrics include engagement, follower growth, website traffic, and conversion rates.
By regularly monitoring these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into how your social media strategy is performing and make data-driven decisions to optimize your approach.
You can visualize these insights using the best notion widgets to analyze the most recent data by the hour.
And when tracked, these metrics can help you identify areas where you need to adjust your strategy, create new content, or target specific audiences to improve your overall performance.
Wrapping up
And there you have it. Four simple steps to help set your eCommerce store’s social media presence for success.
If there’s anything to take away from today’s guide, it’s this: start now. Social media is the best way to reach a large audience with minimal effort (and a low budget).
Remember, social media constantly evolves, so staying updated with the latest trends and strategies can help you pull away from the pack.
By consistently refining your social media approach, you can establish a strong online presence, stand out from the competition, and drive success for your eCommerce store.
