If you’re anything like the average person you spend at least 40 minutes in a day poring over your social media feed.
With cheaper and everywhere access to internet, sometimes free (think coffee shops and Starbucks outlets) being online is getting easier everyday. It has become a fundamental right of sorts. Masses are joining or flipping from one popular platform to another.
In 2018, the combined presence on social media channels sits at 2.67 billion. 3 years from now, the number will likely surpass 3.01 billion.
Needless to say the opportunity is big.
Studies have time and again pointed out on the usefulness of personalized recommendations. Personalized recommendations can improve conversions by as much as 400%. Social media networks use the power of a global network to channel opinions and product reviews driving product purchases.
Different channels available today
Below is a ranking of social channels based on popularity:
Source: Statista
What are the best ways to leverage the power of Social Media?
- UGC or User Generated Content
It’s very easy to fake info online. Because there’s no face to face cognition or verification, scams abound online.
People know that and feel it in their bones. That’s why it’s important to do everything possible to garner trust. Millennials vet a brand before trusting or purchasing from it. On another related note- 57% users search on Amazon first for a product before searching on Google. eCommerce the highest quality traffic is relying on a retail store to inform their purchases instead of Google.
Why?
Simply because these users trust the site.
In order to elicit trust you’ve more than a few tools at hand.
And eCommerce offers a golden opportunity for that.
Let’s see what IKEA does.
On Twitter they run contests with the hashtag MakeRoomforIKEA. These contests are designed to encourage user participation.
The rich photography that you see splattered across their Twitter channel is evidence to the success of their social media campaigns and contests. Most of which are contributed by people participating in them.
Be it any kind of store you can run similar contests, encouraging your customers to send pictures of them using your products and post them on social media channels with certain hashtags. These contests could be tied to loyalty programs in tandem encouraging more people to participate and shop more.
By extension the greater circle of family and friends among your customers know about your products and have their interests piqued and so it goes.
And all of this is done at relatively little cost. Social media advertising can rake up hundreds of thousands in costs. You get nearly free marketing.
Create content yourself
Rip Curl bills sells surfboards online and maintains and online blog dubbed The Search.
The search unlike most eCommerce blogs that are cut and dry and exist for no good reason records best waves, tidbits on surfing and lifestyle. The accompanying photography is rich and is about journeys of surfers. In a few years they gained close to 10000 YouTube subscribers solely due to the content they produce.
The photography has helped them gain over 2 million Facebook followers.
BlendTec the startup behind the Will It Blend series uses videos to demonstrate the sheer blending power of their products. They blend phones, iPhones, selfie sticks and what not.
The result?
The video where they blended the iPhone x gained 143k views with just one month of the video going live.
Their channel has 884,959 subscribers as of now.
Which is better- Instagram or Facebook?
A study from Pew Research pointed out that the user base on Instagram is predominantly female. On Facebook 66% users are male and 77% users are female.
There are over 800 million active monthly users on Instagram. With 200 million of them visiting a business profile each day. Businesses couldn’t hear better news.
In 2017 the number of businesses using Instagram increased to 70.7%.
This is compared to 48.8% in 2016. Are brands increasingly moving to Instagram?
Why?
According to Instagram, 80% of users follow at least one business on Instagram.
One more reason. Few types of content do really well on the platform.
Instagram being a crucially visual platform brands like Gap are making full use of it.
During Spring, Gap produced several mini videos on topics like romance, relationships and unpredictability in general.
In their own words, “The videos have outperformed any other video content we’ve launched on Instagram, in terms of engagement, and our paid media performance is outperforming our expectations. Some of the more interesting things we are seeing are people predicting what will happen next, asking where they can buy the products featured or just generally expressing their love for the series and the talent.”
These indicate that Instagram is riding high on user engagement.
Investing in paid reach is good too.
Oakland Raiders discovered that selling fan merchandise merely through organic posts wasn’t making much in terms of returns.
During the Holiday season Oakland Raiders offered special offers to its customer base with link ads and promotions. This was promoted on Facebook resulting in 1900% return.
Marketing on eCommerce isn’t free of risks.
Just as the probability for success increases a lot with the power of sheer numbers on social media, so does that chance for epic failures.
With the wide reach that social media affords the twin possibility of shooting yourselves in the foot.
For instance, immediately after the Boston Marathon, Addidas tweeted this: “congrats on surviving the Boston marathon”. Most people didn’t like the intended humor. The tweet brought back memories of Boston blast that killed many. Addidas was widely criticised for what they did.
Realizing the blunder they offered a quick apology but brand image loss was palpable and damage done.
Again, a move planned as a publicity stunt turned into a bitter-sour grape for Singapore based retailer SuperGurl. In order to elicit trust you’ve more than a few tools at hand. You can increase customer loyalty by offering different discounts, coupon codes, or by adding social proof with a product reviews app for your e-commerce shop.
On BlackFriday like most retailers SuperGurl announced huge discounts on its labels. Things were going as planned until they replaced the Shop Now button with “Rape Us now”.
First changing obvious text lowers conversions. Second, the insensitive remark didn’t have the best reaction.
Their facebook feed filled to the brim with an angry torrent of comments, and that was when they did another shoot yourself in the foot antic- they blatantly lied about their site getting hacked which was enough to raise a war of words and drag Twitterati into the frenzy.
The publicity stunt turned into a cruel joke that tainted the image of the Singapore based clothing retailer.
When Blackberry posted an image of their new phone they did all the right things posting the image and selecting the background.
They dropped the ball when it came to sending the tweet which they posted from an iPhone. Twitter had a field day.
Considering the potential reach that social media proffers, it’s wise to double check whatever it is that you post to the network.
Publicity stunts should be carefully thought out so that they don’t become cringe worthy.
Last words
What are you waiting for now?
Social media marketing is your one true way to get across to your fans. Like everything else it requires consistent efforts over a long period of time. Eventually you will figure out things that resonate most with your audience and you can build on that.
It’s great power that when employed correctly can take your brand to new heights.