Social Media Tools for Every eCommerce Marketers

Are you a small business owner or solopreneur who has a limited amount of time to focus on marketing activities? 

You’ll be happy to know that there are marketing tools created specifically for busy online retailers like you. These tools aim to make engaging with your audience as effortless as possible. 

In this post, we’re going to look at 13 free and paid social media marketing tools ecommerce store owners can use to help with social media marketing management.

Social Media Tools to Create & Curate Social Content

 

The first thing you will need for any successful social media marketing campaign or activity is content. The content you publish to your Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms will help your fans get to know your business. If you’re not sure where to start looking for great sources of social media content, start with the following social media tools.

Canva

 

Canva helps non-designers create visual marketing content easily with drag and drop functions. As a store owner, you can use Canva to make social media posts, infographics, social banners, thumbnails, and more.

 

You can customize the colors, images, and text on templates as needed in Canva to match your business branding and complete your social media posts. You can choose from an extensive selection of free images and icons, but even the paid options are affordable at only $1 a piece.
Once finished, you can export your designs into JPG or PNG image formats, so you can share it on your social media pages and profiles. In addition to social media graphics, Canva has templates for the most-popular types of marketing collateral, like brochures, business cards, infographics, presentations, resumes, and worksheets. 
Plus, you can sign up for an account for free!

Feedly

 

Do you keep up with the latest trends and topics in your industry? Do you want to share some of that news with your audience? 
If so, use Feedly. Feedly lets you organize all of your favorite blog and online publication subscriptions in one place.



You can use Feedly in a number of ways. For social media purposes, you can use it to curate content from other relevant websites and share that content with your audiences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other top networks. 

Feedly also works with third-party social media scheduling tools like Buffer and social media management tools like Hootsuite, both of which we will talk about later in the post.  
If you like the idea of curating content for your social media audiences, but you don’t know what sites to start with, Alltop will give you the latest five posts from blogs that cover everything from Androids to viral videos. 

You can use these articles to generate interest for the types of products you sell in your dropshipping store. For example, if you have a women’s clothing store, you can share posts from blogs and online publications that talk about the season’s hottest fashion trends.

As a store owner, you’ll find this social media tool helpful on days when you don’t have the time to share your own content but still want to keep your social media feeds populated. Many online retailers use this content curation technique to keep their audiences engaged and interested.

Post Planner

 

Another option for finding content to share on social media is Post Planner. Post Planner allows you to find the most trending content – photos and articles – about a certain topic. You can search for content by keyword search or by browsing the industry page.



Once you find something you want to share, you can share it instantly to your Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest audiences. You can also schedule it to post at a later time and date.

Post Planner plans start at $3 per month (billed annually) for three profiles, 30 posts per day, and 300 scheduled posts. For the ecommerce store owner looking to mostly curate content on social media, Post Planner should be a great fit.

Social Media Tools to Manage Social Activity

 

Next on the list of social media tools is management tools. These are tools that allow you to schedule your social media posts for a future date and time and keep up with your audience engagement. 
Ecommerce store owners can use them to conveniently manage one or more of their social media accounts outside of the social network itself. These social media marketing tools help you save more time.

Buffer

 

Buffer is a marketing automation tool that allows you to create a unique schedule for sharing posts to your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. 



Simply add posts to your Buffer, and it will queue the posts for the next open time slot in the schedule you created. You can also go back in to edit, move, or delete posts from each social account queue. 
This tool allows you to add all your social media posts in advance so that you don’t have to “remember” to schedule posts or so that you can have posts sent out at exact times without manually doing it yourself. It’s great to use to schedule posts after work hours.
Buffer offers a free plan for three social accounts and ten scheduled posts per day. Paid plans start at $15 a month and allow you to connect to eight social accounts and create 100 scheduled posts per day. Buffer also integrates with tools like Feedly (mentioned earlier for content curation).

HootSuite

 

Hootsuite is a social media management and social media listening tool that allows you to do more than schedule posts to your social accounts. Hootsuite’s social media listening functionality allows you to monitor other aspects of your social media accounts, such as managing audience comments, monitoring keyword mentions, and much more for the following networks.


