culled from:http://smallbiztrends.com
These days, it’s almost imperative for businesses to have an online presence. Most people prefer purchasing stuff online rather than going to a store. So, owning an ecommerce website is surely a great idea.
But this is not enough. It is essential to spread the word about the ecommerce website across the internet. And social media marketing is surely one of the best ways to do that.
Social media is almost omnipresent these days. Many people online already have their own active presence on one or more social media platforms. With so much traffic, these platforms surely have the potential to be the most important places for marketing products and services. This holds true for your ecommerce marketing as well.
The impact of social media on business is undeniable. In fact, social media is shaping the way business is conducted online. With these changes happening, it’s time to set new social media strategies for your ecommerce website.
So, how can you integrate social media into your ecommerce marketing strategies?
Here’s a quick look at some of the most common ways to use social media for your ecommerce business marketing.
Use Social Media Platforms Prudently
Why is social media so important for an ecommerce business?
The answer is simple: it is the perfect platform to allow you to interact directly with your existing and potential customers. Thus, you can use it to increase customer engagement.
Besides giving you an opportunity to interact directly with your customers, social media will also help you understand their requirements and answer their grievances. You can also answer their queries.
If you are managing a social media community for your ecommerce website, make sure you do that prudently enough.
Respond to all the queries that are posted there.
Be ready to apologize if a customer has faced any kind of problem on your website.
If someone complains, apologize, solve the issue, and get back to him or her.
When used prudently, the social media platforms can be the game changer for your ecommerce website.
Provide the Most Useful Tips
Businesses these days have two options to be prominent. They can either be amazing or they can be useful. Only when choosing one of these two options can they hope to make a mark in this extremely competitive environment.
Social media seems to be a perfect platform through which your ecommerce website can be useful for customers. Social media platforms are not a good place to write loads about the products and services offered in your ecommerce store. Instead, convey information about your products in short write ups. The rest of the time, you can share tips on different activities that are related to the products that you are offering.
Sharing tips can be one of the best ways for your ecommerce website to remain relevant. On social media, always try to share content that adds value to your potential customers. This will help you attract their attention to a great extent.
Curate Content from Third-Party Websites
You needn’t limit the content you post on social media to topics related to ecommerce either. You should also use other interesting content, which might be related to your business in some way.
Social media platforms require updates on a regular basis to be properly effective. You need to post content in proper frequency. This can be a real challenge, especially if you have to create completely unique content on a regular basis.
There’s a way out though. You can curate content from different sources on the internet. Find relevant content and organize it in a way that will help your ecommerce website’s business prospects.
Try to make the curated content as captivating as possible. It’s OK to share content from another source. Just be sure to properly credit the origin of the information or content you are sharing.
Make Optimum Use of Hashtags
Hashtags (#) are among the most important tools to use these days when posting on social media platforms. They perform multiple tasks:
Increasing exposure
Organizing content
Setting it distinctly apart
So, you should go ahead and make full use of hashtags. They are likely to help your content on social media platforms get discovered by your target audience more frequently.
There is a common trend of using too many hashtags in social media content, however. So, refrain from doing that. Instead, figure out the optimum number of hashtags for your audience (usually two to three in a tweet) and use that as a guide in your social media posting.
Include Other Platforms, Along with Facebook
These days, the use of social media for ecommerce businesses sometimes starts and ends with Facebook. This is primarily because Facebook is the most important among all the social media platforms. It has billions of active users.
But there are other social media platforms as well. For example, you have microblogging platforms like Twitter and others. So, it is important to use all these sites. Besides, while planning your social media marketing strategy, you can also include Pinterest. It is a visual discovery tool and website that uses images. So, the impact is much more than a text-based message. You can post the images of the products available in your ecommerce website and create a pin with them.
Use platforms, such as Instagram, where you can use short videos to persuade customers to buy products from your ecommerce website. You may also want to check out a few other social media platforms and use them prudently for your ecommerce website.
Ecommerce websites offer immense opportunity these days. But you need to market effectively to realize their potential. The proper use of social media can increase the visibility of your website and, at the same time, enhance customer involvement to a great extent. This is surely going to have a positive effect on your website in the long run.
