4 Bits of Tactical Advice for Your Ecommerce Business Social Media Strategy

As an ecommerce business owner, you might find this hard to believe, but social media currently has a limited role in generating visits to ecommerce websites. Instead, the source of most ecommerce sales comes from search or other shopping sites.

Given the facts, should you even bother with social media? Absolutely!

Social media is still critical for your business because:

• Consumers spend 25 percent of their online time in social media platforms.
• Consumers are everywhere: Search, Email and Social. More of your ecommerce business is generated from multiple touches that come from multiple sources, including social.
• Social has a “viral” component that other one-way mediums don’t possess.

Now that we understand why online retailers shouldn’t ignore social media, what are some concise things we can do today to implement a better social media strategy?

Let’s first take a look at which social media sites contribute the most traffic to ecommerce sites. If you want to generate tangible benefits from social media, your best odds will be concentrating on the top two sites here: Facebook and Pinterest.

1. Facebook Ads for Brand Awareness

Consumers are on Facebook to have fun, not to buy. That doesn’t mean it can’t play a role in generating brand awareness. Furthermore, the most attractive aspect of Facebook marketing is the ability to inexpensively micro-target your potential customer base. One recent data point might surprise you in how inexpensive Facebook Ads are in comparison, despite the fact that they are the most targetable!

2. Retargeting

Retargeting on Facebook is another way of using the site. Retargeting our ads to website visitors can be extremely effective. We now have the ability to reach our unconverted prospects in social media through leveraging retargeting platforms that can reach Facebook such as AdRoll.

3. Establishing a Pinnable Environment

I included Pinterest in this post because it proportionately generates twice the referral traffic to ecommerce sites that Facebook generates per user.

But how can your business take advantage of Pinterest? It starts by creating a Pinnable environment.

Pinterest drives referral traffic when a user “pins” an image from your website. In order to facilitate this, you need to provide: 1) “pinnable” images of your products worthy of pinning, and 2) the addition of a “Pin It” button to your website. You can check out this great case study on Canadian ecommerce retailer Indigo, who saw a 218 percent increase in referral traffic from social media just two months after adding a “Pin It” button.

4. Leveraging the Pinterest Community

Don’t be passive in your approach to Pinterest: Become an active member of the community by creating Pinterest boards around your product lines, following and interacting with your fans, and inviting some of your fans to join your community boards.

What other social media advice would you add?