December 01, 2009
Op Ed By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Social Media usage among ecommerce businesses is expected to jump substantially in 2010, as more companies look for ways to expand their audience reach and increase their sales. No longer can an ecommerce site be successful with only SEO and SEM efforts, they need to include social media to the mix to drive sales and traffic. Similar to SEO, the monetary investment needed to get into social media is very minimal and the biggest cost is your time. The return on investment can be tremendous once you establish a social presence and build up a solid base of followers and fans. Regardless of how large or small your ecommerce site is, you cannot ignore social media any longer and need to make it a part of your overall strategy. Using social media does not just mean that you are on Twitter and Facebook, but those are a must and a good start to building your social media strategy. Below we have compiled 21 social media tips for ecommerce businesses where we hope everyone who reads this will come away with at least one piece of valuable information that they can add to their social media efforts.
1. Use a Social Bookmark Aggregator on your Blog
Not everyone uses the same social media sites so it is best and most efficient to use a social bookmark aggregator on the bottom of your blog posts. Some site owners use them on individual product pages as well so visitors can tweet to Twitter or share on Facebook. AddThis.com, ShareThis.com, and AddToAny.com are the three best options that you can use for free on your site. Our favorite here is AddThis because it is so easy to install on multiple platforms and users are very comfortable and familiar with it. In just a few steps you can have this amazing functionality live on your site to help increase the social media reach of your website content. This is a must try technique since the time involved is so minimal for the potential return your site could receive.
2. Monitor Mentions of Your Company
Unfortunately there is not a perfect way to monitor everything being said about your ecommerce company online. There are, however, a variety of useful tools that will help you in monitor your brand. One of the up and coming tools to manage brand mentions in your social circle is Google Social Search which is only part of http://www.google.com/experimental. It allows you to search for your brand and see various mentions of it across your network of social connections. Then you can make sure to follow up and give thanks if needed for the mentions. Another site that will achieve similar results is SocialMention.com, but it is not limited to your social circle as it searches all social media channels per your requests. You can create alerts with your brand keywords and use their tracking widgets. Most people already use Google Alerts which is another great way to monitor your brand, so think of SocialMention.com as an extension of those efforts which will ensure you do not miss any brand mentions.
If you specifically want to monitor your Twitter mentions, then Monitter.com is the perfect real time tool to track one or more keywords or Twitter hashtags. Simply enter in a keyword, phrase, or hashtag and it will begin to provide you with real time results of what people are saying on Twitter. The default view is three columns wide, but you can add more by using the plus button on the lower right hand corner. There is also a widget which you can download and add to your site if you like.
One of the last methods that should help guarantee you are aware of almost everything being said about you online would be to use blog specific search engines, so you can see what bloggers are saying about your brand. Google blog search results should get picked up by Google Alerts, but it often misses many brand mentions that other blog search engines pick up. Try out blog search engines like Technorati.com, Bloglines.com, BlogScope.com, Twingly.com, and Ice Rocket.com. Depending on which niche your ecommerce site is in will usually dictate which of these blog search engines generates the best results.
3. Add a Retweet Button to Your Website Content
While this may sound very similar to social media tip #1, it is in fact totally different and is well executed by one of the leading authorities in social media news Mashable.com. Mashable uses a TweetMeme retweet button at the top of their blog posts in addition to their social bookmarking buttons at the bottom. This is a technique we recommend that is quickly catching on because it helps your posts become more viral, similarly to what StumbleUpon did for the last few years. While stumbling is popular and a good way to get traffic, Twitter is vastly superior and will generate much more traffic for your website. The TweetMeme community is very similar to Digg in that others can browse by category and find tweets with links to blog posts, coupon codes, or ecommerce sales which they can then retweet. Having the button on your posts increases the likelihood that more visitors will retweet your blog posts which should provide more traffic to your site which you can try and convert to a paying customer.
There is however, another retweet button option at Topsy.com that you can use on your ecommerce site which is preferred by many who host WordPress blogs. Topsy is very similar to TweetMeme except the big difference is how they determine which posts make it to the top rankings. They determine certain users of Twitter to be Influential or Highly Influential depending upon their tweet activity and how often they converse with people and retweet. Also, the Topsy plugin only works with a WordPress enabled blog. Regardless of which option you decide, it will be beneficial to your social media efforts.
4. Network on Linkedin With Customers and Industry Contacts
Linkedin may or may not work as a social media channel for your business depending on the niche of your ecommerce store. When you have a profile on Linkedin it will allow you to connect with customers, business associates, or other leaders in your industry. You can also list your ecommerce site in their business directory which will help give you another mention of your brand and allow people to know more about the company. The site is also great because you can build up recommendations that other people in your network can see to give them more faith in working with you or the advice you provide. Make sure to take advantage of Linkedin Groups which is the most powerful place on the site to socially connect and converse with people by asking and answering questions. It is a great way to share your expertise and expand your network of people who may be able to help your ecommerce business.
