You can come across a nice hoodie on your Instagram feed, tap “Shop now,” and quickly finish the transaction inside the app. Or you could see a reasonably priced hand cream while browsing your Facebook page, click “Buy,” and effortlessly make the purchase. Without skipping a beat, you can continue to use Facebook once you’re done by viewing your friends’ photos.

Giving influencers and marketers access to a variety of purchase options directly on the digital platforms that their consumers choose is the core idea behind social commerce. And if you fit one of these profiles, you’d better be utilizing this new era of internet buying if you don’t already.

The data is clear:

30% of online shoppers are likely to buy directly from a social media network like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Snapchat.

Social commerce is the process of using social connections to promote and sell your products. It’s a strategy that combines customer service, marketing, community building, and sales tools into one cohesive package that uses all aspects of your business.

• Customer service: Social media has become a powerful business tool and an integral part of any brand’s strategy. However, it’s not enough to just discuss your brand on social media; you must also monitor your profiles and respond to customers’ comments and questions.
• Marketing: You can use social media channels to reach your target audiences and achieve success in a competitive marketplace of ideas.
• Community building: Social media has the power to bring people together for a common goal or shared interest. Community building is a unique and powerful way you can use social media for social good.
• Sales: You can produce social content to build trust, increase brand awareness, and boost loyalty. For instance, Instagram Shops offers a way to showcase your product catalog and reach new customers.

Step 1: Create your social commerce accounts

Setting up your social media pages and profiles is the first step. This entails setting up a page for your company on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram that your target audience uses.

By creating an account on social media and uploading a brief profile that summarizes your product or service, go ahead and secure your company’s brand. Add the URL of your website to the bio or profile area of your social media profiles to make sure they are appropriately bot-optimized.

These suggestions will improve your natural search engine results and offer you a head start on SEO only by link building. Search engine results for your brand appear on social media sites fairly rapidly, and those links are beneficial backlinks to your website.

Step 2: Market your business on social media

Focus on building your social consumer base by providing high-quality content that will engage potential customers and make them want to buy from you. Easier said than done? Nope! Too many businesses overthink their social media marketing strategy and end up not providing any content.

Bring your consumers into the world of doing business with you. Social posts showcasing your company’s culture, industry news, curated content (sharing content from others), and polls and questions are some of the content you can provide besides just “buy my stuff” shoppable posts.

Research suggests that the top reasons consumers follow brands on social media are to learn about new products and services and to stay up to date on company news.

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Take a look at SHREDZ, a company that sells protein supplements to people trying to get into shape or stay fit. SHREDZ sees tremendous success on Instagram by creating posts related to exercise routines, nutritional information, and, of course, before and after photos of customers’ weight loss. And that’s exactly what its audience is looking for, so the company is having a conversation with its consumers.

Step 3: Understand your customers

Another important step is understanding who your customers are and where they are on social media. Think about the following questions:

• What’s their age?
• Where do they live?
• What interests or hobbies do they have in common with you and your brand?

Answers to these questions will help you create content that’s tailored to your target audience, increasing chances of conversion.

Let’s consider you’re visiting a gym to become a member (possibly!). The salesperson will ask questions about your physical goals, available time for working out, level of physical activity, etc. Based on your answers, they’ll create your customer “persona.” Next, when they walk you through the facility, they’ll be keen to point out equipment specific to meet your persona and ignore the ones you’re probably not going to use.

This practice of learning your consumers—or creating personas—will tell you who your customers are, what their social shopping habits look like, where they get their information from, what common problems they have, who and where they go to for help, and how they make decisions.

It doesn’t matter what your business is, as long as you know who your customers are and how to engage them, the sky’s your limit!

Step 4: Track success with analytics tools

Social media and social commerce is a team effort that requires input from many departments, including marketing, customer service, and sales, to be successful.

Therefore, ensure you’re using an analytics platform to track your success on social media. The two most popular platforms are Google Analytics for websites and Hootsuite for networks.

Google Analytics is a free all-inclusive web analytics application that provides insights about your website visitors. It lets you track “real” traffic from all of your social networks. The only downside of using Google Analytics for a social commerce campaign is the lack of detailed information on posts and who’s interacting with them.

Hootsuite, on the other hand, provides more detailed analytics for a single social network but doesn’t allow you to monitor your website traffic.

Step 5: Monitor competitors and their efforts

You should definitely monitor what your competitors are doing on social media to see if they’re trying out any new tactics that may give them an edge and get you inspired.

For instance, check if your competitors have a Facebook page and how many “likes” they’ve got every few days. This will show you how many people like their page, which are their most popular posts (most liked or commented), and how many times they’ve posted recently.

Similarly, on Twitter, you can check if they’ve got any new followers or the latest tweets mentioning their name to get an idea of what people are saying about your competition.

Monitoring competition is important because it gives you a chance to stay one step ahead of your competitors by using their best practices as your inspiration.

Direct product sales and purchases through social media are known as social commerce. To put it simply, this integrates e-commerce capabilities into social media networks. This indicates that the complete shopping process, from product discovery to product research to checkout, takes place within the built-in social media platform.

