What is Social Commerce and Why Is It Important For Creators?
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Think about places where you might be able to find potential customers; say, millions of them, 24/7. The answer is social media! Teaming up your social networks with ecommerce results in social commerce, an intersection of the two that offers content creators and influencers innovative opportunities to engage with their audience in new ways, amp up their brand, and monetize their online presence.
Social commerce is a powerful tool for driving sales, fostering community engagement, and amplifying brand visibility. Let's explore all things social commerce, including its key features, benefits, effective usage strategies, and where you can get started with this rapidly growing trend.
What is Social Commerce?
Social commerce refers to the practice of buying and selling products directly through social media platforms, all the way from "window shopping" to selecting merchandise to checkout and shipping. Unlike traditional ecommerce, where transactions occur on dedicated websites or online stores, social commerce seamlessly integrates the shopping process into social networks.
This means that customers can discover, explore, and purchase shoppable products without even leaving their favorite social platforms, creating a polished, effortless shopping experience. Social commerce blurs the lines between interactions (social) and transactions (commercial) in a positive way, leveraging the power of social networks to drive sales, grow creator and influencer brands, and encourage customer engagement.
Benefits of Social Commerce
Reaches a Larger Target Audience
Social commerce enables content creators to tap into vast audiences on social platforms via both media posts and live shopping, reaching potential customers who may not actively seek out traditional online stores. Most people you know are probably at least on one social media platform; plenty of people are on multiple platforms. That's a lot of people you can reach with social commerce to grow your audience and customers!
Removes Friction
By showcasing shoppable items and allowing users to make purchases without leaving their socials, social commerce streamlines the buying process, reducing friction, enhancing convenience, and making shopping fun and easy. Social commerce lessens the amount of steps that a person has to take to purchase something that catches their eye, making them more likely to buy it.
Keeps You on Trend
Showcasing shoppable products on your social networks also lets you better tune in to changing trends, so you can capitalize upon trending fashion, memes, entertainment, and holidays. Maximizing social commerce by incorporating current trends into your content and your videos/livestreaming helps your audience feel like they're part of something, which increases product discovery and helps turn your fans into customers.
Gathers Data on Your Customers
Social commerce platforms offer valuable insights, data, and metrics about customer behavior, preferences, and demographics. These stats help empower content creators and influencers to gather research results, and enables them to tailor their social commerce marketing efforts and shoppable product offerings to their audience's interests and wants.
Brings in Revenue From Your Socials
With social commerce, creators can generate revenue directly from their social media presence, monetizing their influence by promoting and selling products to their followers. This not only saves time, it also maximizes your socials by getting more people to buy products, earning you even more revenue for your content creation efforts.
Encourages Customer Feedback
Engaging directly with customers through social commerce fosters real-time feedback and interaction, enabling creators to gather insights, address concerns, and improve products, services, and socials/livestreaming production. Pay close attention to your comments section, as feedback patterns will rapidly emerge based on your social commerce content and the shoppable products you're showcasing.
5 Great Platforms for Social Commerce
Instagram Shopping
Instagram Shopping is great for social commerce; it allows you to tag shoppable products in Instagram posts and stories, making it easy for users to explore and purchase items directly from the app. You can make both specific product detail pages on Instagram with descriptions and prices; put together product collections; and use shoppable product tags in your feed, Reels, and Stories so that your viewers can easily tap on a tag to find out more, and then directly checkout on Instagram.
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace also provides a social commerce platform for creators and influencers to sell products, leveraging Facebook's extensive user base. You can sell nationally, but one benefit of selling locally is that Facebook will charge zero fees to list your items. While you might think of Marketplace as similar to Craigslist (and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, as a lot of people sell used household items on both), you can also use it for your social commerce products, handmade art items, or even retail arbitrage (in which you purchase a product at a deal, and sell it for a higher price.)
Pinterest enables users to discover and save ideas for various interests, including products they wish to buy, making it a valuable platform for driving product discovery and sales via social commerce. Pinterest users come to Pinterest to be inspired and plan; making your brand, products, and Pinterest catalog connect with what Pinterest users are looking for can quickly ramp up your social commerce sales. Carefully researching your desired demographics and implementing good keywords can help Pinterest users find you and get excited about your shoppable products.
TikTok Shop
TikTok Shop allows businesses to showcase and sell products directly within the TikTok app, capitalizing on TikTok's short-form video content, live shopping events, and engaged user base for effective social commerce. You can even seamlessly integrate your Fourthwall merch with TikTok shop, making it easy to keep things consistent. TikTok keeps elevating the creator/customer experience with additional features like platform discounts, coupons, and incentive programs - they claim that a whopping 70% of TikTok users have discovered new brands and products on the platform - and the grassroots #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag has become one to watch (and is one that you can use on TikTok yourself!)
YouTube Shopping
YouTube Shopping lets you connect your store to YouTube, so you can feature your products on a shelf below your videos (you need to be part of the YouTube partner program to do this.) You can also utilize this feature to tag products in your videos, Shorts, and YouTube live streams, and then use YouTube’s Shopping analytics to see how well your products are doing. It’s a great feature, and you can additionally use it with your Fourthwall shop, for seamless inclusion of your Fourthwall-based merch with your YouTube channel.
5 Tips for Effective Social Commerce
Optimize Product Listings
Create fun, inspiring, appealing social commerce shoppable product listings with high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and relevant keywords to max visibility and appeal to your potential customers.
Engage with Followers
Build a strong relationship with your audience/fans by actively engaging with them through comments, messages, and live interactions; you can even send thank you messages (like the custom ones available on Fourthwall) when they buy products. This helps build good communications, business trust, and brand loyalty.
Create Compelling Content
Produce engaging and authentic content that resonates with your audience, from video posts to live shopping events, showcasing your shoppable social commerce products in creative ways and highlighting their unique features and value.
Encourage Reviews
Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews and testimonials, leveraging social proof (the notion that "if others are happy about something, I'm likely to be happy about it too!") to build credibility among new customers.
Target Your Reach
Utilize targeting tools and analytics provided by social media platforms to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, so that your marketing and promotional efforts are effectively directed towards your target audience.
FAQ
How Does Social Commerce Work?
Social commerce integrates e-commerce functions into social platforms, allowing users to browse, watch live shopping video events about shoppable products, get detailed information, checkout, and seamlessly purchase products from content creators and influencers all without leaving their socials app.
What Are the Types of Social Commerce?
Social commerce includes peer-to-peer selling and live shopping, influencer-driven sales, UGC (user generated content) about featured products, group buying, and social shopping features, all integrated right into socials.
What Are Some Examples of Social Commerce?
Examples of social commerce include TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, Facebook Marketplace, Pinterest, and assorted creator/influencer affiliate marketing programs.
Unlock the Power of Social Commerce with Fourthwall
Social commerce represents a real transformative opportunity for content creators and influencers to monetize their brand, engage with their audience, inspire social proof, and drive sales directly through social media platforms. By leveraging the power of social commerce, creators and influencers can unlock new revenue streams and expand their reach as they create content and grow.
Fourthwall empowers you to harness the full potential of social commerce by providing you with intuitive tools, resources, and products to launch and manage your online presence seamlessly. You can create both your own online ecommerce shop and your own homepage that links to all of your socials, includes exclusive video content, and allows you to offer memberships to your fans and customers. With Fourthwall, creators and influencers alike can capitalize on social commerce opportunities and build thriving, profitable online communities; Fourthwall’s social integrations like YouTube Shopping, TikTok Shop, and Instagram/Facebook Shopping give you even more opportunities to reach new customers!