Powerful Tips for Using Facebook To Boost Your Ecommerce Store:

With more than 1.5 billion registered users, a figure continuously rising, Facebook is a social networking powerhouse. It’s worth more than the annual output of many countries and has users from all across the globe. The amount of data Facebook has, and the detail with which people willingly share information about them on Facebook, makes it any marketer’s dream platform. Just look at some of these stats.

• Facebook has more than 1.5 billion registered users.
• More than 699 million people log in to Facebook every day.
• An average person spends around 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook every month. This makes it a total of 700 billion minutes globally.
• More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.

Currently there are thousands of Facebook pages where people are selling products directly to their fans. While it’s not always the best strategy to depend completely on Facebook for ecommerce sales, it certainly can be a part of your broader ecommerce plan.
If you have an ecommerce website or an online store, you can use the power of Facebook to reach your target customers much more effectively and drive them to your online store and boost sales.
Here are a few tips for using Facebook to strengthen your ecommerce store.

1. Content is the King – Even on Facebook

Quality content is the king everywhere. But the kind of content that resonates with Facebook users is very different from blog content or articles. Here, if you write 1000 word status updates, very few of your fans will have the patience to read till the end.
Facebook users like short, catchy, visually appealing and action oriented posts created in a fun way. Above all your posts should provide users value. Demonstrate your knowledge about your niche and products in your status updates.
Also, don’t be obsessed with your own product images, links and blog posts all the time. Regularly share stuff from other blogs and websites that your fans may find useful (not from your competitor’s site, of course).

2. Optimize Your Store for Facebook Engagement

Your ecommerce store should also be optimized for maximum Facebook engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares). You can do that in a number of ways. Offer sign up via Facebook. Make sure your store’s product pages have clearly visible social media sharing widgets. Add the Facebook comments widget to your product pages so that the user comments are visible on their Facebook profiles as well. Add a small statement below the product images encouraging users to share on Facebook.
These are basic things but many ecommerce stores don’t have them in place because of which they fail to take advantage of Facebook.

3. Use Engaging Descriptions and Smart Calls To Action

Whenever you add new products to your store, you’d most likely share them on your Facebook page. When you do that, make sure you add an engaging 1-2 line description with your links. Engaging or catchy descriptions drive more clicks as compared to simple link shares.
Use high engagement words in your posts. Research shows that status updates that include the words Facebook, Why, Most, World, How, Health, Bill, Big, Says and Best get most engagement and shares. Similarly,

• Posts with less than 80 characters attract 23% more engagement.
• Using emoticons increases comments by 33%.
• Question posts get 100% more comments.
• Quotes get 26% more Likes and 19% more shares.

Also, make your descriptions action oriented and add clear calls to action with them. Facebook recently introduced the “Add Call to Action” option with status updates. Always use it with your status updates and link shares.

4. Boost Sales With Contests, Deals and Special Offers

Facebook users love contests and discount deals. Running competitions is found to be the most effective engagement technique for ecommerce stores. Almost 35% users “Like” Facebook pages to participate in contests. So give them what they want. Ask questions and use “Like for Yes, Comment for No” type techniques for feedback. These small fun activities can boost your engagement significantly.

5. Focus on High Quality Visual Content

I’ve already mentioned the importance of content, but visual content deserves a separate mention. Facebook users love visual content like images, info graphics, videos, memes etc. Image based content gets almost 40% more interaction as compared to simple text posts.
But to get the best results, you need to mix up your updates with a combination of text only, text+image and image/video only updates. For ecommerce stores, product images get the highest engagement.

6. Run Targeted Facebook Advertisements

There’s no better paid advertisement mode for ecommerce stores than Facebook advertisements. Facebook Ads have improved drastically over the last couple of years. They’re not only much simpler to configure but also bring much more targeted results as compared to other advertisement modes. You can target users based on their location, interests, gender, like/dislikes, recent activity, pages liked and dozens of other criteria. Start with a small budget of around $50 and test different ads to see what works well for you. Once you understand how it works, increase your budgets gradually.

7. Simplify the Buying Process

One important thing is to make the payment and buying process as simple as possible for your customers. Normally ecommerce stores add a link to the product pages with their Facebook status updates. There’s nothing wrong in doing this, but since it involves multiple redirections, there are high chances that buyers would abandon the purchase mid-way through. A smart option is to use a direct link to the checkout page or, even better, use a Facebook app to accept payments directly on Facebook. There are several Facebook ecommerce store apps where you can configure your products for direct selling on Facebook.

8. Use Facebook for Customer Support

A great way to show your fans and prospective buyers that you care about them, is to move the customer support to your Facebook page. Ask users to share their product feedback, compliments/complaints and concerns of your Facebook page. Actively respond to such comments, and ensure quick problem resolution. This will show the world that you really care about your customers.

