Social Media Shopping
Social Media Shopping or Social Shopping is where social media and eCommerce come together. From a business point of view, you’ll be directly advertising to potential customers and from a customers point of view, you’ll be seeing products that you might otherwise not have seen.
What is Social Media Shopping?
It’s exactly what it says it is, shopping on social media. It makes sense for products to be put in front of eyes where people spend the majority of their time online, and from a business that has a smaller marketing budget, this makes complete sense.
Is social shopping important?
From an independent retail point of view, yes it is important. It allows your products to be seen by more eyes and in turn that will mean a higher possibility of getting more sales. During the pandemic, people become more confident with online shopping and that won’t change now that shops are back open, they may well return to shopping in physical stores but whilst scrolling social media they won’t be afraid to purchase something they like the look of.
It’s important that you have a presence on social media and actually use it. It’s no good just having a profile, you need to be active and making full use of the tools and functions that the various social media channels offer.
How social shopping works
Most of the eCommerce platforms are able to integrate to social media, for Shopify, this is done using a simple plugin, for others, it might be using your online store feed but any major site has a way of doing it, even if they don’t you might find there is a workaround to get it linked up.
With your products being linked up the main ones to link would be Facebook shops and Instagram shops, the two most popular locations for people to view items. These two not only allow you to customise the look of your store but also allow you to tag your products in your posts.
The advantage will be that your products will have a bigger reach, the potential for new customers to discover your business. All your products, prices, descriptions will automatically be added to both your Facebook and Instagram store and that includes any discounts you may offer in the future. Once set up you can edit parts of it but if you wanted to you could just let it run on its own.
Conclusion
If you want your online shop to be a success then you’ll need to understand that you need to do more than simply building an eCommerce store. Being active on social media, building a social store, and tagging products are all part of the process now. Although Facebook and Instagram are the obvious ones to focus on don’t ignore the other social platforms. Depending on your target audience you might find TikTok is more suited, or Pinterest, YouTube, all of these social media channels have their own way of showcasing products and this is only going to grown.
If you require help setting up your eCommerce site or your Social Shopping then please fill in this form and we’ll be happy to help.
