When a consumer “likes” a post you’ve published on social media, it could be an indication they’re interested in the fashion, accessories or other products you’re promoting. A positive comment could suggest affinity with your brand’s style. The ideal response to any social media post, however, is when the consumer clicks on a link or “buy” button that leads to an actual purchase.
As social platforms make it increasingly easier to manage financial transactions directly through their services, retailers are realizing they can use them for far more than marketing activities. In fact, social commerce represents a huge opportunity to convert and grow revenue.
To understand how to sell using social commerce, read on.
What is Social Shopping or Social Commerce?
For everyday consumers, social media continues to be a place they come to share photos and videos with their family and friends. While brands initially established their own accounts to advertise products and direct them back to their own eCommerce stores, social commerce means they are now using these platforms to provide a seamless digital shopping experience.
Social commerce sales are forecast to reach $8.5 trillion globally by 2030. Clothing is expected to be the fastest-growing category in this space, representing 18% of social commerce sales by 2025. In the U.S. alone, 77% pursue social shopping at least once per week.
The first step in developing a shoppable storefront on social media is to ensure you can easily connect your product catalog to social platforms where your customers are browsing. Product feed management makes this far easier to accomplish and scalable across multiple social services.
At the same time, you should become familiar with the unique requirements and social shopping opportunities each platform offers.
Top Social Commerce Platforms
Approaching social media as a brand is a lot different than what you might have experienced as a consumer. You’re not just sharing content broadly to the world but taking advantage of channels within each service that can maximize your social commerce sales.
These are some best practices specific to the most popular platforms.
Mastering Facebook Social Commerce
The volume of consumers shopping on Facebook is expected to reach more than 64.6 million in 2024, making it the largest social commerce platform. To reach that audience:
Leverage Facebook Shops
Facebook offers a shoppable storefront where retailers can create collections of their products based on a theme, such as seasonable apparel. Setting up a Facebook Shop allows you to display your brand’s name, logo, ratings and other details in addition to products. It’s also easy for users to discover Facebook Shops through their fields or via a dedicated tab and follow it and make purchases.
Use Dynamic Ads
No one has time to make thousands of individual ads to promote every product in their catalog. Facebook’s Dynamic Ads address this by allowing you to promote your entire catalog while also delivering relevant product recommendations to Facebook users based on their interests.
Engage with Facebook Live
Retailers have often used the power of a live in-store event to attract shoppers and give them a closeup look at their featured products. Facebook Live offers a way to do the exact same thing but on a global scale. Showcase items with live models, answer questions from potential buyers and offer the kind of authentic connection that consumers crave.
Optimize for Mobile
It may have started in the days when desktops were still the dominant device for browsing the web, but most consumers are probably scrolling the Facebook app on their smartphone. Make sure you don’t disappoint them by ensuring you’re offering fast page loads and adjusting text and images to display on smaller screens.
Feed integration: Facebook Shops and Dynamic Ads need to properly convey every important detail about the items you’re selling. This includes not only names but pricing, images, descriptions, SKUs and availability statuses. Automating Facebook product feed management will render everything consumers need to know in the right format, every time.
Instagram Social Shopping: Everything You Need to Know
Whether gazing at photos or watching Reels, Instagram also commands a sizable social shopping audience, with 46.8 million expected to make purchases there in 2024. Instagram is also well established as a home for highly engaging fashion and lifestyle content, making it an ideal digital destination for many eCommerce brands. There are plenty of ways to attract customers:
Utilize Instagram Shopping
There’s no shorter path to purchase than “see it, buy it,” which is exactly what Instagram Shopping was designed to offer U.S. retailers. Posts will include one-click access to view collections, detailed product pages or simply buy directly through the app. You’ll need to set up a business profile on Instagram and comply with Instagram’s merchant agreement to get approved. You’ll then be able to tag up to 20 products and shops in a photo feed post, 10 photos and videos in a carousel post.
Create Shoppable Posts
Consumers have come to recognize the little shopping bag icon that identifies Shoppable Posts on Instagram, which allow them to streamline the process of ordering a product they want. Bear in mind that they are likely looking at multiple brands on Instagram at any given moment, and Shoppable Posts let them stay in the app even as they make purchases. You can enhance your Shoppable Posts by not only creating enticing images, but adding important context such as sizing, fit or styling.
Leverage Influencers
Instagram is a great example of a platform where users are building up audiences that dwarf that of many brands. These creators are also called influencers because consumers pay close attention to products they recommend and endorse. Partnering with influencers can help draw more attention to your Shoppable Posts and other Instagram content to boost your social commerce sales.
Use Instagram Stories
Instagram may have originally been focused on photography, but today users can create Stories that blend images, video, text and special effects. Brands can do the same thing, illustrating how their products could be worn or used in a particular context or locale. Instagram Stories are also ideal for conveying the kind of key messages that were once reserved for expensive TV spots, while also offering a fast and easy way to take the next step and buy items.