Although Yahoo! first used the term “social commerce” in November 2005, we have only recently seen it come into its own (pandemic was a huge factor, we must agree). Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are the social media platforms that are dominating the social commerce market.

Here are the main advantages of social commerce that will persuade you to give it a try if you are still unsure of whether it will be successful for your company:

Consistent audience growth exposed to your products

Thousands of people sign up for social media platforms every single day. In terms of business, this implies that you get to market your goods and services to a larger clientele.

Optimization of the buying process

I hate to keep saying it, but social commerce allows customers to complete their full social shopping experience without ever leaving the social network site.

See it, select it, and buy it. It’s a simple, quick way to offer your products and services that is also tailored for higher conversion rates. Customers also adore it!

Improved search engine ranking

Social media interaction can result in more than simply straight sales. The best strategy to get people to visit your website from social media users is to share links to information that points people there.

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So, you will see more traffic to your website the more social interaction and direct transactions you have. It will eventually have an impact on a lower bounce rate for your website and an improvement in your search engine ranking.

Powerful branding opportunity

Regularly appearing in the updates stream of your followers allows you to take advantage of a potent branding opportunity. It will compel people to interact with your company and use social media as an effective means of contacting you for customer care.

You’ll get assistance with audience development from social media word-of-mouth in the form of sharing and reposting. Increased engagement and more active users surrounding your brand go hand in hand with it.

Improved customer loyalty and retention

You are cultivating positive relationships with people as well as trying to sell and advertise your goods and services in order to gain their trust and loyalty. This results in satisfied customers who are more likely to make subsequent purchases.

It makes it easier to measure business metrics from social

You are aware that the majority of social media sites include analytics for impressions, engagements, reach, and website clicks. Calculating your ROI will be easier if you take into account your total fans/followers, likes, and interactions.

How to Start a Social Commerce?

Create your social commerce accounts

Setting up your social media pages and profiles is the first step. This entails setting up a page for your company on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram that your target audience uses.

By creating an account on social media and uploading a brief profile that summarizes your product or service, go ahead and secure your company’s brand. Add the Link of your website to the bio or profile area of your social media profiles to make sure they are appropriately bot-optimized.

These suggestions will improve your natural search engine results and offer you a head start on SEO only by link building. Search engine results for your brand appear on social media sites fairly rapidly, and those links are beneficial backlinks to your website.

Market your business on social media

By producing high-quality content that will engage potential customers and motivate them to make a purchase from you, concentrate on growing your social consumer base. It’s simpler stated than done. Nope! A lot of companies overthink their social media marketing approach and don’t actually post anything.

Invite your customers to participate in your business. Other than just “buy my things” shoppable posts, you may also create social media material that demonstrates your company’s culture, shares industry news, and conducts polls and asks.

According to research, the two main reasons why people follow brands on social media are to find out about new goods and services and to keep up with business news.

Understand your customers

Knowing your clients and where they hang out on social media is a crucial next step. Consider the following inquiries:

• What’s their age?
• Where do they live?
• What interests or hobbies do they have in common with you and your brand?

Your chances of conversion will increase if you produce content specifically for your target audience using the answers to these questions.

Let’s say you go to a gym to sign up for a membership (maybe!). The salesman will inquire about your level of physical activity, available time for working out, and physical objectives. They’ll develop your customer’s “persona” based on your responses. Then, as they show you around the building, they’ll focus on pointing out equipment that suits your personality while ignoring the equipment you’re probably not going to utilize.

Learning about your customers—or developing personas—will help you understand who they are, what their social buying habits are, where they acquire their information, what difficulties they frequently encounter, who and where they turn to for assistance, and how they make decisions.

Whatever your line of work, as long as you understand who your clients are and how to connect with them, the sky is the limit!

Track success with analytics tools

To be effective, social media and social commerce involve the collaboration of several departments, including marketing, customer support, and sales. So, be sure to use an analytics platform to monitor your social media success. The two most used platforms are Hootsuite for networks and Google Analytics for websites.

Google Analytics is a free all-inclusive web analytics tool that offers information on the people that visit your website. You may follow “actual” traffic from all of your social networks using this tool. The lack of specific data on postings and who is connecting with them is the only drawback of using Google Analytics for a social commerce campaign.

On the other hand, Hootsuite doesn’t let you track the traffic to your website but does offer more thorough analytics for a particular social network. To gain a complete 360-degree perspective of your activities when utilizing Hootsuite Analytics and Google Analytics, it is best to set up certain API connectors.

Monitor competitors and their efforts

It’s important to keep an eye on what your rivals are doing on social media to see if they’re experimenting with any new strategies that could offer them an advantage and inspire you.

For instance, every few days check to see if your rivals have a Facebook page and how many “likes” they have. You can see here how many people like the page, which posts have received the most likes or comments, and how frequently they’ve posted recently.

Similar to this, you can look at your competitors’ followers on Twitter or recent tweets mentioning them to see what others are saying about them. Monitoring competition is crucial because it provides you the ability to stay one step ahead of them by taking inspiration from their finest practices.

What are Examples of Social Commerce?

