Social media has forever changed our shopping behavior. Therefore, relying 100% on your Shopify website won’t take you far in this eCommerce game. That’s why you need to plan out a proper social media marketing strategy for your Shopify store if you want to thrive and survive. Â
Is it so hard to increase sales through social media!? The answer is no. There are multiple ways sellers can do to boost sales on social media easier than you thought.
Grab your pen and paper because we are going to show you how to sell more on social media with our best tips and tricks.
Let’s get to the point!
Table of Contents
Sell wherever customers are
In an era of social media as nowadays, online shoppers are everywhere. Therefore, a fundamental social media marketing strategy you have to employ for your Shopify store is “Selling wherever customers are”. This holds true to a great extent because where there are customers, there will be businesses.
Here are some most common social media platforms that e-commerce businesses usually involve: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, Tiktok, etc.
Among these social media platforms, some are suitable for B2C (Business to consumers) while others are more potential for B2B (Business to business). Therefore, merchants must choose the social media channels wisely to target the right audience and customers.
To do that, you first need to understand their customer insight and know which platforms their prospective customers mostly use. Moreover, you also have to identify which forms of the commercial transaction (B2B or B2C) you should apply for your business so that you can decide to pick the suitable social media platforms.Â
In brief, businesses of all shapes and sizes should get on multiple platforms to make social selling easier.
Make use of social media sales channels
If getting on more social platforms is step one to increase sales through social media, then the next step is to make use of the sales channels provided by the social platforms themselves.
Commonly, a lot of e-commerce beginners simply use social channels like Facebook, Instagram as a place to post product content, build brand awareness and drive sales through traffic and impressions.Â
This is a good way to help you sell more on social as always. However, it also has certain limitations for both buyers and sellers. For example, a shopper can only see your products on a Facebook post, and he or she has to send a message to ask for price and wait until the store owner replies before making orders. On the sellers’ side, customers often drop the orders on the way because of the inconvenient buying process, payments, late response, or else.Â
We know it is very popular to shop online or sell online like that, but what do you think if you can make social selling simpler and more professional?
Yes, you can do it by leveraging the given sales channels from the social media platforms themselves.Â
If you are selling on Facebook and Instagram as a regular fan page or personal channel, then you can upgrade them into real e-com business sites with Facebook Shop and Instagram Shopping.Â
This is a very smart and getting-popular social media marketing strategy many Shopify merchants are leveraging in the meantime.Â
Stay connected with your customers on social persistently
At least once, you must have heard someone told you to post on social media channels frequently if you want to maintain the traffic and impressions. And it’s true.Â
To e-commerce merchants, traffic and impressions mean sales, so pay attention to how you interact with your prospective customers if you are craving to increase sales through social media.Â
By this, we would like to remind you to stay active and connect with your customers on social media persistently.Â
It simply means you should post on social channels more often and keep it persistent.Â
However, don’t spam on social media if you think it may help you get more traffic or impressions. According to Hubspot’s stats, pages with less than 10,000 fans encountered a 50% drop in engagement per post if they published more than once per day.Â
So, a question remains ‘How often should you post on social media?’.
Suggested posting frequency from experts
Depend on the social media platforms and your own purposes, the posing frequency will vary. Usually, you should post at least once per day.Â
Here is the optimal frequency suggested by experts for certain platforms:
- Facebook: Once or twice per day.
- Twitter: 15 – 20 tweets per day.
- Pinterest: 15 – 25 pins per day.
- Instagram: Once or twice per day.
- Linkedin: Once per day.
To keep up with the tight schedule, you should create a social content calendar where you can visualize your posting content and frequency.
In brief, if you want to boost sales through social media, you have to maintain and improve your social traffic and impressions first; and no other better way than posting on social media more frequently. If posting on social media at a quite high frequency is a burden to you, then you can automate this process.
Check out How to auto-post content to social media.
Also, it’s a smart method to engage with audiences better if you can organize online mini-games or events on social.
Leverage user-generated content to increase sales through social media
Perhaps you don’t know that 95% of people acknowledge that customer reviews have strong impacts on their buying decisions (no matter positive or negative). Moreover, the Olapic study showed that 70% of U.S consumers are more likely to purchase products after reading other customers’ reviews or images.
So, why not embrace this social media marketing strategy to build credibility for your Shopify business meanwhile increase sales through social media? There are two typical ways to leverage user-generated content to strengthen your brand’s trust and awareness.
Publish customer reviews on social media
In short, you can publish all the best customer reviews on your social media as posts.Â
This will not only fulfill the content you need for the posting frequency mentioned before but also capture more attention of customers. Regardless, the genuine reviews from your customers will help you build better brand trust and give you more chances to impress visitors and convince them to make purchases.Â
All you need to do is pick out the most effective reviews of your online stores and turn them into social proof posts on social media.Â
Create social proof through visual content
This tip is applicable to Instagram only since it is the biggest image platform in the world.Â
Nowadays, a lot of people have the habit of posting their product reviews on Instagram and add hashtags related to the brands. Those Instagram posts are vital resources for you to create social proof on your online stores.Â
By displaying the Instagram images or videos of your customers’ product reviews on your websites, you are driving brand trust better than ever and also encourage new more visitors to buy your products.Â
To do so, you can use Socialwidget – The ultimate Shopify app for Instagram feed solutions.
With Socialwidget, all you need to do is connect your Instagram business account and import the media by your brand’s hashtags. Then you can create nice Instagram feeds of your own customer reviews before showcasing them on your websites to sell more on social media specifically Instagram.
What are you waiting for? Get Socialwidget for free and give it a try!
Use advertising to increase sales through social mediaÂ
Unless you’re a big fish, one of the social media marketing strategies you must invest in is using ads. Well, this is not a tip but a must to all e-commerce businesses if they want to thrive in sales on social. Especially when you are a new seller on social media, and your brand is less popular than others.Â
By running social media ads, you are promoting your posts to more and more audiences on social media. Basing on your targets and budgets, the social media ads will offer you various benefits and results.Â
The strong impact of running social media ads in driving sales is undeniable already. Therefore, we are only going to emphasize it once more:
- Drive more traffic and impressions
- Increase brand and product discoverability
- Boost conversion
- Build brand awareness
In brief, it’s crucial for you to leverage social media ads to drive not only traffic, and impressions but also sales through social media. Depending on the platforms you are using and the categories of your products, you can optimize your ads to have better results.
Ready to adopt our highly-recommended social media marketing strategies?
Briefly, these are the most effective social media marketing strategies that fit Shopify businesses of all shapes and sizes.
- Sell where customers shop
- Leverage social media sales channels to generate more sales
- Stay in touch with your customers and audiences on social media
- Take advantage of user-generated content to strengthen your businesses
- Use social media ads wisely
As long as you apply our tips properly, you can enjoy your sales growth on social media. Good luck!