Today’s social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and other regional platforms — have an influx of millions of users weekly. For small businesses, social media is the primary channel through which they generate awareness about their business. Leveraging social media for sales is what a social commerce strategy is all about.

An effective and compact strategy is essential to optimize social media platforms for the direct selling of products and services. It is not only about how a business markets itself, but is more about building meaningful content and relationships with customers for long-term associations

Is there a need to build a social commerce strategy?

Every business should integrate a social commerce strategy into its social media platform. Similar to how businesses have an omnichannel approach to reaching and engaging with their target audience, a social commerce strategy ensures that customers are directly engaged with the brand.

Amid the battle to be the best social media platform in the world, Gen Z prefers the platforms of Instagram the most. On the other hand, Gen X prefers spending their time on Facebook. As a brand that caters to various audiences and engages them, imagine a situation in which these customers make an instant purchase based on a post.

The point here is that a social commerce strategy is a human-centric approach to online shopping. Instead of a customer going out of their way to look at pictures and reviews on an e-commerce website, they can make product purchases by watching meaningful content on social media

Building a social commerce strategy for small businesses

The base for creating a social commerce strategy is to first optimize one’s social media platforms. For small businesses, we recommend focusing on one platform at a time. Depending on the target audience, the platform can either be Instagram or Facebook. It is advisable to seek the assistance of a social media optimization company during this time to better understand the audience and how to move ahead through building a great social media strategy.

The steps for creating a social commerce strategy include the following:

A Great Social Media Strategy

The first thing about setting up a commerce strategy is to have your social media in place. A brand’s social media is about generating content surrounding what the brand is about, what they do, and convincing users to make a purchase.

Top social media optimization companies focus on the content and type of communication that a brand has with its audience. Creating transparent, clearly communicated, and engaging posts is the key to a successful social media strategy.

Communicating & Audience Engagement

Everyone on social media is looking at thousands of posts and videos daily. They engage with posts that they like and follow brands that have unique content that they like. When it comes to brand engagement, customers always prefer personalized responses. Be it in response to a comment, a shoutout, or replying to a message, brands who take the effort to reply are remembered more than others.

Communicating with one’s audience is an act of transparency. A brand that communicates with and responds to its audience is more likely to have a successful social commerce strategy.

The Shopping Experience

A brand can opt for an organic approach to its social commerce strategy via social media. The paid approach is when they boost or promote a post and get a set group of people to see and engage with it. Most small businesses prefer an organic approach to start. They are selling to their existing audience.

Understanding the way that their audience is reacting to different posts, optimizing post content to be more engaging, and finally pushing for sales is how most brands do it. Picking out preferences or even directly messaging customers who have shown interest in sales is a stepping stone to getting into a social commerce strategy.

Leveraging User-Generated Content

The size of the community is the most significant advantage of small businesses. Small businesses have a small community of people who believe they are trustworthy and have been associated with the brand because of the type of content or products they offer. When sales are done, users most likely use their social handles to give a review. This review is the user-generated content,

User-generated content not only acts as a validation for the legitimacy of the brand, but it is also great fodder to start another round of pitching sales.

Building and Integrating an E-commerce Website

Most small businesses are reported to use social media platforms for the selling of their product. They utilize the power of direct messaging and manually filling in details for shipping different products. For those businesses that are small and have less than 50–100 customers per month, this is ideal. But for businesses that are growing, having an e-commerce website is advantageous.

Research from the top social media optimization company in Pune suggests that customers are more likely to purchase small businesses that have a website.

Most small businesses rely on user-friendly e-commerce platforms like Shopify to carry out their eCommerce integration.

Social commerce: Assisting businesses to grow

Small businesses always utilize their social media platforms for trying to grow their business. The aim is to grow steadily and organically with a set of trusted and engaged followers. Growing into a business that can integrate its e-commerce platform and grow exponentially to a full-fledged business is the target.

Social commerce, whether it’s done through selling via direct messages, or through a link in bio is all dependent on strategy. The core of the entire social commerce strategy is social media platform optimization.

81% of an audience researches a product through social media. Before making a purchase decision, they look at the brand’s page on various platforms as well as other people’s reviews of the brand. So, it is imperative to have an effective branding strategy in place.

In Conclusion,

Social media platforms are the go-to destination for most of the population today. With nearly everyone glued to their phones and engaging in content regularly, social commerce is on the rise.

The pandemic brought about a drastic change in the value placed on online shopping, paving the way for social commerce. As mentioned, building one’s strategy is a game of optimization. We at Digikore Digital are affluent in social media optimization and building brands. Let us assist you in building a compelling social commerce strategy that will boost your brand’s e-commerce easily.