HOW TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

By Massawe Arkadi

Do you promote your products online?

Are you looking for ways to use social media to increase your sales?

Both well-known and startup companies are mixing social media and e-commerce to garner more sales.

In this article I’ll show you not only how they’re doing it, but how you can do it too.

Combine Social Media and E-Commerce

Find 4 examples of how to promote products with social media.

Pioneering companies are bringing social e-commerce back by integrating sites like Instagram with websites that look similar to the social sites users are familiar with (e.g., Pinterest).

#1: Link Product Photos With Product Pages

How You Can Do It Too

If you’re ready to invest, you can try out Like2Buy yourself or look at Olapic. Olapic lets you republish user-generated photos within your site in various ways. However, both options are expensive.

If you’re looking for a more reasonably priced option, you can start by creating your own Pinterest-themed website for your e-commerce merchandise. There are plenty of templates available and Pinterest user Robin Good has handpicked a few of the best for WordPress.

#2: Create a Familiar Space

Whether you’re working with your website or your social media profiles, as a marketer your question is always going to be “how can we make money here?”

How You Can Do It Too

There are plenty of photography collage-style themes out there that let you create individual galleries. You can use them to mix and match various products to create a whole set and link to your e-commerce shop.

The popular Sentinell theme allows for the same type of gallery function, but also holds YouTube and Vimeo clips if you’d like to incorporate video.

#3: Use Customers’ Feedback

Like the Wanelos and Polyvores out there, Fancy lets users find, collect and buy items from various companies. To set itself apart, it also offers a monthly box subscription (Fancy Boxes) that delivers gourmet food.

So where does the social element come in? Fancy’s 2 million+ members help curate (via voting) the foods that show up in each month’s box.

Encouraging this kind of customer input further reinforces that Fancy truly cares about customers and values their feedback. It’s a great way to build brand loyalty and turn a profit at the same time.

How You Can Do It Too

The logistics of setting up a subscription goodie delivery service are far too involved to cover in just one article, but you can still benefit from the curation aspect. Use your website and social media profiles to ask customers what they’d like to see in next month’s box.

The Ultimate Modern Magazine theme for WordPress lets you curate and spotlight those products and allows users to review and rate products.

Of course, if you’d rather, you can advertise your products on a curation site and take advantage of their technology and traffic!

#4: Include Customer Images on Product Pages

Invite customers to share pictures of themselves using your product for added social proof.

BlackMilk pulls the hashtagged pictures into their product pages so other customers can see how the clothing fits and looks on others—and see how fun it is to wear. Bringing social proof to product pages is one more way to encourage visitors to buy.

To give product pages this look-book functionality, BlackMilk uses the Show. See. Soldadd-on that works with the Shopify platform. The add-on lets users zoom, rotate, spin and filter products to see exactly what they want, as well as buy directly.