The Ultimate Guide to Social Media For E-commerce

Source: Neil Patel

These days, everyone and their dog has a Facebook profile or page… literally.

If a dog can gain a following on social media, so can you.

But even with the enormous popularity of social media platforms, some businesses still haven’t tapped into the potential they hold.

Others have made half-hearted attempts but haven’t taken advantage of social media for all it’s worth.

If you haven’t yet created a strong social media presence, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your site, and make sales.

Thankfully, it’s not too late.

Whether you’re an avid social media expert or a total newcomer to the party, you can still use social media to grow your business.

In this guide, I’ll help you understand why social media is so important to your success. Then, I’ll walk you through how to use it to drive traffic and to increase sales.

We’ll discuss proven social media techniques, and I’ll share some tips and tricks that I’ve found success with.

I’ll tell you how to pick which social media channels to use, and I’ll even teach you how to measure your return on investment for social media so you can make sure your efforts are paying off.

By the time you finish reading, you’ll know everything you need to know when using social media for e-commerce.

Let’s start by looking at why social media is so important for e-commerce stores.

Why is social media important for e-commerce?

Although search traffic is making a comeback, social media is still a significant driver of traffic for websites.

Why have social shares dropped?

Users are now spending less of their time on Facebook and more of their time on video and live streaming content.

This type of content is less likely to link out to other pages.

So just because the number of shares seems to be going down, that doesn’t mean that social media is becoming less popular.

If anything, the usage of social media continues to grow.

You can see how the volume of activity on social media sites keeps growing year over year.

This means the opportunity to drive traffic from social is alive and well.

According to current projections, 90% of businesses will be using some form of social media for customer service in just two years.

If you’re in the other 10% two years from now, you’ll risk losing customers.

Why?

Well, customers spend 20-40% more with companies that they have social media engagement with.

Last year, there were 2.46 billion social media users. This year, projections show that the number will rise to 2.62 billion. And just three years from now, there will be over 3 billion people using social media!

You can’t ignore a market that huge.

In the past, companies assumed that if their target market wasn’t teens or twenty-somethings, then they could ignore social media.

That’s no longer the case.

Social media is attracting users of all age ranges.

Ignoring social media is basically handing customers to your competition. If you want to stay in business, you need to adopt social media.

Consumers don’t just have social media accounts. They use them a lot.

On average, they use it for 2 hours and 15 minutes per day! That’s a third of their total online time. It’s also twice as long as any other online activity.

This means that your ideal customer is spending more than twice as much time on social media as they are on shopping or browsing other websites.

Why wouldn’t you target them there?

How do you drive traffic from social media?

You can use social media for e-commerce in two different ways.

You can use it to simply drive traffic to your website (which I’ll focus on here), or you can use it to make sales (which I’ll talk about later on).

Social media is all about three things: connections, relationships, and engagement.

Remember that, and you can use it to drive traffic to your business.

Research shows that customers who experience positive interactions with your company on social media are almost three times more likely to recommend your brand.

Can you guess where they’re going to make those recommendations?

You guessed it: social media!

And when someone says something about your business on social media, it has a much greater reach than if they just tell their coworker at the office.

So, how do you create positive interactions on social media?

Start by making sure you’re posting content that resonates with your target market.

People crave human interaction. 78% of customers believe that social media is the future of customer service.

Not only that, but 88% of customers are less likely to buy from you if you leave their social media complaints unanswered. If you don’t have a social media presence, how will you answer their complaints?

But if you have a social media presence and you answer a complaint, you can turn it into a success.

77% of customers have improved their perceptions of a business after chatting with them online.

Others will see that communication and resolution on social media. That means that you can improve their perception of you as well.

If you want to increase traffic to your site, you need to make sure that your social media content is timely and engaging.

And in order to be engaging, you need to share images, written content, and links to your website.

Increasingly, it will be more important to share video content as well.

85% of companies plan on increasing their social media video content this year.

If you want to compete, you will need to do the same.

While organic content can be successful, it can also take a lot more time and effort.

That’s why 94% of companies using social media have paid for ads and/or sponsored posts on Facebook.

Also, 67% of companies said that they plan on increasing their social media advertising budgets this year.

Here’s the bottom line: All but 6% of businesses are already paying for Facebook Ads (among other paid social media ads), and two-thirds of them plan on increasing their spending this year.

That should tell you two things:

1. Social media advertising works.
2. You’re going to have to pay to play.

If all of your competition is investing money into social media to boost their visibility, you need to consider doing it, too.

Companies that have paid for social media ads are over twice as likely to report that social media marketing is very effective for them.

So if you haven’t already done it, you should seriously consider paying for ads.

But that isn’t the only way to drive traffic through social media. Here are some other avenues you should take advantage of.

Facebook content

Articles that are between 2,000 and 2,500 words in length get more shares on Facebook than articles of any other length.

Videos between 4 minutes and 4 minutes, 20 seconds in length get more shares than other videos.

Of course, length isn’t everything. You need to produce high-quality content that captivates your audience.

Live streaming videos

Live streaming is a huge (and growing) form of social media.

Currently, users upload over 300 hours of video to YouTube every minute!

YouTube users enjoy a total of 1 billion hours of video content per day.

People clearly love video. But there’s something even more exciting than regular video: live video.

People in nearly every age category, from teenagers to those 55 and older, create and watch live video. Overall, 36% of Americans watch it, and 22% create it.

Live videos are good for more than just publicity. They will often lead to conversions, too.

Two-thirds of people are more likely to buy a ticket to an event after watching a live video about it.

Here are some other interesting reasons why you should consider using live video:

• 80% of people prefer watching a live video over reading a blog post. 82% of people would choose live video over any other type of social media post.
• Users watch live videos on Facebook 3x longer than recorded videos and they get 10x more comments.
• Over 36% of Internet users have watched a live video.
• Live.me is less than two years old, but it already has more than 20 million active users. And these users create over 200,000 hours of original content each day.

Why is live streaming taking the world by storm?

Viewers respond positively because of the immediacy and engagement it creates.

Live video creates an enhanced customer experience.

Most social media platforms now have native live streaming capabilities or easy integration.

Always make sure you let your followers and fans know you’ll be live streaming beforehand.

Make sure your videos are authentic and informative.

Remember to breathe.

If you connect and build a relationship with your audience, they’ll not only become loyal fans. They’ll also become vocal advocates on your behalf.

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