How important is social media becoming for E-Commerce?

By Charlie Britten
23 Dec 2019

E-Commerce is a rapidly growing feature of the retail landscape - and social media has a definite part to play in helping drive sales.

In a digital age, it does not require a great leap of the imagination to think there could be a link between e-commerce and social media. After all, both have been fast-growing features of online activity across the globe, with Britain one of the leading nations in both cases.

On the one hand, E-Commerce has become so important in the UK that some are blaming it for the decline of high streets in towns across the land. At the same time, the use of the internet is almost universal, with the Office for National Statistics declaring in its latest report (May 2019) that 99 per cent of people aged 16 to 44 had used the web at some time in the previous 12 months.

What can you do to get started?

If you have an E-Commerce business, the question is clearly not whether you may be able to leverage social media for your benefit, but how you might go about it.  

Questions you could ask would include:

  •          Which platforms should I use?
  •          What kind of material should I post on social media?
  •          How often should I post it?
  •          Most importantly, what am I aiming to achieve?

The obvious answer to the last question may be to increase sales, but that is the end goal. The key point is to work out how to get your potential customers to the point where they are ready to make a buying decision.

Among the steps that this can involve are:

  •          Creating awareness so people know about you and what you offer to begin with
  •          Tell a story to maintain interest and help nudge people through the consideration stage
  •          Make introductory offers such as discounts to help get new customers on board.
  • All these goals can be accomplished by the right kinds of social media posts.

Why you need to choose our platforms carefully

Judging what platforms to use may depend on the buyer persona of your target market. For example, if your target market is male, professional and over 35 in age, you would find LinkedIn a very useful platform, while if the target was more female and under 30 then Instagram would be a much better prospect.

The kind of material you post may also be more suited to some social media platforms than others. For example, video can be used effectively on different mediums but is particularly suited to YouTube and Facebook.

Good images are certainly important for your social media. Like video, still images provide a clear visual guide to what you have to offer your potential customers. For this reason, it is important to include relevant and high-quality images. You don’t want something with a poor resolution as it looks unprofessional and will not attract anyone to your products.

How can you write good social medias posts?

In the case of written text, the post needs to be short and succinct.

  •          In the case of Twitter, there is an obvious necessity to keep it very short due to the character limit.
  •          However, that does not mean you should write very long posts on other social media, as readers tend to be put off by them.
  •          You still need to optimise content, so make sure you write relevant, authoritative content and use the right keywords to keep your SEO at a high level.

Why you should make the most of social media interaction

It is also important to remember social media is an interactive medium; this gives you a great opportunity to pick up positive feedback and customer reviews. It also enables you to stimulate discussion.

Of course, you could face some negative posts but you can also demonstrate great customer service by responding to them in then right way, such as swiftly replacing damaged goods or fixing any technical problems that might arise with your website.

How BeUniqueness can help

With our expertise in digital marketing and the use of social media, we can help you put together an effective social media strategy to help increase awareness of your firm, bring in new leads and increase customer engagement.

BeUniqueness can also use the latest tools to help in practical ways, such as re-scheduling social media posts so you don’t have to go online at all times of the day.  

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