Social media has plenty to offer your business in terms of promotion of your brand and thus more brand awareness, seals lead generation, and even search engine optimization. While not a direct channel for sales, your social media accounts can support and promote your ecommerce efforts by assisting with promotion, brand awareness, trust, loyalty, and also by providing you with valuable insights as to who’s following you and what people are saying about you.
Brand awareness via social media promotion is accomplished simply by branding your pages so that they look very similar to your website. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, and all of the other social media networks out there allow you to customize your page’s header image (often referred to as a banner or cover art) as well as your personal profile picture, and by choosing the same imagery that you use on your website, you’ll create brand awareness and recognition.
Consumers who may not be familiar with your brand may learn about you from followers of yours that are friends of theirs; or if you choose to promote Facebook posts or Twitter tweets, you’ll show up in their timeline if their published content is relevant to yours.
Those consumers who may not be familiar with you and thus may hesitate to make a purchase can be assured by your reputation on Facebook and other social networks that you are in fact a decent company whom others would recommend. And those customers who are happy with your services may become loyal customers, simply due to the fact that you are available online to interact with.
The great thing about today’s website and ecommerce platforms is that social media integration is almost always included. If not, you can include it with the use of a few simple lines of code, or “plugins” offered by popular content management systems. When used in conjunction with your other search engine optimization efforts, social media has the power to provide you with valuable insights, and help you obtain your ideal ranking. This may be a time-consuming endeavor, but it has a very promising pay-off.