5. Take Advantage of Social Media Apps for Your Smart Phone
The iPhone app store is far and away the leader in the industry, offering mobile users more apps than any other provider in the market. Blackberry and Android have started to catch up, so regardless of which smart phone you have, there will be apps that help your ecommerce business. If you have an iPhone then you can get Google Analytics on your phone to stay on top of your social media traffic statistics wherever you have mobile Internet access. There are also Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace apps for many of the smart phone platforms which will help you stay connected to your other social media channels so you do not miss any messages.
Some ecommerce shopping cart solution providers like Shopify have an iPhone app called ShopKeeper, which was developed by Robot Mode LLC. The app helps Shopify merchants stay connected via their mobile phone so they can manage their ecommerce store on the go. This means that a Shopify owner can tweet about a deal with a coupon code from their iPhone, then check the traffic stats on Google Analytics, and follow up on orders via the ShopKeeper App.
Explore different apps on your smart phone and test out a bunch of the free ones before you go and buy anything. You may find that you get enough from the free apps, but if not then it will not cost you too much to pay for a few apps.
6. Utilize a Facebook Fan Page
This may be something that you already are utilizing for your ecommerce store, if so then that is great, but there are many online businesses out there that still do not utilize this social media channel. We wanted to call this out because many ecommerce store owners have set up a groups page on Facebook, but not a fan page. A Facebook fan page is vastly superior for an ecommerce brand to have as opposed to a groups page because it is far more interactive. Therefore allowing a better medium for any ecommerce site to have a conversation with their customers and promote deals as needed.
7. Make Video Part of Your Social Media Strategy
Now that digital camcorders are so cheap and many smart phones can record video, it is surprising that more ecommerce companies have not taken advantage of video for their social media efforts. If you do not already have a digital camera, then why not check out something like the Flip UltraHD at Amazon which can record 2 hours of 720p HD video on the internal memory. You want to have a high quality video if possible as it will allow your message to translate more clearly. One way to use video for your social media strategy would be to record videos that introduce your ecommerce store and tell customers what you are all about. Many ecommerce store owners have a unique story, and video is a great medium to connect with people so they can know more about you and your brand. In addition you could have tutorial videos that may show someone using the product form your site. No matter what kind of videos you create for your brand, it is recommended to host all of your videos internally as opposed to using YouTube. You want to get the full viral effect with your videos so when people share them in various social media channels, they link to your site. This technique will result in more links to your ecommerce site which will, in turn, help with your SEO efforts.
Another way to promote your brand is to make your own commercials and put them on your ecommerce site. You could also try running a contest where fans of your brand submit videos to you and award the winner a shopping spree at your site. Some online businesses have even opted for a higher end solution to add video to their social media strategy by partnering with a company like Zooppa.com which helps brands run user generated advertising contests via their community of creatives. Most brands focus on user generated video as it is the most viral and can spread quickly among social media channels. Regardless if you run the video contest with a company like Zooppa or try and organize it on your own, make sure you get the rights to use all videos submitted to help promote your brand.
8. Use The Same Username if Possible
This is a quick tip that many brands use, but you may not have a great tool to effectively make sure you can use the same name in all social media channels. Regardless if you are new to social media or a seasoned pro, you will still enjoy using namechk.com which will help you quickly check if your brand name can be your user name among various social media sites. If you can keep a uniform branded user name (ideally your ecommerce site url) across all of your social media sites, then it will help search engines as well as users more easily find your brand.
9. Selectively Use Ping.fm to Save Time With Multiple Updates
Using a tool like Ping.fm is a great way to update multiple social network sites at once with your latest status message. However you do not want to use this too often as it does not allow you to be as personable to people you interact with. Ecommerce sites can cross tweet promotions and deals but most updates should be made uniquely on the few social media channels that you utilize.
10. Consider Social Media a Part of Your SEO efforts
Most ecommerce sites have traditionally spent time and money on SEO and SEM while many have yet to adopt social media because they have trouble measuring the exact ROI. While it may be difficult to precisely measure all of the sales generated as a result of your social media efforts, it may help you to know that those efforts also help your SEO efforts. When you create a great blog post about your industry with links to your site and other blogs pick it up, you receive more links to your site. The more links you have to your site the more clout you have with Google and the better your site ranks within the search engine results.
11. Showcase Your Expertise
If you regularly participate on industry blogs by guest posting, then you will not only get a link, but you create a chance for that post to get picked up by social media sites. Research and find relevant industry blogs and request to be a guest contributor. Most blogs will welcome this as they get a free piece of content, which is hard to turn down when blogs need to post on a regular basis. You can also network in forums about ecommerce or your industry, and help out people by participating in conversations and answering questions.
12. Avoid the Hard Sell
Social media is a great avenue to sell your products, but you should only sell a small fraction of the time. No one is going to want to follow your brand if all you do is try and get them to purchase something from your store and check out from your shopping cart. The sales will come indirectly as you become entrenched in the social media channels and build a good base of fans and followers. Bottom line is that the soft sell is best so that it does not feel forced upon anyone. People know you have a business to run and if they enjoy your brand, they will want to hear about it a great deal, but not 20 times per day.
