How to Build a Successful E-commerce Business Using Social Media

Social media has become an integral part of our daily life. Be it for entertainment, information, promotion, communication, or even for business, the many social media platforms that we have available now are serving different purposes in our life. This is especially true for the many eCommerce businesses that are now emerging from all over the world. Especially considering the effect that the pandemic had on the worldwide market, many retail businesses have decided to turn to the internet to reach out to potential customers amidst the lockdown. With more businesses of varying sizes, industries, and target markets, it just makes sense for e-commerce business owners to use social media to their advantage.

Why is Social Media Important for e-Commerce?

With the competition for customers’ attention growing tighter by the hour, the need to take advantage of multiple social media channels has become a necessity for businesses. With the right social media marketing strategy, a business can easily scale up and grow faster. It can improve a business’ overall performance and gain an edge against its competitors. There may be many other forms of digital marketing available, such as email, content, and blog marketing, but considering the growing number of social media users worldwide, it’s high time that businesses realize how much ground they can cover if they add social media marketing to their digital marketing strategies.

How to Use Social Media in e-Commerce

To those businesses who haven’t tried using social media yet to boost their return of investments, here are some ways for you to take advantage of social media to build a successful eCommerce business.

#1 Post photos about your products or services

A good photo of your products or services can catch the eye of a number of prospective customers. This is one reason why many businesses take advantage of the power of Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook to share photos of their brand and share them with their followers. The interactions that you build through these photos, if properly nurtured or entertained, can turn into loyal customers in the future.

#2 Share customer reviews

One of the most important content that can be shared or used by businesses to boost their sales is customer reviews. Sharing your customers reviews on social media can greatly boost your brand’s reputation and help you gain more customers. These customer reviews are the best sales talk that you can ever do online, with not much of an effort from your end.

#3 Interact with customers

Many online sellers and eCommerce business owners nowadays are taking to social media to promote their products and services. Social media can also be a good platform to interact with customers and build a community of brand supporters and followers. It helps promote your brand better and improve your online reputation. If you want to boost your interactions with your followers on social media, see to it that you share posts regularly as it will bring more people to comment on your post and share them. This way, you get more traffic towards your social media page and gain more interactions with current and potential customers alike.

#4 Provide customer support

Business owners are finding it easy to provide customer support using social media. With the presence of different Facebook and Instagram bots, you can easily provide your customers with a platform to communicate with you any problems or concerns that they may have about your brand. These social media platforms have messaging capabilities that allow you to set up automated response messages so that your customers can receive a more immediate reply from you. This helps improve customer retention and even resolve some issues much sooner as compared to not having this messaging capability for your business at all.

5# Improve customer retention

With better interactions and customer support through social media, you can improve your customer satisfaction rate and boost their loyalty to your brand. This is why some companies even go through the lengths of hiring social media managers or build a customer support team, to make sure that the concerns of their customers are addressed and resolved in a timely manner. By including social media as a part of your customer retention efforts, you can cover more channels and provide more choices to your customers in terms of contacting you for support.

6# Boost your online presence

The most important use of social media is for boosting your brand’s online presence. With about 3.81 billion active social media users recorded last April 2020, this only goes to show that there is a huge market for online businesses on social media. By optimizing your use of social media, building an online community, and boosting your brand’s interactions with customers, you can continuously grow your online presence and expand your business in no time at all.

Conclusion

There is a great opportunity for various e-commerce businesses on the internet, most especially on social media. By building a comprehensive social media strategy, you can make the most of your online presence, grow your brand’s followers, increase your sales, and scale up your business successfully.