The Hootsuite dashboard organizes your social media into tabs and columns. Each tab can hold up to 10 columns. Tabs can be used to organize your social media by account or by activity, such as monitoring your competitor’s social media activity or responding to post comments.
Hootsuite offers a free plan for three social accounts and 20 scheduled posts per day. Paid plans start at $29 per month for use with 10 social accounts and 100 scheduled posts per day.

Sprout Social

 

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that goes beyond scheduling posts and social media listening.

It has several features that help with all aspects of the social media management process. For example, its Smart Inbox is a unified social inbox that lets you manage your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn messages all in one place.
Sprout Social also has a nifty Social CRM feature that helps you build a 360-degree profile of each of your customers, including a history of conversations, contact information, and internal notes about them across your networks.

Sprout Social is available on a tiered subscription model, with a Standard, Professional, and Advanced plan. The Standard plan starts at $99 per user per month.

 CoSchedule

 

CoSchedule has a suite of five tools that span more than just social media management. These five are the Content Organizer, Social Organizer, Marketing Calendar, Work Organizer, and Asset Organizer.
The Social Organizer is a social media management tool that covers everything from publishing your posts to measuring how they performed.

The Best Time Scheduling feature takes the guesswork out of figuring out the ideal time of day to schedule your posts – it intelligently tracks peak traffic times and schedules posts for you. If you have gaps, the ReQueue feature will fill them with your top-performing posts.
CoSchedule’s Social Organizer is available in three tiers: Growth, Professional, and Enterprise. The Growth plan starts at $150 per month for three users.

MeetEdgar

 

MeetEdgar is another full-service social media management platform. But this one’s a bit different – it has the ability to automate your social media strategy. This includes the impressive functionality of writing social media posts for you.

The “Variations” feature allows you to paste in a blog or article you want to post about. From that link, MeetEdgar auto-generates a few different noteworthy quotes or lines that you can then pick or edit (or add your own if you’re not a fan).



Another one of MeetEdgar’s automation features is the auto-scheduler that pulls content from your library to automatically add to your posting calendar. The Continuous Posting feature ensures that your social channels never go silent.

MeetEdgar is available for $49 per month for up to 25 social media accounts.

Originally Published at www.oberlo.com

12 Best Practices of Social Media for Marketing Your eCommerce Business

eCommerce Social Media Marketing

If you run an eCommerce business, you're probably very much aware of the increasingly significant role Social media plays in the development of online shopping. With 93 percent of buyers going to Social media to help settle on purchasing choices—and 90 percent of them saying they trust product proposals from their companions—maintaining a strategic distance from Social media basically isn't an alternative in the event that you need to contend on the web. 

Start With the Basics 

The eCommerce universe is driven by Website traffic, yet pulling in customers to your site through web-based social media is actually quite difficult. Making supported progress requires something beyond strategies; it considers an internet based life showcasing a system that takes the following:

Defining Goals: 

You have to set benchmarks for what achievement will look like before you even consider handling strategies. Be as explicit as conceivable by setting quantifiable goals that include the: 

1. The measure of traffic you need to get from social media
2. Number of fans and followers
3. The ratio of visitors to conversions
4. Number and type of presents compared to the measure of engagement
5. The ratio of audience growth and engagement to sales.

Understanding Customer's content needs: 

You need to know what your possibilities and customers need before you can begin posting content that addresses those issues. Get knowledge by asking customers what they need to find out about and screen your intended interest target audience’s via web-based social media sites.

Utilizing information: 

Your site's analytics give a wealth of data on customer behavior, including where your Social media traffic is coming from, which kinds of content get the most perspectives, and when visitors connect with the content. You can utilize this information to post specific content on the occasion that get the most engagement on each respective platform. Before you make your social media marketing strategy, make sure to return and audit historic performance to perceive what was best and join that conduct with new activities moving forward. This is the way you find best practices. 

