Top Social Media Platforms For eCommerce Businesses

May 18, 2021 5 min read

Social media is where your target audience likes to hang out online, so why aren't you using it to promote your eCommerce store?

In this post, we'll take a look at the best social media platforms for eCommerce businesses to sell on. We'll walk you through how to get started on each of them.

Best Social Media Platforms For Selling: Facebook

Facebook may not be everyone's favorite social media platform anymore, but it still offers unmatched reach.

With more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, you can potentially reach any set of users. So it's needless to say that you should set up a Facebook business page for your eCommerce business if, for some reason, you haven't already.

Now there are many ways you can use Facebook to promote your eCommerce business or even direct sales.

Using Facebook's retargeting options & tracking pixel, you can collect leads, send messages & promote content to an audience set that has shown an interest in your products/services.

Besides Facebook's incredible advertising features, you can set up a Facebook Shop as well.

A Facebook shop allows you to promote and sell your products directly to Facebook users on the platform itself.

With a Facebook Shop for your business, you can:

  • Promote an unlimited number of products

  • Create different collections for your products

  • Get analytics on your impression, sales, visits, and more

  • Directly communicate with your customers

Even if you don't have a preexisting online store set up, you can run an entire store via Facebook if you want to.

To help you get started, we have a detailed article explaining how to set up a Facebook shop.

Best Social Media Platforms For Selling: Instagram

With Instagram, eCommerce brands can now do much more to generate direct sales from the platform.

Especially if you're targeting a younger audience base, Instagram can be a goldmine for your online business.

Using Instagram's shopping platform, you can set up a virtual storefront for your eCommerce business.

Your followers will be able to explore your products and shop from their feed, your stories, or directly from your Instagram Profile.

Instagram also supports direct checkout, or you can redirect the visitors to your store website for completing a purchase.

We've written a detailed article on getting started with Instagram shops & creating your first Instagram shoppable post & stories. Take a look.

How To Set Up Instagram Shopping

Best Social Media Platforms For Selling: Twitter

Twitter for eCommerce is still behind a bit compared to Facebook or Instagram, but you can still use the platform to boost your sales.

Granted, you cannot start posting marketing tweets & expect people to start buying; you need to lure in Twitter users with content that showcases your products & brand in a positive light.

Here are a few tips for eCommerce businesses getting started with Twitter marketing:

  1. Start by building interest (create an eye-catchy profile & post content consistently)
  2. Run campaigns (encourage users to become a part of the campaign by creating content featuring your products)
  3. Engage with influencers (work with influencers who are relevant to the products you're selling)
  4. Learn from your competitors (learn from competitors who are already performing well on Twitter)
  5. Showcase difference use cases for your product (you need to educate people about the different ways your products can be used)
  6. Use Sponsered Tweets to target desired audience (target users whose characteristics are similar to that of your best customers)
  7. Offer proactive customer service (respond to customer queries in less than an hour)
  8. Keep track of your activities & performance using analytics (measure everything & fine-tune your strategies)

Best Social Media Platforms For Selling: LinkedIn

LinkedIn & eCommerce do not feel like an organic collaboration at first, but there's more than meets the eye.

Here are a few reasons why your eCommerce business should be on LinkedIn:

  1. Get A Chance To Share With Your Business Story

LinkedIn provides an excellent opportunity to showcase your business, the story behind it, company mission & what sets you apart from your competitors.

If you're able to share a compelling story, you'll be getting the desired attention in no time.

  1. Get A Chance To Network

LinkedIn is filled with tons of entrepreneurs & business professionals, making it an excellent place for eCommerce owners to start networking with other business owners.

Creating symbiotic relationships with other business owners get you increased visibility and can help you bring in more sales.

Using these connections, you can get spots on blogs, podcasts, email blasts, etc. You can also collaborate with e-commerce owners for affiliate partnerships, contests, and giveaways.

  1. Get A Chance To Boost SEO

Being active on LinkedIn helps you improve your SEO scores. When you share a post on LinkedIn, reply to comment, and interact with connections, it sends a positive signal to Google.

Once Google determines that you're a valuable resource, it'll automatically rank you higher for the keywords that matter to you.

Best Social Media Platforms For Selling: Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger has recently introduced the ability to purchase products directly through the app, making it a hot platform for eCommerce businesses.

Facebook Messenger app allows potential customers to browse through your catalog without needing to access your website. And not only that, it comes with an inbuilt payment option and pulls the mailing information from the user account if it's available.

You can also share receipts and shipment notifications straight to the customer via Messenger.

Here are some tips for using Facebook Messenger for eCommerce.

Use A Chatbot

The first step to using Facebook Messenger for eCommerce is to set up your chatbot. While setting up your chatbot, use simple, clear language and avoid any technical jargon, complicated instructions, and overly complex responses.

Learn who your audience is and what problem you're trying to solve for them. Build a chatbot to solve those problems.

You can start by selecting a single goal for your bot, such as handling order confirmations.

Link Messenger To Your Ecommerce Store

Once you have set up a Facebook Messenger bot, you need to sync it to your website. Once you sync it up, it'll be able to display product updates, price changes, and other information.

Here are a few use cases for linking Messenger to your eCommerce store:

  • Adding Messenger sales channel to your eCommerce site
  • Integration Facebook Live Chat with your eCommerce store
  • Adding the Buy Now button to your Facebook Messenger bot

Best Social Media Platforms For Selling: YouTube

In business, it's better to show, not tell.

YouTube is the ideal platform where you can showcase your brand & products to your target by leveraging Content Marketing.

You can create content that helps make people aware of your products and eCommerce website.

Let's say you run an online clothing store. Usually, an apparel e-commerce store would have pictures of the clothing and a simple description. But you can expand on the idea by making videos that show different outfit ideas, feature advice on color combinations and accessories—all the while showing off products you have on sale.

The goal is to convince people that your product is better than the product of the competition.

Collaborating with influencers & YouTube creators can help you reach a wider audience quickly.

Social Media Management For Ecommerce Business With Statusbrew

Statusbrew is a unified social media management platform that brings all your social media efforts together and adds all the utilities & features. Create, plan, and schedule your social media content. Manage comments, reply to messages, delegate tasks & get extensive reporting on all your social activities.

For eCommerce businesses, Statusbrew lets you:

  • Leverage customer support automation for eCommerce success
  • Automatically get rid of unwanted comments on ads & posts
  • Tag & segment social conversations
  • Maximize the use of your Shopify order data & more
  • Customized Shopify & engagement reporting

1000+ Shopify merchants use Statusbrew for social engagements.

Try Statusbrew for yourself, or book a free demo to understand how Statusbrew can work for your eCommerce business.

Try Statusbrew Today!

Which Social Media Platform Works The Best For Your Ecommerce Business?

Although ideally, you should be using all these social media platforms to grow your business, certain overheads such as operating costs can restrict these choices.

It is essential to choose a social media platform where your target audience exists & it aligns with your goals.

If you run an online store & have leveraged a social media platform to promote your store or sell products directly, we'd love to hear about your success story.

Let us know in the comment section down below.

Shivam Devgan

Marketing Manager @ Statusbrew

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