Social media marketing has taken off like never before with the number of people spending time on social media at an all-time high. According to a recent report by Statista, more than 4.1 billion people are active on social media globally. Moreover, more than 54% of social media users browse for products on it. If you are an online marketer looking to promote your eCommerce store, you should be active on social media, and tapping into this immense target base.

Here are 5 powerful social media strategies that you can use to leverage your social presence for your eCommerce store:

#1 Use Visual Forms of Content

Content marketers today work very hard to make their content visually attractive and engaging. There are many forms of visual content including images, videos, GIFs and memes that brands use to engage with their audience on social media. According to Hubspot, 80% of marketers use some form of visual content as a part of their social media marketing efforts.

Moreover, due to the shrinking attention span of social browsers, presenting content through visuals is a lot more likely to generate interest and engagement. In fact, video has replaced blogging as one of the top assets for visualization within social media marketing campaigns. Visual content also helps you ensure that your readers retain most of the content, even days later.

A great example here is of Frank Body, an American skincare brand which excels at content marketing and social media marketing. The brand communicates through the persona of a guy called Frank, who interacts with customers directly in first-person. This forms a highly effective personalized experience for customers.

Here is a great example:

Source: Frank Body

#2 Build User Engagement and Communication

With social media, the main goal of marketers is to stay engaged with their target audience and form a more interactive relationship with them. Most social media users who are not active in posting are likely to remain engaged with brands and some of them even prefer to communicate with the brands directly. Building user engagement ensures that your customers retain their connection with you which is directly related to their willingness to remain loyal to your brand.

For example, every brand can learn valuable lessons on user engagement from Netflix, even though it is not an eCommerce platform. The brand is highly active on Twitter and Instagram, especially among the youth – their largest subscriber demographic. They use wit, sarcasm, memes and pop-culture references to relate with young audiences and keep them hooked on their social media, sometimes taking engagement levels off the chart. Their social media language replicates that of a fan talking to other fans. Here is an example:

Source: Netflix Film

#3 Provide Customer Support

One of the many effective ways in which social media plays right into your marketing strategy is by providing you a two-way communication channel with customers. For the longest time, brands struggled to minimize the lags within customer support processes, which largely affect the customer experience. However, brands now integrate customer support within social media, by communicating with them directly thus decreasing the turnaround times. They use customer service tools to provide customers with great shopping experiences.

Providing customer support on social media is also a great way for brands to let customers know that they are being heard. For eCommerce stores, social media channels have been a way for customers to check whether specific products can be delivered to their location, the status of their packages and much more. According to a recent statistic, your customer advocacy is likely to go up by 25% when you give answers to complaints on social media. Considering this, as an eCommerce company, you should ensure that your employees are up to speed with the digital modes of communication and operations, which can be achieved through digital adoption platforms.

#4 Integrate SEO Best Practices

Social media marketing is only a small part of the big world that is online marketing. Social media channels do stand on their own in terms of traffic and user engagement, however, when combined with your other digital channels, they can form a strong brand identity online. When SEO principles are integrated within social media marketing strategies, they become more powerfully effective for your brand.

One of the common ways in which brands accomplish this is by integrating SEO keywords within their social media content. Image SEO can also help in making your visuals more discoverable in Google, thus benefiting your brand. Most importantly, writing actionable captions with relevant hashtags can also help in bringing the right target audience to your social media channel, and then your eCommerce store.

SEO can be an invaluable tool for eCommerce companies in boosting website as well as social media performance. Combining these highly effective practices with good content can hook the users and increase traffic to your channels.

#5 Utilize Paid Advertising for that extra boost

Paid and organic forms of advertising are just two types of marketing – both of them equally effective. Paid advertising on social media is a great tool for marketers to achieve visibility, especially when the competition is high. For eCommerce companies, paid advertising can be a great way to not only gain more exposure but to also prompt user engagement.

According to recent research, once a user visits a brand’s social media profile, they are likely to engage in many different ways. Most customers will visit your website or application, 89% of them are likely to make a purchase. So, even if your organic marketing strategies are generating a buzz, you can give that extra boost to your conversions using paid advertising tools.

Social Media and eCommerce are great together

Social media marketing techniques are known to be effective across industries, but more so in the case of eCommerce stores. Social media channels can provide the perfect platform for eCommerce store owners to showcase and promote their products directly to the customers. What’s more, the increasing period of time spent by users on social media is likely to be favorable for eCommerce brands.

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About the Author:

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.