Sharing, not selling: 

Although an ever-increasing number of customers start their purchasing journey via Social media, most don't visit internet based life locales with the expectation of shopping. Social Media is tied in with building relationships first; selling is a far off second. That implies you have to concentrate on sharing helpful data and building up trust before attempting to make a sale. In the world of B2B sales, leaders collaborate with five bits of content via social media before they're prepared to talk with a salesperson. A similar guideline extends to B2C eCommerce marketing. 

Following advancement: 

As you build up your social media strategy, characterize how you will approach following advancement and evolving conduct, for example, making reports, revising your plan, and imparting updates to colleagues consistently. Trends change and your social media strategy need to represent them. 

12 Top Social Media Tactics

When you've built up your system, utilize these twelve web-based life advertising strategies to help traffic and become your eCommerce business:

1. Optimize social media posts: 

Using high-conversion keywords in your posts can build their visibility in look and in this way empower you to contact a considerably bigger group of spectators than your direct followers. Perform keyword research to find the terms shoppers are looking to discover content identified with your industry, business, and products/services, and afterward strategically incorporate them into your posts.

Additionally, at whatever point conceivable, add a visual component to your presents on help snatch the eye of your occupied with, checking readers.

2. Share the right content: 

Sales pitches are a certain fire approach to dismiss customers. Rather, give helpful, a share-commendable substance that increases the value of your possibilities and customers. Keep the experience social, intuitive, and logical, utilizing your presents on recount to customers-stories, share news, and give supportive tips. Offset limited time posts with ones that instruct, illuminate, engage, and put customers' needs over your own. 

3. Use your reviews: 

Let your fulfilled customers do your online life showcasing for you by sharing their surveys of your products. Surveys are powerful tools since possibilities are bound to be available to an item evaluation when it originates from a goal outsider, for example, a reliable customer. Truth be told, 88 percent of purchasers state they trust online audits as much as close to home suggestions.

4. Add social sharing buttons in strategic places: 

Adding sharing gadgets like Facebook's "Like" catch to the entirety of your product pages can be valuable for attracting customers who are further along in the purchasing cycle. Furthermore, consider setting sharing buttons in a prominent area in your site's design. For example, empower customers to impart their audit of an item to their Twitter devotees or Facebook companions, or enable them to share a business offer or even a business confirmation email.

5. Use visual content: 

Image-based content is normally more captivating than content-based posts, making it ideal for showcasing your business via social media. Actually, I think about the show that utilizing pictures is the most significant strategy for enhancing social media posts. Make your product pictures shareable on locales that support picture driven marketing, for example, Instagram and Pinterest (i.e., incorporate Pinterest's "Stick It" button on all pictures). You can likewise get creative and include customer selfies with products on your product pages. 

6. Interact with followers: 

Social media is the perfect platform for connecting straightforwardly with possibilities and customers. Screen posts and connect with them regularly to pose inquiries, react to their remarks, express gratitude toward them for sharing your content, and take an interest in exchanges. It's an incredible method to show you genuinely care about them and are keen on serving their needs, which can go far towards building trust and shortening the business cycle.

7. Be consistent: 

Posting content all the time is basic to improve customer engagement and drive more traffic to your eCommerce site. Frequency can differ dependent on your market, yet consistency is critical to show your group of spectators that you're keen on always sharing significant content. To make this procedure simpler and spare time, use a marketing automation tool such as Around.io, for example, Around.io so you can plan posts ahead of time. 

8. Start a blog: 

Not having a constant flow of new content is a typical complaint of many eCommerce businesses. Probably the most ideal approach to cure this is to keep up a functioning site with educational and inspirational content so you generally have something to discuss. In addition to exhibiting your organization's one of a kind viewpoint or aptitude, a solitary blog post can deliver many social media posts that connect with followers and compel them to navigate to your website. 

9. Use hashtags: 

Hashtags help your content get found all the more every now and again via social media platforms. They sort out content, extend the compass of your posts, and advance collaboration. Abstain from utilizing such a large number of hashtags in one social media update, constraining them to one to two for each post. 

