Creating Sales Through Social Media

For many of you, the opportunity to sell your business via e-commerce is great. Which is why social media is great. But in order for it to really be effective, you need to make sales from it. Otherwise, it’s a lot of time without a lot of value (unless you do it for fun, in which case this is more personal than business).

To help increase your opportunity for social sales, here are a few tips:

1. Announce new product arrivals or any other worthy news and monitor how much your traffic increases to your site as a result of your announcements. This allows you to also see sale increases during these times. It’s important to understand the relationship of sales and social media so that your time is spent wisely. Pay attention to what tweets & posts gain the most responses and link backs, as well.

2. Offer incentives to your followers on your social sites that would make them want to shop with you. Give coupon codes for purchases made during a specific time frame, for certain products or just because. Track the purchases made as a result compared to your total number of followers.

3. Allow old fashion communication to enter the picture. Social media is an extension of plain old socializing, which in shopping is part of the fun! People are familiar with this and some are even more comfortable with this. Include your phone number and email address as options for customers to connect if Twitter and Facebook isn’t their thing.

You should be open to the both the fun and the challenges of social marketing to allow for social sales if you want to be successful with online retailing. It’s tough, though. And competitive. Not only does your product need to be great (we know you have that covered), but your website and communication need to be great, as well. A balance of everything can equal to a wonderful reward of social sales.