Social Media Marketing Overview

By Adam  |  12 Jul 2015 10:00:00

Social media can be a very handy marketing tool. You'd be hard-pressed to find a big, successful business that didn't have a strong social media presence as that's just the direction in which things are headed. If you've recently started up your own eCommerce website but have yet to dip a metaphorical toe into the pool of social media, hopefully this blog post will be helpful for you. I'm going to go over the three biggest social media outlets and explain to you what each of them are and what each of them do, with links to more comprehensive blog posts if you need them.

First up, we have the most popular and well known of the social media sites: Facebook. Facebook is a great way of connecting with your existing customers and keeping your business in their minds. You can share photographs and write posts of whatever length you like and if anyone clicks to 'like' your posts then people on their friend lists might see and come over to your page. It provides a nice and easy environment in which to have friendly interactions with customers through comments. Facebook also lets you 'boost posts' for a fee which means that it will target people in your business's demographic and make sure that they see your posts, hopefully meaning that they will then be interested in your business! Read my full Facebook post here.

Next, there is Twitter. Twitter limits you in that you can only use 140 characters for everything that you post, which means it's not ideal for posting anything long or for interacting with customers (though it can still be done). What Twitter is great for, meanwhile is posting a lot of short but sweet 'tweets' and for finding new people and having new people find you. Twitter makes use of hashtags which you can follow to find all of the people who are interested in the kinds of things your business provides; equally, those people can follow those hashtags to find you! Read my full Twitter post here.

Finally we come to number three: Instagram. Instagram is based around the sharing of images, so you will need to be regularly taking photographs or making graphics if you want to use Instagram for marketing. This is especially good if you've got a product which is made to look nice; if you sell clothes you can approach popular Instagram models and send them your clothes so that they can then photograph themselves in them and expose your brand to their thousands of followers. Instagram is probably for the more artistic or creative of businesses (it may not be for you if you sell office supplies) but can be a useful marketing tool, nonetheless! Read my full Instagram post here.

So I hope that this has given you a good insight into social media and helped you to decide which platforms are the best for your business. If you're just researching these things before opening your online shop, then maybe now is the time to get things started. Sign up for Sellr now and make your own eCommerce website, it is completely free!