Create A Social Media Strategy For Ecommerce In Just 7 Steps

Updated on October 31, 2022 in Marketing by Nishant Shrimali

The Internet is divided into two spectrums today. Social media and search engines.

And with time, we are also seeing an overlap between these two. For eCommerce, social media is an organic way to connect with their customers.

It’s not just about being relevant. A social media strategy for eCommerce is about trust and conversion.

The higher your social equity is, the better your organic reach will be.

So, if you are running an eCommerce, it is very important to create a social media strategy for your brand.

A strategy that helps you use your resources effectively, and see the positive output of your efforts.

Looking forward to it? Let’s jump right into the guide to create an ultimate social media strategy for eCommerce from scratch.

Understand your goals

What do you want from your social media strategy?

Are you looking to increase traffic or do you want conversion?

Do you want to connect with your audience or do you want to reach a new audience?

Answers can be overlapping.

We want conversion and traffic both to be in sync. But to have a good roadmap, we must know our destination first.

When you’ll be working on your strategy, you’ll see a positive impact on all your metrics.

Traffic will increase with conversion. You’ll connect with new and current customers.

But, having a goal will help you define what steps you should be taking first.

That is why start with defining what you want.

Pen down your goals, and arrange them based on your priority.

Define Your Audience

Who are you targeting?

This will again be inspired by the first step of social media strategy – understand your goals.

If you are already running an eCommerce or if you have an experience in the industry, you know the stages of your customer.

• Are you targeting people who are not aware of your products or are not aware of your brand?
• Are they looking for a solution or are they unaware of having a problem/solution itself?
• Are they considered beginners, intermediates, or experts in the industry?

Along with these questions, you must have answers to the following questions as well:

Who are they?	Eg: Gender, geography, profession, age group, economical group, culture, etc.
What kind of information or content is the interested in that you can share?	Eg: informative, entertaining, lifestyle, casual, formal, descriptive, brief, funny, etc.
Which platform are they most active on?	Eg: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Clubhouse, WhatsApp, Youtube, Tiktok, etc.
When are they using the platform, that aligns them with your goal?	Eg: Early morning, before going to bed, in the gym, when getting ready, when going to work, coming from work, doing some research, etc.
Why are they consuming the following information/content?	Eg: to look better, to make their house look aesthetic, to take care of their pets, to solve a problem, to get information, to buy some products, for entertainment, etc
What form of content are they interested in?	Eg: images, videos, short videos, texts, animation, carousel, audio, etc.

Having a defined audience persona will help you create content that connects with your audience.

You’ll know what they want, and bridge it with what you are delivering.

Analyze your industry

Not just your competitors, but looking across the industry helps you point out – what’s working and what’s not.

So, what are you exactly looking for?

We are looking for the strategy that is already working and tests that have already been done.

For example, if you are a cosmetic brand you’ll scrap all the beauty brands. You’ll find makeup tutorial works, but the long-form video has lower engagement.

At the same time, long-form interviews with creators and CEOs have a much better engagement rate.

What you are looking for can’t simply be confined to points.

But this surely can be said that you are looking to get the advantage of all the tests that your industry has done.

Once you know what combinations are working, a good part of creating a social media strategy for eCommerce will be done.

Define your content

You know who your target audience is. You have also analyzed the industry to determine the content.

Now, it is really important that define it for your social media strategy for eCommerce.

What does defining content means?

It means sharing what your audience will be getting when they connect with you.

Here are a few examples:

• They will stay connected with the brand and the new updates (discount, launch, etc.)
• The audience will be able to learn more about the product.
• They will be able to learn more about the category.
• They will be able to be a part of a community that has similar goals.
• The audience will be able to follow and share inspiring stories related to the brand.

The goal of your social media strategy for eCommerce is to create space on the internet where your audience would like to connect and engage.

At the start, it might be hard to be unique (if you are, great!). But with time, the aim is to differentiate yourself.

Determine your timing

When is the right time to post your content?

Organic reach is regularly falling. That means, more and more accounts have to rely on paid media to reach their audience.

OR…

You have to make sure that you hit the Share/Publish/Post button at the time when your audience is active on the platform.

If you can generate high engagement initially after posting a piece of content, the platform will organically show it to more people.

You can learn about the best time to post using your social media analytics, or some of the best social media analytics tools.

They will show you the time when most of your audience is active. But wait a minute. Make sure you are not blindly posting content based on the analytics.

That means, if you see that your audience is active around 5-6 pm, they might be on their way home after a long day at their work (depending on your audience).

In that case, you have to share content that aligns with their mood, energy, and things that they would like to see. 

Just for reach, if you share a post wishing them a great day – well they are not entirely engaging with the post.

Generate UGC

Are you struggling to create content?

Running out of ideas is common. But more importantly, you have to make sure that there is space for UGC content as well.

What is UGC Content?

UGC stands for User Generated Content. Engaging and motivating your audience to create content for your brand.

For example, you can challenge your audience to share and participate in your brand-specific trend, showcase product use cases, and tag your social media account.

Also, if you are not even starting a challenge if you see someone sharing your product, tagging your brand, resharing it, and giving them a shoutout would be a great opportunity for your brand to connect with your audience.

Often UGC is not a part of the baseline social media strategy for eCommerce.

Since the organic reach and engagement are dropping across platforms, your brand must focus on building a connection with the audience, from the start.

Utilize Repurposing

What is repurposing in terms of social media?

The meaning is essentially the same.

Rather than only focusing on creating and sharing new content, across all the social media platforms, create a strategy where you create once, and share it multiple times.

For example, if you create a post on Twitter > Share it on Instagram > Share it on LinkedIn > Create a short video and share it on TikTok > Share it in Youtube shorts.

The above one is just an example.

If you are targeting different audiences on different platforms, the strategy will be completely different.

But what you can definitely do is once you published content (let’s say one or two months ago), and if it performed well – reupload it and share it with your new audience.

What will your audience think?

To be honest, an average user spends up to 145 mins on social media. Even if they see a post for 15 seconds (which is huge), they see about 580 posts a day.

The chances of them remembering what you posted are marginal.

On the other hand, if you are growing an account, your new followers would have never even seen your old content once.

So rather than just piling up new content, using your old – well-performing posts – again would help you create a resourceful and effective social media strategy for eCommerce.

Bonus Read

Creating a social media strategy for eCommerce is aligning your content and their expectations together.

I am sure the above guide will definitely help you do that.

But there’s one thing that every eCommerce social media team MUST focus on. Ensuring that the product images, align with the brand.

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