Feed Integration: Developing a shoppable storefront on Instagram requires adding details to its Commerce Manager platform. This includes either connecting your existing catalog or creating a new one. That could be a laborious and error-prone job without a product feed management solution that instantly transmits the right data and accelerates Instagram’s review process.
Social Shopping on Pinterest: Your Secret Weapon
Whether you’re decorating your home or creating a board full of outfit ideas, Pinterest is the ultimate way to curate ideas and products that speak to your individual style. No wonder 85% of Pinterest users have made a purchase based on a pin. Make sure your brand is among those benefiting:
Optimize Product Pins
Every pin you promote as a brand should tell a story. This not only includes visual storytelling with images but metadata such as the keywords you use to describe them. Also make sure to tag across multiple categories where appropriate to maximize discoverability and form product groups with the same care you’d put complementary products on a table in a physical store.
Use Rich Pins
Pinterest recognizes that product information should never stay static. That’s why it offers Rich Pins, which automatically sync data from your website. This means you can have the latest ingredients in a Recipe Rich Pin, or updated pricing and availability for Product Rich Pins.
Create Themed Boards
Pinterest boards don’t have to be random assortments of products. Much like an in-store experience, you’ll provide a better experience for customers by organizing pins based on broader similarities, customer interests and needs. A good example might be a vacation-themed board that includes everything you should buy before setting off on your next getaway.
Engage with Visual Search
Shopping inspiration can come from anywhere, but the hard work comes when you need to track down something that appeals to you. Visual search technologies ease that journey by allowing consumers to simply point at an item and look it up online. Pinterest Lens, for instance, can drive more consumers to your pins when you have multiple optimized images of your products with accurate data.
Feed Integration: Pinterest allows brands to add 50 different data sources, but doing so manually requires many steps, and Pinterest requires data be updated every seven days. This could become a full-time job without an automated feed management solution that can handle this on a scheduled basis.
TikTok Social Commerce: Go Viral with Your Sales
Some come for the singing and dancing. Some come for the memes. There are also plenty of people who visit TikTok for both types of content – in addition to hunting for their next luxury item. More than 55 million U.S. consumers shopped on TikTok in 2023, either through links in the app or directly on the platform. Now is the time to meet your customers here as well. Here’s how:
Create Engaging Content
TikTok first became known for the extreme brevity of its content, as well as a sense of humor that tended to skew towards younger consumers. As the platform grows, its audience will inevitably become more diverse, but the same lighthearted and fun-loving spirit remains. Instead of a hard product pitch, try to develop clips that put what you sell into an unconventional environment, or answer some of the funniest questions you’ve ever been asked by existing customers. If you know some of your loyal customers well, see if they’ll be part of clips that are part of viral trends, such as posts with the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag.
Leverage TikTok Shopping
TikTok Shop incorporates many of the features of other social shopping platforms, including the ability to be featured on a Shop tab, in-feed and live shopping as well as product showcases. Of course you’ll have to adhere to TikTok’s community guidelines and TikTok Shop policies to set up this kind of shoppable storefront after signing up to its seller program.
Partner with Creators
Like Instagram, TikTok is filled with creators who have mastered the art of short-form video. Involve them anywhere from launch campaigns and unboxing opportunities to clips that let them explain to their followers why your products are essential items.
Use Hashtag Challenges
TikTok is perhaps the most “gamified” social media platform where brands can challenge users to compete with one another to create the best content. Examples here could include clips that demonstrate the best use of your products to bring your company’s slogan to life in a new way.
Feed Integration: TikTok suggest brands can create new catalogs, upload products from an online file or use a template. There’s actually another, better way: leverage the power of a proven product feed management solution to ensure every attribute is included and leave your
2024’s Trends in Social Commerce
Social commerce is an ever-moving target. As platforms continue to compete with each other for consumers’ attention, we’ll see them experiment with new technologies and introduce features to drive even more immersive engagement.
Given giants such as Meta not only own Facebook and Instagram but WhatsApp, for instance, expect to see further integration of social commerce within messaging apps that allow consumers to get their contacts’ opinions on their purchases. Evolving mobile device hardware could allow social commerce via augmented and virtual reality. Other areas, such as live shopping, are still nascent and poised for further expansion.
Integrating Highstreet.io for Optimal Social Commerce
Regardless of how social commerce evolves, having a product feed management solution in place is a great strategy for future-proofing your brand.
Take Highstreet.io, which not only allows brands to manage product catalogs on social platforms but create enriched feeds tailored to their needs. Flexible configurations means brands can also stay ahead of channel requirements as they change, and the platform allows performance monitoring and the ability to keep track of inventory statuses. These kinds of capabilities all support a social shopping experience based on improved data accuracy and simplified, automated feed management.
Your shoppable storefront should be available everywhere. Contact Highstreet.io to learn how we can help grow your social commerce sales.