Basic Social Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Online Sales

The biggest challenge that online store owners face is increasing traffic to their ecommerce store. The explosion of growth in the ecommerce world has only made it tougher for ecommerce sites to attract the critical mass of visitors needed to stay in business. Here are some basic social media marketing strategies which will increase your online community and increase traffic to help you boost sales. Pick the strategies and tactics you find most interesting and suitable for your business and start seeing your business grow.

1.      Post Daily Content for Continued Growth: One of the easiest ways to grow your social communities over time is to post content consistently. Studies have shown that different audiences react to different posting frequencies, so make sure you are testing the optimal frequency with your own audience or look at the engagement levels in comparison to posting frequencies of your competitors for some guidelines. The minimum should be once a day on Facebook and 4-6 times a day on Twitter. Also pay attention to what time of the day you post, the timing of social media is very important. There areTwo amazing tools which can be used to help automate this process are Swayy and Buffer. Swayy is great for finding high quality articles and news related to your industry and allows you to schedule posts to your different social networks. Buffer is a very popular app that can be integrated with your browser and dozens of other apps to help you schedule posts to your social networks. Using these apps can help you cut down your time spent on your social marketing to half an hour a day.

2.     Use Images When Posting to Facebook: The best way to increase engagement on Facebook is by including images within your posts. Photos on Facebook have been shown to generate over 50% more likes than the average post. When you want to post an announcement or to promote a piece of content then include the link to the page within the post (preferably after the content so it stands out) and attach an image to the post.

3.      Increase Exposure of your Communities With Social Buttons: The more impressions you have on your social networks the more likely it is that you will gain more likes. The best way to dramatically increase the number of impressions on your social networks is by embedding social buttons within your site and within your marketing communications. Most blogs have social sharing buttons displayed prominently to encourage readers to share the article.

Some of the places you may want to consider to place social buttons:

·         Footer of your website and blog

·         Header of your website and blog

·         In your newsletter

·         In your email signature

·         Within specific blog posts

4.     Run a Launchrock Campaign: Launchrock is a popular free service for collecting email addresses of people who want to get early access to the launch of a new app, service or really anything. The special thing about Launchrock is that it integrates social within the subscription process which is a very powerful component that can be used to turn a regular promotion into a viral marketing channel to help drive traffic and sales.

5.      Leverage Social Reviews to Automate Word of Mouth Marketing: Using product reviews to create trust and provide insights on your products is a great way to increase sales.

6.     Create Micro Content: We are all suffering from information overload, which means that people have less patience and less time to consume content. A growing trend among marketers which should be seriously considered by online store owners is the creation of bite sized chunks of content for quick and easy consumption.

7.     Run a Twitter Q&A: Engagement is critical to keep any online community alive and well. A great tactic to grow your Twitter community and dramatically increase engagement is by hosting a weekly Twitter Q&A. The idea is to pick a day of the week, and then encourage your community to post questions related to your product, business, industry or really anything. You then provide answers to their questions and then choose the best questions and use them in a blog post.

8.     Run a Pinterest Treasure Hunt: Pinterest is one of the largest social networks in the world and can be used for a wide range of marketing activities. One powerful way to use Pinterest to create buzz around your brand and product line is to use it to run a “treasure hunt” promotion.

9.     Experiment With Different Titles in Your Blog Posts: The title of a blog post carries a lot more weight than the average person realizes and should get as much attention as the content of the post. Here are some tips for optimizing your titles:

·         Use everyday language

·         Leverage common psychological traits (urgency, fear, desire, etc)

·         Keep it short

·         Use negatives (Don’t do this vs. do this)

·         If you're post is a list, start the title with how many points you're going to make

10.   Make it Easy for Customers to Share and Pin Your Products: Including social sharing buttons is a must for any online store that wants to take advantage of our innate social behavior online. Make sure you include buttons to the popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) and that they are not hidden away in your store’s theme.

Try and use a service like AddThis which has its own analytics and can be used to help you with finding the optimal positioning and layout.

11.  Invest in an Infographic: Over the last few years infographics have become extremely popular. Investing in a professionally designed infographic is one of the best ways to create a huge spike in traffic to your site and help you get a number of high value back links which are great for SEO.

12.  Create a Complimentary Board on Pinterest: A great way to provide additional value to your customers is by providing them with info and special deals on complimentary products which you don’t necessarily sell.

Many of the strategies mentioned in this post are very fresh and underutilized which means that if you are reading this you have a unique opportunity to take full advantage of the advice mentioned in this post.