How social commerce helps increase business profitability
Due to its convenience for consumers, social commerce is becoming increasingly popular. Today, users can select, explore, and purchase products without leaving the platform. In turn, social networks actively support this format. They are expanding their platforms’ functionality to make shopping and ordering more convenient.
For businesses that sell physical goods, including social commerce in their strategy is extremely important. Integrating with these platforms allows companies to avoid barriers such as a complex user experience or slow loading speeds for online store pages.
Another advantage of social commerce is that it speeds up the decision-making process. Most purchases are impulsive: users see an attractive price on a product and place an order immediately. If they have to go to a third-party website, there is a high probability that they will lose interest.
User-generated content, created not only by influencers but also by ordinary consumers, also encourages impulsive purchases. This effect is amplified by social networks’ capabilities: purchase tags and links, built-in catalogs, and recommendations. These features transform social networks into comprehensive trading platforms, opening new growth channels for businesses.
How to optimize your social commerce strategy
The key platforms for social shopping are TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube. The process of creating a business page and its functionality are generally similar across all platforms. The page is linked to a personal account, making it easy to switch between profiles.
To increase the effectiveness of your social commerce strategy, optimize your store. To do so, you should:
- Focus on keywords and descriptions. Prepare a meaningful description for each product using relevant keywords. High-quality images are essential — at least four are needed for each product. For example, Facebook prefers descriptions that are longer than the title.
- Use collections or product groups. This approach simplifies navigation, which is especially important when you have a wide range of products.
- Integrate tags into organic content. Combining user posts with shopping tags builds brand trust. This also helps maintain authenticity and draw attention to products.
- Respond promptly to customer requests. Interacting with users helps you understand their needs better and provides you with the opportunity to create valuable content.
- Collaborate with influencers. Their influence expands your reach and attracts new audiences. Give preference to bloggers with high engagement levels to increase the effectiveness of your campaign.
Each social network has unique promotional tools for social shopping. Videos demonstrating products, live streams, and ads with direct links perform well on TikTok. Posts with reviews and integrated tags are effective on Facebook and Instagram. Personalized collections in a standard ad format work well on Pinterest.
