What Is Social Commerce?
A social commerce campaign is successful when consumers interact with the company’s marketing through retweets, likes, and shares.
Understanding Social Commerce
Some of the marketing tactics social commerce employs include creating and posting messages and interactive features that promote online sales and other e-commerce initiatives.
- Inviting users to vote on product style or choices
- Offering personalized buyer options
- Applying large and striking graphics to attract viewer clicks
- Using videos to show the product in use and from multiple angles
- Encouraging user-submitted photos, commentary, and feedback
- Using celebrity endorsements of the product line
- Linking directly to the checkout or shopping cart
- Offering promotions or giveaways to users who share the product on their feeds
Social commerce refers to the usage of social media platforms in order to perform commercial transactions.
How Social Commerce Began
Yao Zhong said that the concept of consumer marketing promotions online first appeared on the internet in November 2005 in Yahoo! The site promoted their “Shoposphere pick lists,” which highlighted the most popular products.
Jeff Bullas, a marketing blogger, identifies the following four brands as being among the best in the business when it comes to engaging online shoppers by offering reliable advice and support from online experts regarding their purchases:
- Nordstrom pins a “popular on Pinterest” label on store items that are trending online.
- Coca-Cola personalized its labels on bottles in stores and then invited social media users to post photos of their name-branded soda with the hashtag #ShareACoke
- Lolly Wolly Doodle, a fashion brand that allows followers to design and order their own clothes right on its Facebook page
- Starbucks, which awards bonus points to customers who unlock Mayor badges on Foursquare
While social shopping is a collaboration of online shoppers networking together, social commerce is a collaboration between online shoppers and vendors.
Special Considerations
Social commerce is an online marketing field that is growing and changing, which works with social media and online shopping growth. Fashion and shopping-related blogs use social commerce and media to get shoppers to purchase linked items online.
Many popular fashion blogs have Instagram accounts that allow followers to like, share, and comment on the offered product. The tagged article frequently links directly to the store’s shopping cart or checkout desk.
