One of the things which you’re going to need to do if you want your store to succeed is use social media to publicize your company and communicate with your customers. Nowadays, a business with no social media connection is as dead-in-the-water as a company in the 1970’s or 1980’s would have been without a telephone.
Social media is just one of the earmarks of a professional business and it is among the most effective ways to advertise, offer customer service and let customers know that there are actual people behind your organization.
The Basics of Social Media
You understand that social media can be a great way to get traffic to your ecommerce website but that doesn’t mean that getting that traffic is going to be easy. It especially is going to take work if you want to have sustained success throughout your shop’s lifetime. That means that you aren’t just looking for short-term social media tactics, you truly need a strategy. That begins with goal setting.
Setting goals is important no matter what you want to achieve, because unless you know where you’re going you have very little chance of getting there. You want to set goals like: traffic grows from social media, number of followers/fans/other vernacular of your social media platform, your conversion rate, article engagement amounts and expansion goals.
You also should know what your customers desire. This was discussed a little bit in the chapter on niche marketing. You want to know what kind of content they desire before you start posting and then track and remain in the loop using social media, comments, and other methods to track reactions.
The analytics that have your website also can provide you with a whole lot of advice on what your customers are looking for and what kind of articles would bring in the most traffic. The keywords that people use when they reach your website are especially telling and may be an unlimited supply of themes to write about.
Finally, among the most basic things about social media that anyone just coming in should understand is that social media isn’t for selling. If you try to create your social media platform a podium from which to hawk your products, you are likely to lose your followers very fast.
However, if it is possible to keep followers interested in your feed — whatever platform you are using — you will see that new followers will come along with your regular followers will not be offended by the occasional product recommendation from your shop, particularly if it is something which solves a problem that someone was introducing on social media. Just remember to keep tabs on your progress and your social media efforts are showing improvement.
Ten Social Media Strategies for Ecommerce
- Here are some social media strategies that have been shown to be particularly powerful in ecommerce. These are things that you should strive for, but if you aren’t performing up to 100% on everything (or anything for that matter) do not worry — because if you’re improving — your income from social media will be improving as well.
- Make sure that you are thinking carefully about what words you use in your social media articles. You don’t need to write just anything. For one thing, it is going to live on the internet forever, so if you’re giving advice, triple-check to make sure it is accurate. But what is probably more important is that you use keyword research when you create social media articles. You’ll be able to get your social media posts higher in search and as a result, attract more followers.
- Share images whenever possible. Your followers and anyone else who views your articles will be scanning the net like everyone does and you need to be able to catch their attention and get them to really read your content.
- Sharing your reviews can be one of the very best sales tools that you have. When someone leaves a favorable review like for instance a white label review management software, share it on social media and then sit back and watch the sales roll in.
- Make it simple for someone to share your content with others. Make sure that you are following a strategy and creating buttons which are in a place most likely to be used by your readers.
- You are on social media to make a human face behind your business so make sure you really interact with your followers. Read their articles, and comment on them when appropriate and do everything that you would do for a friend that you’re following on a personal social media account. Of course, the more followers you have the more limited your personal interactions must be, but the point is to be certain your followers know that you really care about them and do not just see them as dollar signs.
- Combine any groups that are related to your market or industry. If your social media platform provides classes, make sure you combine them, and use this the same way that you want a forum related to your chosen subject — post great content that will be viewed as “expert” content.
- Find out who the influencers are in your niche and build relationships with these people. Every niche has people with a good deal of weight behind them on certain subjects.
- People who post consistently get the most followers, the most interaction from the followers that they have, and they build the best brand image. If you don’t have time for this, consider outsourcing or using social media automation tools to provide consistency.
- Use hashtags but do not be ridiculous. You don’t need to make a hashtag with every single post that you make, and you don’t need to use multiple “adorable” hashtags on each article but if you can use hashtags which don’t make people want to unfollow you, you’ll get a big boost in traffic from the people looking for those hashtags.
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Brevity is the key to interaction. If you want people to look at your content create engaging post names and make your posts as short and succinct as possible. As you should make your blog articles and information comprehensive enough to provide valuable information, always be thinking of ways that you can shorten things to create more engagement.