Shopping Via Your Social Media Accounts

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Josh Wardini from  16best.net.

The term ‘Social Commerce’ is a fairly new addition to our daily vocabulary. Unlike the word ‘selfie’ this one doesn’t really have a clear definition in the dictionary yet. However, it is universally accepted fact that it represents another subset of eCommerce, one that involves social media platforms. We’ve already seen how all the different social media sites have slowly been integrating into online marketplace, with their main goal being to get the shoppers to purchase things online using their platforms.

You may be wondering how they do all this. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, there have been ads by Amazon and eBay popping up all over Facebook feeds. The eCommerce giant eBay has also been offering on Twitter eBay discount codes. You can also shop directly via Pinterest and Instagram too. These two different types of platforms - Social Media and eCommerce - are pairing up nowadays. We shouldn’t be really surprised to see on a daily basis more and more influences on our social media coming from eCommerce.

Let’s start with Facebook and their feature Marketplace. According to Facebook, this is a great place where you can buy and sell things in your community. Following this feature, they introduced Messenger Payments, so you can do your shopping smoothly. Lately, we’ve seen the option to buy tickets for various events directly via Facebook, and you can now buy eBay daily deals here as well.

We can also see changes with smaller social media platforms. Before Twitter rolled out their ‘Buy Now’ button, they were increasing profits by alerting users about the latest sales that were happening as they were scrolling down Twitter feeds. Then, Tumblr started allowing their users to shop on their platform via ‘Buy’ button, while Pinterest did something similar by introducing buyable pins. Meanwhile, Shopify and Instagram decided to collaborate and thus Instagram created their shoppable feeds. So, any time you see something you like, on any social media platform, you can just click a button and it’s practically yours!
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As for Amazon, one of the biggest eCommerce platforms, they decided to take the route of designing their own social media platform. The idea is obviously derived from Instagram and their feed system, but with the ability to directly make a purchase. They’ve named it Spark.

All of the aforementioned points show us that as soon as social media and eCommerce platforms decided to collaborate on a larger scale, both shoppers and buyers ended up with certain perks. However, the idea behind all this is to promote companies with the goal for further growth, which this is apparently the best way to accomplish this objective at the moment.

One of the perks includes being communicative with your audience via your social media profiles. Your buyers have plenty of questions they are eager to post, and all you have to do is listen and give answers.

Another great perk that you can provide to your audience as a brand is to introduce reviews of your products. You should always aim for great communication and customer service in order to really give your reviews a boost. This way, when people leave reviews of your products, they’ll only have nice things to say, which is going to make your audience even bigger and increase your conversion rate.

Whether you are someone with a brand or just a simple seller, one of your top priorities should be earning plenty of positive reviews of your products. In order to increase your conversion rate, positive reviews can boost it by 133% for mobile shoppers. And if you’d really like to show that you care both about your brand and your buyers, leaving a response to reviews and comments that you receive is also going to improve your brand’s perception in the public, by a whopping 71%.

If you choose to use Facebook, it is also going to translate into a higher conversion rate. This platform is shortly followed by YouTube and Instagram. If you are unsure about how to exactly build a strategy for your social media accounts, try to get some inspiration by looking around and researching the most popular brands and their profiles. 

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to take advantage of both eCommerce and social media platforms. You just need the right strategy and mindset.

About the Author:

Josh Wardini, Editorial Contributor and Community Manager at 16best.net.

​With a preliminary background in communication and expertise in community development, Josh works day-to-day to reshape the human resource management of digitally based companies. When his focus trails outside of community engagement, Josh enjoys the indulgences of writing amidst the nature conservations of Portland, Oregon.

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