Social Commerce with Pinterest and Facebook | Social Media Virtual Assistant - Be Social Worldwide

Social Commerce with Pinterest and Facebook

Filed Under Social Marketing

Social commerce is not a new term but it’s one that is getting paid a lot more attention lately by businesses. It refers to the use of social media in e-commerce to encourage the buying and selling of a business’s products or services to consumers online.

Facebook was once the leader of social commerce but Pinterest has quickly been on the rise and looks to be taking over in the top position for social commerce. One survey conducted by Boticca.com shows that Pinterest users spend an average of $180 on e-commerce sites whereas Facebook users only spend $85 on average.

These numbers show that social media sites are having a lot of influence on consumers and help to drive online sales. Just because one may be showing more promise at one time or another does not mean that the other should be ignored. After all, social media is an ever-changing flow and what works well today may be slow tomorrow.

To get the most results, you want to utilize both Pinterest and Facebook for your business marketing. Each has proven to be helpful in driving customers to e-commerce sites and will continue to do so in the future.

Here are some of the tactics that your business should consider when taking advantage of the marketing opportunities that are easily available through social media.

Facebook Offers

A while back, Facebook introduced “deals,” which totally flopped and was quickly replaced by Facebook Offers. These are really taking off, allowing businesses to offer fans exclusive offers for their products and services. The company creates a great offer, like free shipping on an order or a coupon for 50% off. Users can click on “Get Offer” and an email will be sent to their inbox.

The great thing about these offers is that once they are claimed, a notification appears in their friends’ news feeds, meaning more exposure for your offer and more potential customers being reached. You can post an offer that is good at your physical location, with users printing off the coupon to present in person, or your online site with a promotion code to enter in at the time of purchase.

Just make sure that you can fulfill your offer. You don’t want to offer a free donut and then have 50,000 claims when you won’t be able to make that many donuts to give away!

Pinterest Board Optimization

Pinterest is all about the visual appeal. You want to have pictures of your products that are great to look at. You want to entice users to not only repin your products to their boards but also to click through to your website and make a purchase.

Take plenty of pictures of each product until you find the images that are most appealing. Have pictures of someone wearing or using your product too. You can also add the price so that it appears in the top left corner of the image. This lets users know that the item is for sale and for how much.

Integrate Social Media to Your E-Commerce Site

With social commerce, it’s important to integrate social sharing into your website. With each product, include a way for users to share, recommend, like and pin to their social networks. When people are shopping online, they like to let others know what they like, what they are buying and what they are adding to their “wish list.”

Make it easy for them by adding all of the share buttons to your site, especially for individual items. This is essentially free advertising, so don’t overlook this important part of social commerce.

What social media platform do you use the most for your social commerce marketing? Have you found one to be more useful than another? What have your results been?

 

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