‘Tis the season for shopping! With Black Friday soon upon us, followed shortly by Christmas and then infamous January sales, purchasing power is at its peak during the winter months.

Social commerce is the means of selling products or services directly on social media. Integrating e-commerce within social media is powerful because it allows users to discover businesses through social content and discover products they would not ordinarily look for on an e-commerce site. Facebook Shops, Instagram Shops, and Product Pins are just a few examples of native shopping solutions.

Why implement an organic social commerce strategy?

1. It’s completely free to set up.
2. It makes the sales process more straightforward. Users may shop directly from their feeds instead of navigating to an external website, reducing the extra step when shoppers may change their minds.
3. Conversion rates can be improved by reducing the time between discovery and checkout.
4. Many people use Instagram and Pinterest to find new brands and products; offer people what they want by enabling them to buy what they’re looking for right away.

Set yourself up for success: 4 tips to boost your social media storefront organically

Tip #1 – increase discoverability
There are a number of methods to initially increase your discoverability – Hashtags and Geotags are two features available natively on most social media platforms designed to optimise your organic reach:

Hashtags
We recommend combining trending/popular and niche hashtags; if the hashtag is too obscure, it will be difficult to find and unlikely to be used by other social media users.

Each social media platform has its own guidelines regarding how many hashtags to use. A minimum of three and a maximum of ten is recommended by LinkedIn. Facebook recommends using two or three hashtags. While there is no restriction on Twitter, the platform claims that two is the ideal number. Instagram enables users to use up to 30 hashtags, although just 5 are preferred.

Geotags
Geotags are available on most social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. Geotags can help you to boost brand recognition, reach a wider audience, and even increase revenue. It’s an especially important tactic if you have offline stores to drive traffic to. When people geotag themselves in your location, it produces free exposure and user-generated marketing. By labelling the geographic area in your own brand’s posts, you can inspire others to do the same.

Tip #2 – post product reviews
According to a recent survey, 90% of customers buy based on reviews. I’ve certainly purchased products before because of other users’ reviews (#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt!). For social media, this could mean reviews found in the comments section, influencers trialing makeup products or even my friends posting their cute outfit of the day. Sharing reviews on social media speeds up the steps a potential buyer takes to determine if they’ll enjoy your product.

Mobile banking app, Monzo, often share their product reviews along with a witty caption as part of their Instagram strategy. From a brand perspective, this is a fantastic way to generate visual content for a business that, due to the nature of Monzo’s business, may otherwise lack it.

 

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Tip #3 – collaborate with others

Partnering with a social media influencer, or another organisation, who is established with your target audience can help you reach new customers. Note: Don’t just work with a company because they have a large following; think about their morals and ethics and how they match with your brand values.

Footasylum is an example of a brand that has succeeded in partnering with well-known figures since they frequently collaborate with well-known YouTubers “in order to be seen as an entertainment company by its core audience.” This has resulted in a 600,000 increase in subscribers, with an average of 2.3 million viewers every episode.

Tip #4 – share user-generated content
The most valuable content you can post isn’t something you even have to create! It comes directly from your customers. Users that create content, even if it’s only for one product, make your job easier by acting as brand advocates for the entire brand.

People’s positive emotions are tapped into through user-generated content. Users can imagine what it’s like to use the product if they witness real people using it, which means they’ll be much more likely to make their first purchase and even share their own images and experience.

Tip #5 – use platform features to their full potential
Every social platform is now in battle to lead the frontier of social commerce, so use the suite of (free) tools that they are offering to their full potential. Instagram in particular is gearing up for a bigger Christmas season than ever before, with their introduction of live stream shopping broadcasts, as well as a new price focused gift guide which will soon launch under a “Holiday Picks” section of the Shop tab. Use them – your competitors will be!

Want to learn how to set up a complete social media e-commerce strategy? Get in touch with our award-winning social media team to discover new opportunities to add value through social media marketing: creative@social.co.uk