10. Be short and sweet: 

Concise and convincing updates pull in more engagement via social media than longer posts. Your followers are significantly more likely to share your short, visual posts since they can rapidly be processed and went along. For instance, bother a blog entry with a connecting with a picture and an interesting headline.

11. Add tweetable quotes to blog posts: 

In addition, empowering perusers to tweet a whole blog post, take a stab at including "tweet this" usefulness all through your post to make statements and expressions tweetable. Apparatuses, for example, ClicktoTweet convert code for you to make this procedure quick and simple.

Are You Looking For Search Engine Marketing Services?

12. Use paid advertising: 

If you have the budget, take your Social media marketing to the following level with Facebook advertisements, LinkedIn promotions, or Promoted Tweets that you interface back to a product page for a change. For whatever length of time that they're profoundly focused on, these paid alternatives can help you significantly boost website traffic.

Integrating social media into your advertising blend is basic to be focused on eCommerce. On the off chance that you put the correct right strategy and social media marketing tactics set up, you can improve brand awareness, drive more traffic and changes, increment customer engagement and faithfulness, and eventually grow your business.

Plan Your Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Online Business

Social media is paramount for e-commerce, its significance has grown to mammoth proportions over the years with its ability to reach specialized pools of consumers.

Brands that relied on traditional forms of advertising to further their base have taken to optimizing their brand to fit into different social media niches on the web. E-commerce brands can target consumer collectives with a range of purchasing capacities through planned social media strategies.

These Social Media Strategies should aid in developing healthy patterns of online engagement:

Wholesome amalgamation of content

When customers sign up to follow different portals on your brand’s social media portfolio, the content on these platforms should not pertain entirely to posts on your brand. This would tire your audience, and deviate your campaign from following a pattern of organic engagement.

Providing external content that induces user sharing, would keep your platforms consumer engagement at optimal levels, furthering user interaction with posts pertaining to your e-commerce venture.

Here are a few user poll statistics that establish positive content-client interaction:

• 61% followers admitted to buying a product because they found the brands’ content interface engaging.
• 78% consumers bought the product after being directly influenced by the brands’ social media content.
• An e-commerce’s social media platform accounted for 1 out of 10 customers directed towards the site.

If the engagement levels on your social media campaigns deteriorate, it will also affect the reach on your new posts since Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc, push content based on follower engagement formulae.

To capture the niche space on a user’s feed, e-commerce brands have to constantly engage followers with shareable content in the form of original or recycled articles, listicles, and micro-content. Posting engageable social media content frequently will push an organic stream of consumers to your online store.
However, being at all these (social) places all at once is a challenge. There are many social media publishing software that you can use to schedule posts in advance and have a filled content calendar for each social profile.

Factoring in SEO strategies

Search Engine Optimisation can be improved in leaps and bounds through social media, the higher the quality of follower to brand engagement on a social media platform, the greater the boost to page rating and visibility.
The number of followers does not count as much as their organic interactivity as followers.
In Google’s search ranking, external inbound links play a huge part in generating traffic, but these links should encourage quality engagement to make a significant difference towards optimization.
Additionally, using local listings, hashtags, keywords etc, to make your content easier to search and share can boost your brand’s SEO.

Create a culture of reviews

Social media reviews act like digital crumbs to followers, if the engagement on the review is positive it has the potential to convert a follower into a customer. If your brand sells on many e-commerce portals, encourage customers to leave feedback and reviews on their purchases.

 

Study has it that nearly 70% of customers base their purchasing decision on products that attract the most amount of reviews on e-commerce portals.
Widgets that connect and sync reviews and customer engagement by stringing it, through your social media platforms and e-commerce page can build bulk reviews, often a single portal might attract more reviews and customers who seek out reviews on a different portal featuring your brand might miss out on reading positive customer feedback and choose brands with better reviews on that particular platform.

Does your brand have an online persona?

