There are many ways to promote your business, one of them being social media. With the popularity of social media only increasing, so are social media stores. You can find these social media stores on Facebook and Instagram. Social media selling is when your businesses promote their products on social media with the ability for a customer to buy. People spend the majority of their time on social media, so why not sell to them there?
Facebook is one of the most popular platforms for selling your products, allowing you to easily link items in your catalog to your Facebook ads. This allows you to reach your customers in an extremely targeted way. You can even link your store's inventory from your main website directly to your Facebook profile. Plus, this social store has an abandoned cart feature that reminds your customers of what they are missing out on. Facebook is the best fit for stores selling clothing, specialty gifts, furniture, and products like that.
Instagram, unlike Facebook, is a more visual platform, which means the photo is everything. Selling on Instagram is a more recent addition to the world of social media. It is hard to spot the differences between a regular post and a shoppable post, other than a tiny shopping bag. But once you click the “shop” option you can either be brought to the company’s main site or to their Instagram shop page. You can literally make a purchase right there in the app. You can sell similar things on Instagram that you do on Facebook, but since Instagram lives up to a higher “Instagram-able” standard, the more photographable products take the rank.
Although Pinterest doesn’t have as big of a cult following as Facebook or Instagram, it does have a following. Pinterest pins with a price in it means that whatever is shown can be purchased. These pins can link to big e-commerce websites like Shopify or BigCommerce, but these pins can also link to your Pinterest store where it is easier for them to buy. What’s great about Pinterest is that not only is good for retail type of products but also works for travel, food and drink, and even home renovations.
Snapchat is one of the newer ones on the market and is the most straight-out selling of all of them. The trick of these ads is that they look so close to regular snaps, it’s hard to tell which is which until you swipe up. You can’t sell individual products on Snapchat, but you can promote your business itself, which is still a win. On Snapchat, you can sell normal retail products, but you can also promote events.
Selling on social media is different than selling traditionally. Less is sometimes more as people don’t want to know they are being sold to. They have to, in a way, be tricked into it. When someone is sold something too much, when an ad pops up too many times, the user/customer is more than likely to block or unfollow that account. And that is the last thing you want. It also has to be personal. This means that the copy, photo, and call to action are all enticing and have personality.
