Use Social Media to Boost Online Shopping

Online shopping is booming. A recent study shows consumers make most of their purchases online rather than in stores. Attracting visitors to your website and converting those visits into sales is critical. Using social media is a natural way to drive traffic to online shopping on your e-commerce site. Increasing your social media presence helps you build relationships and engage with your network. This leads to loyal relationships and increased visibility for potential customers. We’ve compiled a few best practices to help your brand increase site visits and conversions using social media.

Use Influencers to Build Credibility

Using brand influencers helps expand the reach of your company and products. Influencers are trusted by their followers and are an influential source of advice and information. 92% of consumers trust recommendations from family, friends, and peers over other sources. Great shares from influencers can quickly boost your site traffic and social media followers. Consumers want to purchase from companies they trust. Influencers help give your brand authenticity and build brand loyalty. The feedback from trusted influencers legitimizes your brand and product in addition to expanding your audience.

Create Shareable Content

The best way to boost online shopping and drive engagement on social media  is through creating content that is shareable. All content that you share on social media should be both relevant and useful to your target audience. Consumers are flooded with social media information from brands and they need a good reason to follow your accounts. Social media content is an excellent way to drive consumers to your website for online shopping and each post should be shared across multiple platforms. The reach of a single post is limited by the presence of the audience on that platform at that time, so sharing valuable and actionable content more than once is crucial. Optimizing your online content for mobile is incredibly important to ensuring that your content is effective.

Integrate Compelling Visuals

Effective content is essential for social media posts, but visuals have a major impact on consumers. Social media posts that contain images create 65% more engagement than text-only posts. Visuals help validate purchasing decisions — customers 85% more likely to decide based on information with images than on text alone. Whatever platform you use, the best visuals on social media consistently have:

• Vibrant colors and clean layouts
• High quality images
• Visuals that tell a story
• Images that show products/services in a new light

Using visual content is one of the best ways to bring your brand to life and drive traffic to your website. Instagram remains one of the best platforms for visual content. Brands that create engaging and attractive Instagram content see the highest level of engagement compared to other social networks.

Leverage Your Company Blog

If your company doesn’t already have an active blog, consider creating one. High quality blog content provides a source of relevant and instructive information that will give your audience another reason to visit your site and increase online shopping. Blog content is easily shareable on other social media platforms, making it work beyond the original post. Sharing tools, resources, and tips attracts increased engagement and social sharing. It’s important to identify the right channels and the content that attracts the highest engagement so that you can amplify that content to drive more social engagement. Knowing what content attracts the most interest from your audience will help you know what content to create and promote online shopping and attract social media attention.

Optimize Use of SEO for Online Shopping

Sharing your content should be easy for readers, but it’s also important to ensure that it is being shared correctly and effectively. Review and update your search engine optimization (SEO) practices to make your content work best for you. Integrating SEO best practices helps improve your online visibility, generate more sales and leads, strengthen your brand’s authority, and increase your social media traffic. Optimizing your online content for search engines has impressive payoffs. Social profiles influence the content of search results and are often among the top search result listings for brand names. Social sharing is a big contributor to a brand’s authority — much like external links. The more likes, shares, favorites, replies, and/or retweets your content gains helps boost your brand authority. These external sources help validate your content and your company. Optimizing your SEO in each post helps authenticate your brand and drive increased awareness.

Social media content can serve multiple purposes for your brand, including driving online shopping on your website. Creating high quality content paired with visuals that can be shared across a variety of social media platforms help increase your reach and expand your audience. Influencers and SEO legitimize your brand and products and help increase visits to your e-commerce site. Leveraging your content and promoting it effectively helps boost online shopping traffic and maximize conversions.

What other ways do you drive consumers into your online shop? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!