10 power tips on increasing sales from social media

Have you set-up your Facebook business page, Pinterest, Twitter, You Tube and Instagram accounts? What next? Are you using them to grow sales or simply become another face in a crowded room?

​In this blog we will help you uncover some tips to improve your ecommerce via social media.


1.Set clear goals and objectives
If you want to get anywhere with your social channels, be very clear on what you want and set measurable goals accordingly. Your objectives could be to get more followers or fans, increase traffic from social channels to website or have a better ratio of visitors to conversions from social.
Use your goals and understand your customer content needs by looking at social channels’ and website’s insights to define your strategy for social media.

2.Converse and engage
Now that you know where you want to go, start conversing online. While social media forms an important part of the consumer purchase cycle, your customers are not here with the intent to buy. Share and be helpful; don’t push a sale down their throat at every opportunity if you want to fans to stick and become paying customers.
Interact with your followers; thank them for positive feedback, participate in discussions and show then you’re interested in serving their needs. Another good way to engage and find communities is by joining relevant groups. Social influencers – people with large fan following – are gold mines; engage them and use them to spread your message. Making advocates out of influencers is a very important part of any social media strategy, particularly online retailers.

3.Use live videos
Show the action as it happens. Live videos are a great way to build brand awareness and create a community. And as engagement statistics around video posts continue to shoot through the roof, live videos have become an affordable and easy way to create content. They are perfect for real-time conversations about industry news, trends and behind-the-scenes.
They’re also great to improve your organic reach as every time a video is created, a notification is sent to all your followers. The same can’t be said for every post you create.

4.Get native chat
The ‘right-here, right-now’ modern consumers want instant answers. They’re not ones to wait overnight for your email responses. So brands have moved to native chatting – or conversational e-commerce, which uses the messaging services within social networks to automate, customise and personalise your communication. You can use third party chat apps to manage your native chatting – the investment is well worth the improved retention and engagement rates you’ll see.

5.Make it easy to buy from your social channels
Turn browsers into buyers by getting your audience a step closer to buying. In Facebook, set up an e-store (requires some development, but it’s very effective on retailers!). Use the ‘buy’ buttons on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to your advantage – it’s all about making the customer journey to check-out shorter.

6.Listen
Monitor conversations about your business, industry and competitors. It sounds more complicated than it is; with a bunch of easy to use listening tools like Hootsuite, SproutSocial, TweetReach, Social Mention, Klout and more, the task is very simple. Keeping a finger on the pulse of your online audience helps you salvage tricky situations, reward brand advocates, generate new leads, mine creative marketing techniques, identify customer pain points, track sentiments, and gauge motivations. 

7.Feature user content and reviews
Heard of UGC? User Generated Content is no longer a buzzword; it’s essential. It is content that is created and shared by your fans, followers, and customers on social platforms, either spontaneously or through contests or giveaways. Some data shows that consumers who come across UGC are 97% more likely to convert than those who don’t!
Using authentic visuals will demonstrate social proof, drive high-intent users from social channels to product pages, increase on-site conversions and improve ad performance.
Reviews are another form of UGC and absolutely integral in creating an online reputation for your brand. Encourage and harness them to lure new customers.

8.Produce seasonal, topical and event-related content
Social is all about here and now. When posting, be relevant by talking about seasonal issues, products and trends. If there is a big event happening in your location, use that as a hook in posts. Example: If there is an Ariana Grande concert happening and you’re a fashion retailer, ask your audience what they’ll be wearing to the concert? 

9.Create social-friendly images
There is no denying the importance of visuals in making an impact on social channels. But everyday brand or stick images are not too great in stirring social users into action. They need more authentic and well-crafted visuals. There are plenty of apps available to help you create good social visuals or infographics in no time. You could even use UGC push your case.

10.Optimise your social media pages and posts
Using high-conversion keywords on your page and in your posts t increase their visibility in search and thereby enable you to reach an even larger audience than your direct followers. Be consistent across all channels and use hashtags to make your content more ‘findable’. 

Article by Namtra Malik
Namrta Malik is a digital specialist, helping brands create stories that are engaging and leads to action. Contact herwww.facebook.com/thescriptwriterforyou for your content requirements, blogging, SEO or social media management.