Examining examples of businesses that make the most of social commerce features and platforms is the greatest method to learn more about them. Here are some excellent instances of social commerce in the fields of food, fashion, and beauty.

1. 100% PURE

An international force, 100% PURE is a retailer of natural and organic cosmetics. It started out on a California farm and expanded to have a physical and online presence in a dozen other nations.

With a shop filled with categorized products, the firm makes the most of its Pinterest presence. When a product is tapped, information about it, a link to 100% PURE’s website, and a choice to add it to a Pinterest shopping list appear.

Additionally, 100% PURE uses Pinterest advertisements to provide sponsored pins to people who are browsing other beauty products and boards with an emphasis on cosmetics.

100% PURE is a formidable Instagram force in addition to Pinterest. With over 260,000 followers, 100% PURE’s fans may easily find and purchase products while browsing its Instagram feed thanks to its images, Reels, videos, and Guides.

It’s understandable why Ric Kostick, co-founder of 100% PURE, told Shopify that he believes his company’s e-commerce business would grow eight times in five years.

2. Milk Bar

Celebrity chef Christina Tosi established Milk Bar as a tiny bakery in New York City’s East Village in 2008. Since then, Milk Bar has expanded into a major player in national e-commerce, selling ice cream, cakes, cookies, and pies.

Prior to the pandemic in 2020, physical shop sales accounted for 75% of Milk Bar’s revenue, with online sales accounting for the remaining 25%. It changed with the pandemic. Christina relied heavily on Instagram, and later on its social commerce features, which have been crucial to Milk Bar’s ongoing success.

One of the content forms Milk Bar used to get in front of people during the early lockdowns, when they spent more time on social media than ever, was live videos. Another was vivid product photos. A fourth was customer takeovers on Stories. And a fifth was video instructions. Milk Bar currently has over 800,000 followers, and their videos regularly receive tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of views.

Of course, this is a fantastic chance to highlight related items from Milk Bar’s Instagram store. It has the ideal balance of motivation, interest, and shoppability.

Milk Bar filled its TikTok profile with recipes and baking advice that were made into vibrant short-form videos, despite the fact that it hasn’t yet used TikTok’s social commerce features. More than 200,000 of Milk Bar’s TikTok followers enjoy viewing many of them because they are organized into playlists for simple binge-watching.

3. JUNO & Co.

A DTC beauty company named JUNO & Co. uses TikTok to demonstrate how its cutting-edge skin care products function. It excels at it: the brand has millions of video views on the platform and approximately 200,000 TikTok followers.

JUNO & Co. saw tremendous success after enrolling in Shopify’s pilot program for brands to sell their goods on TikTok. “We observed a prompt reaction. According to the founder of JUNO & CO., Kyle Jiang, “Our sales on TikTok are ten times what we’ve garnered through Instagram and Facebook.

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According to a Forbes report from the end of 2020, TikTok and Instagram were key factors in JUNO & Co.’s 300% year-over-year growth. Product how-tos, gift videos, premieres, and instructional videos are just a few of JUNO & Co.

JUNO & Co. takes a softer, more fashionable tack on Instagram. Videos that are amusing, visually appealing, and occasionally a cross-posted TikTok video without any product tags are the main topics of feed posts.

On the main profile and occasionally through product tags in Stories, users can access JUNO & Co.

4. CLUSE

The fashion company CLUSE is well-known for its contemporary jewelry and watches. It was established in the Netherlands in 2009, and in 2014 it opened an international e-commerce operation. Instagram played a significant role in CLUSE’s ascent to international fame.

Hundreds of items are available in CLUSE’s Instagram storefront. When a visitor taps on a product, a product description, a message option to contact CLUSE with any inquiries, and a button to explore the product on the website and make a purchase there are displayed.

With closeups of watches and jewels with images of individuals wearing them, CLUSE’s Instagram feed has the appearance of a fashion magazine. An method that significantly contributed to CLUSE’s climb to e-commerce success is the fact that many of the people on the feed are CLUSE consumers, ambassadors, and influencers.

The Lookbook area of CLUSE’s website, which showcases customers’ Instagram photos and photos they’ve posted directly to the site, is significant. When viewers click on an image they like, they can make purchases from that page.

This tactic, according to Photoslurp, increased CLUSE’s overall conversion rate by 19%.

The following is what CLUSE’s CEO, Rudyard Bekker, said to Photoslurp regarding the company’s emphasis on user-generated content: “By utilizing photographs taken by actual customers, our website’s visitors are given a clear and accurate representation of how the watch would seem on their wrist and how they can pair it with jewelry, clothing, accessories, etc. Hence, you could argue that making such content available on your website is essentially a no-brainer from the perspective of the user experience.

In order to integrate the experiences of its website and Instagram, CLUSE highlights its ambassadors on a page on its website devoted to ambassadors and urges users to utilize the hashtags #CLUSE and #CLUSEclub in its Instagram profile.

Your community, customer loyalty, sales, revenue, and brand exposure can all increase thanks to social commerce. It can serve as the basis for rapid expansion, just like with many of the brands we reviewed.