10 Best Practices for Marketing Your Shopify Store on Social Media

If you’re a Shopify seller, one of the best ways to reach more potential customers is to grow your social media presence. In fact, as we’ve reported on here and here, the vast majority of today’s shoppers are on social media and report using it to make buying decisions.

However, expanding your social media reach isn’t as simple as just starting a Twitter or Facebook account for your business and making a few posts. In order to truly run an effective campaign and attract the right traffic, there are few strategies you need to put into place. Keep reading to discover 10 best practices for marketing your Shopify store on social media.

1. Set Goals & Measure Analytics

For starters, you need to set goals for your social media marketing efforts and determine how you will measure success. This may seem overwhelming, but once you understand the concept, it is really quite simple. Your social media goals should ideally match the goals you’ve already set for your Shopify store so that all of your strategies are aligned with one another. 

For most sellers, typical goals may include:

• Attract more traffic to your Shopify store.
• Improve brand visibility & awareness.
• Increase Shopify sales.

And your social media-specific goals might be:

• Receive more click-throughs.
• Increase likes, comments & shares.

Once you’ve set goals, you will be more able to strategize the type of content you should be posting and measure its performance. Use tools such as tracking parameters on any links you include in your social posts, so that you will know when users are clicking through to your store from a post. 

2. Choose Your Channels

You also need to decide which social media channels you will implement. This may depend on your industry. More visual brands (such as cosmetics sellers) may opt for using Instagram as their primary social media marketing tool. Still, others may find Twitter or Facebook to be more suitable. And if you’re in an industry that caters to a wide audience, you might want to use every social platform to reach different sects of shoppers.

For example, B2B companies may use LinkedIn to connect with C-suite executives, while also utilizing Twitter and Facebook to create buzz about new products.

3. Get to Know Your Target Audience

And before you can market to your target audience, you need to get to know them. Do a deep dive on your demographic to learn more about their social media habits. What are they sharing and discussing that is relevant to your industry? This will help you to understand what to post and do in order to attract and engage with the right prospects.

4. Conduct Industry Research

In addition to demographic research, you also need to conduct industry research. Take a look at your most successful competitors and see what they’re doing on social media that’s working. Furthermore, get to know any hashtags or hot topics in your industry that are currently trending. Then you can get in on the conversation and showcase the value that your Shopify brand offers.

5. Infuse Your Shopify Branding into Your Social Media

Speaking of your Shopify brand, it is crucial to infuse your store’s branding tone into your social media content. Whether your tone is fun and quirky, succinct and informative or ultra-chic, make sure you carry that same vibe throughout your social posts. Staying on brand can help you to develop your company’s identity and even attract a loyal following of like-minded customers.

The same goes for any philanthropic work your company is involved in. Are you a charitable organization? Make that clear in your social media and start conversations about the topics that are important to your company culture. For example, sock company Bombas gives socks to people in need for every pair sold. These types of company values have helped the brand to amass a dedicated customer base that is proud to buy from them.

6. Use the Right Content Mix & Frequency

When you’re posting on social media, it is also important to use the right content mix and publishing frequency. From memes to informative posts to retweets of trending topics, you need to keep things interesting rather than just creating the same types of posts over and over. This will ensure your audience stays engaged and entertained by your content, and will also increase the odds that your posts will be shared. 

And when it comes to frequency, find the balance that works for you. Posting too much can overwhelm and even annoy your followers. While posting too rarely can cause your engagement and traffic to drop. A good general rule for most brands is to post every day, but only once or twice per day. You should also engage with followers by liking their comments, commenting back and even sharing their relevant posts.

7. Launch Shopify Store Promotions

Next up, use your social media channels to launch any Shopify store promotions you’re putting on. Having a sale next week? Let your audience know! You can even offer special discount codes via your social media posts, which will encourage more people to follow and share your content. 

8. Encourage Engagement

One of the most important factors to any social media marketing campaign is to encourage audience engagement. Depending on your industry and brand, there are a myriad of ways to do this. 

For example, if you run an apparel brand, you can invite users to post pictures of themselves wearing your products. You can even hold a giveaway in which users enter by posting these pictures along with a designated hashtag that is relevant to your brand. At the end of the giveaway, you can select one person who entered to win free swag. These sorts of promotions can really go viral and work wonders for your Shopify store traffic and brand visibility.

9. Collaborate with Influencers

While we’re on the topic of visibility, another way to raise brand awareness is to collaborate with social media influencers. This approach involves sending free items to influencers (social media personalities who have a lot of followers) who are relevant to your industry. The influencers are then invited to share their thoughts on your products with their audience, thereby dramatically increasing the number of people who know about your brand. 

A few things to remember here, though. First of all, make sure your products are top-notch before sending to any influencers. After all, they will give their honest opinion. So you want that feedback to be positive, especially since it will be going out to a large number of people. Secondly, be careful about the influencers with whom you engage. Make sure they have a stellar reputation. The last thing you want to do is align your brand with someone who could be considered problematic in any way or receive bad press.

10. Provide Stellar Customer Service

Finally, use your social media channels to showcase that your Shopify brand is dedicated to providing an excellent customer experience. If someone asks a question about your products on Twitter, answer it as comprehensively and helpfully as possible. And even if someone lodges a complaint, address their concerns in a way that lets your audience know that you value customer satisfaction and are eager to make things right. 

Want to minimize the odds that you will receive complaints via social media? Get your customer service right from the start. Replyco helpdesk for eCommerce enables multi-channel sellers to consolidate all of their customer messaging into one easy-to-use inbox. 

By centralizing your customer service, you can reduce response rates, save time and make sure no inquiries ever fall through the cracks. And our live chat widget means Shopify sellers can provide real-time support to customers at crucial times during the purchase process by meeting shoppers where they are.

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