13. Write Great Headlines
Every page of content you create on the blog of your ecommerce site should have a great headline that will not only draw people in, but entice them to buy. You want to use language to target users in and show them that the article will be something beneficial to read. Some ideas are to write different “how to guides” or perhaps an article that exposes some secret techniques to generating more sales for an ecommerce business. If the reader does not think that they need to read the post by reading the headline, then they will not click through to read it, retweet it to their Twitter followers, or mention it to their Facebook friends.
14. Add Your Social Media Profile Links Everywhere
If you are going to invest the time and effort into social media then why not make sure you promote your social media URLs as often as possible? Anytime you write a post on your blog or another industry blog, you will want to make sure to put your most relevant social URLs in your signature or about author section. For most people, this is typically your Twitter URL and your Facebook fan page URL. Another place to put your social media URLs is in your email and forum signatures, so you can be sure to drive as many new users to your profiles as possible. Linkedin.com just recently added the ability to link up your Twitter account securely over OAuth so your network can connect with you. There is also a feature that will allow all of your tweets to post to Linkedin which we do not recommend using, because you do not want to over update your business network. One of the last places to add your social URLs is on your business cards so that when you network and pass them out, people can have all of your social info to connect.
15. Find New or Niche Social Networks Outside Facebook and Twitter
There are literally thousands of niche social networks out there that cater to various industries, but you will have to do a little digging to see if there is one worthwhile for your ecommerce site. If you do not have extra time to invest in social media, then you should stick to the big two which are Twitter and Facebook. For example if you sell toys and games online, then their are niche networks you can join relevant to only that topic. Likewise there are niche social network sites in health, movies, music, pets, and most importantly shopping. Shopping social networks may be most beneficial to you as they are mainly geared to help you sell more products.
16. Completely Fill Out All of Your Social Network Profiles
You would be surprised how many social network profiles are only partially filled out and lack vital information. If you spend time and effort on social media, then you should follow through and complete all of the information possible on your profile to receive the maximum benefit. It is also helpful to increase traffic to your website as you are usually able to post your ecommerce site URL, contact information, and bio about yourself and your online business. Linkedin does a great job reminding you how close you are to being complete by constantly showing you what percentage of your profile is finished. Thus encouraging users to complete all of their details so they can benefit from the social network.
17. Ask Employees to Help Via Their Own Social Media Accounts
Many ecommerce shops are, in fact, one person operations, but if you are lucky enough to own an online business with multiple employees then you should work together on social media. It helps when you have a built in team with their own social media profiles where they can support overall social media efforts. For example, if there is a great Cyber Monday deal your ecommerce site is promoting, then they can help promote it on their social media accounts which will help the information generate buzz more quickly. Not all employees will be receptive, but with social media becoming much more common, especially among younger workers, it is likely they will help out. It never hurts to ask and if they are open to assisting via their own social media accounts, then you will definitely reap great rewards.
18. Become an Active User on a Few Social Bookmarking Sites
There are dozens of unique social bookmarking sites and some are more popular for different niches. For example Digg is very popular among the technology crowd where as StumbleUpon is more receptive to arts and cultural sites. Check out some of the social networks via namechk.com which we mentioned in tip #8, so you can determine which are a fit for your online business. It is best to find two or three that resonate well with your ecommerce site and become a regular part of the community. This will help focus your efforts to build a larger networks on few social bookmarking sites so that you will get better response for your blog posts.
19. Find New Business Partners or Investors
Ecommerce store owners primarily think of social media as a way to gain more visitors to their site or as a means to participate in business to business networking. However few people view social media as a channel where you can find a business partner or investor, for your current ecommerce site or perhaps a new online business venture. You will be surprised at how many successful, rich, and influential people utilize social media in one form or another. The real challenge with this tip is to find the best way to locate the right people who you want to connect with as a potential investor or business partner.
20. Use a URL Shortener Where You Can Track Stats
Taking advantage of a URL shortener site to track your stats is a great way to get additional data on the success of your posted links. The most commonly used URL shortener that allows you solid statistical tracking is Bit.ly which just requires you to sign up for a free account. Then you can quickly drop in your blog or deal URLs and it will generate a short URL that you can now spread in your social media channels and track the click activity with it and related short URLs. It will aggregate the cumulative activity of your true URL across various other short URLs that people create so you can see the popularity. You can cross reference the popularity of people retweeting the URL at TweetMeme or Topsy which we discussed in in tip #3. Bit.ly will not only track twitter clicks, but any activity be it on Facebook, Myspace, or anywhere online where your link is posted in a short URL.
21. Analyze Traffic and ROI to Continually Improve
Continuous improvement should be a quality that you not only apply to your social media efforts, but to all business activities. The Japanese word Kaizen means improvement, which has been adopted in the US towards business operations as a way to continually refine operations. It does not matter what line of business you are in, you always want to measure your results and try and improve upon them. Social media ROI measurement can be difficult to track 100%, but if you use some of the tools and suggestions we provided, then you will have enough to get insight regarding what is working and what is failing. Since you only have a limited amount of time to dedicate to social media, you should analyze the overall traffic and sale performance of your social media activities monthly or quarterly. Figure out which social networks to continue to invest time and which to reduce time or cut out all together so you can test another channel. Continue to experiment until you find an optimal mix of social media channels that generates an acceptable ROI for your time and energy.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