Expecting a brand to have an online persona might sound far-fetched to most, but the formulas of most successful engagement portals such as BuzzFeed, are often identified by their content creators who have formed a human face to the brand, thus drawing viral engagement towards the platform.
In such a case, the virality of their content does not happen by chance, the entire brand is built around the sole attribute of generating viral engagement with every post.

Originally Published at https://www.floship.com/

Social Media Marketing Tactics to Drive More Traffics to your Online Business

If you run an eCommerce business, you’re probably well aware of the increasingly important role social media plays in the evolution of online shopping. With 93 percent of consumers turning to social media to help make buying decisions—and 90 percent of them saying they trust product recommendations from their peers—avoiding social media simply isn’t an option if you want to compete online.

eCommerce Social Media Marketing

Start With the Basics

The eCommerce universe is driven by website traffic, but attracting consumers to your site through social media is easier said than done. Achieving sustained success requires more than just tactics; it takes a eCommerce Social Media Marketing strategy that takes into account the following:

• Setting goals: You need to set benchmarks for what success will look like before you even think about tackling tactics. Be as specific as possible by setting measurable objectives that include the:
  
  
  • Amount of traffic you want to receive from social media
    
  • Number of fans and followers
    
  • Ratio of visitors to conversions
    
  • Number and type of posts compared to the amount of engagement
    
  • Ratio of audience growth and engagement to sales
    
    
    • As a benchmarking example, according to HubSpot’s 2015 Social Media Benchmarks Report, companies in the consumer goods/retail/eCommerce industry average 6.02 posts per week, have 370,321 followers, and average 11.4 interactions per post
      
      
      Read More...

Social eCommerce - How Social Shopping Trends Drive More Sales

Most purchase journeys have too many unnecessary steps in the Conversion funnel.

Each one massively increases the chance your potential customers are going to abandon their purchase and leave your store forever.

The issue lies in present day vendors' dependence on programming and tech arrangements.

eCommerce Social Media Marketing

We’re all too concerned with gamifying the process and making sales through cheap tactics instead of solving genuine consumer problems.

We’re overthinking things.

Since truly, you just need two things to make a fruitful online business.

  1. An item that really enables individuals to tackle an issue.

  2.  A streamlined purchase journey. One that makes it easy to buy and that begins where the customer is most active and engaged.

You’ll have to find the first on your own.

In any case, for the second, you need to quit seeing things like gamification and low worth offers that push the buy. 


You need to analyze how you can utilize innovation to make a superior client experience.

Which is the thing that the most intelligent online business marks on the planet are doing with eCommerce Social Media Marketing Trades.

It makes complete sense if you take a second to think about your customers and their actions.

  1.  There are1.47 billion daily active users on Facebook alone.

  2.  60% of Instagram users say they find new products on Instagram (so it makes complete sense to also sell them on the platform).

  3. 30% of online customers state they would probably make a buy from an internet based life system like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.

 4. Online networking Messenger deals are hugely beating the present ROI hero of email.

Your crowd is on these internet based life stages and they need to buy through those systems.

So why confound matters with additional means that require gamification for even irrelevant transformations?

The more astute alternative is execute a social business arrangement that draws in clients where they are and transforms their online life commitment legitimately into deals.

I'll dive into the subtleties of precisely how you can use social business to expand your image's income, on the whole, we should make a beeline for rudiments.

Read More...

Grow Online Presence with Social Media Marketing Strategy in eCommerce

As social media and ecommerce become increasingly enmeshed in our lives, the opportunities for them to interact with and bolster each other are innumerable, considering that the average person spends around an hour and 40 minutes browsing social media every day, and the number of internet shoppers in the US will reach 217 million this year.

eCommerce Social Media Marketing

Evolving Role of eCommerce Social Media Marketing

Back in the old days, a business’s presence would be signified by advertisements in the paper and a physical storefront. Now, in the digital age, business reputations live and die by their social media standing. Right now, social media is used by brands as a way to advertise, increase their online presence, and deliver high-quality customer service. In 2017, we can expect those trends to continue, as some new ones emerge. Let’s take a look at the growing role of social media in ecommerce.

Read More...