9. Use a Combination of Manual and Automated Posts

Most ecommerce stores serve customers belonging to multiple countries, due to which they need to operate in different time zones. Of course you can’t stay on Facebook all the time. So it’s recommended that you automate some of your posts to stay in touch with customers from all time zones. You can use the BufferApp or HootSuite for this purpose. But keep posting manually as well.
Research shows that the engagement levels are 18% higher on Thursday and Friday, and 32% higher on weekends. Every day, around 1PM gets the most shares and 3PM gets the most clicks. Keep these time slots and days in mind while scheduling your automated posts.

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How To Boost Your Ecommerce Sales With Effective Twitter Marketing:

Twitter is any marketer’s dream platform. With more than 284 million active monthly users and a monthly volume of more than 500 million Tweets, Twitter allows businesses of every size to monitor their target customers closely, engage them regularly and drive more sales.

For e-commerce businesses though, Twitter is a gold mine. If you know how to use this platform to your advantage, you can convert it into a major revenue generation channel for your e-commerce business. It’s not just about knowing the features that Twitter offers. It’s more about using those features to drive business value. And this is what I am going to tell you in this post.

1. Understand the Platform and Your Objective

Before diving deep, understand how Twitter can contribute to your business. Twitter is a fast moving micro blogging platform. It has given voice to common men and women around the world, who actively use it to engage with their friends, celebrities and their favorite brands.

It is not primarily an eCommerce platform, and people do not come here to buy and sell products. To take advantage of this powerful tool, you need to learn the rules of the game. Instead of trying to sell products all the time, you need to join conversations, build relationships, establish trust and then drive sales.

Don’t expect immediate results from it. It won’t open floodgates of revenue and traffic immediately. But once you establish yourself on it, and earn the trust of your followers, things will start happening.

2. Build a Strong Brand Image With Your Profile

Your objective on Twitter is to make sales. For this you need to establish trust by building a strong brand image. Your Twitter profile is a great place to start your branding activities.

• Twitter Handle: Use your company name. If it’s not available, add a number at the end. But try to keep it simple and easy to remember.
• Profile Picture: Use your company’s logo as the profile picture.
• Header Image: Use an image of your team or your office building as the header image. In this virtual space, showing your physical existence can really help you stand out. If you don’t have a physical existence, use an image that reflects your business.
• Bio: Twitter gives you 160 characters to describe yourself/your business. Use this space wisely. Without being too fancy, describe in clear words what your business is all about. Use the keywords that resonate with your target audience. For example, here’s how Kitchen Aid, a leading kitchenware portal, describe their profile.
  

• Location: For e-commerce websites, location often matters. So mention it clearly on your profile.

 3. Enable Twitter Cards For Product Pages

Twitter cards is a powerful Twitter feature that really comes handy for eCommerce websites. If enabled on your website, Twitter cards will show additional information when someone Tweets your product pages. The standard Tweets are limited to 140 characters, but Twitter cards expand that limit by showing a snippet of your product page that includes the product price and quantity in stock. This will simplify the buying process for your buyers and increase the probability of making sales.

4. Attract Followers the Smart Way

Once you have the basics in place, you should focus on attracting relevant followers. Target people who shop online and who’re likely to purchase from your eCommerce website.
Avoid two mistakes,

a) Don’t buy followers from any Twitter marketing company. They’re mostly inactive followers who are of no use.
b) Don’t mass follow people in the hope of getting follow-backs. This will hurt your brand image.

Instead focus on the following activities.

• Become a knowledge source: Accounts that share high quality and actionable Tweets regularly, attract followers naturally. Make sure your Tweets serve a purpose. Make them actionable. Share tips, advice and best practices. Become the go-to account for everything related to your niche.
• Target your competitors’ followers: Your competitors’ followers are the best place to start. Attract them to your profile by engaging with them. Go through your competitors’ profiles and see if there are any unanswered Tweets or questions that you can answer. Enter your competitor’s name in Twitter search and see what people are saying about them. Respond to their Tweets to let them know you are a better option.
• Cross-network promotion: Route people from your Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social media profiles to your Twitter account. Do this by adding your Twitter handle in all your introductions and by regularly posting about it on different platforms.
• Market with guest blogging: Guest blogging is a great way to attract followers. Target the top blogs in your niche and offer them high quality guest posts. Add your Twitter handle in the author bio and ask people to follow.
• Influence r outreach: Follow the top influence rs in your niche (people who’re regarded as experts). Respond to their Tweets and try engaging them. The more you engage with influence rs, the more exposure you’ll get.
• Acknowledge RTs: When you get Re Tweets, favorite them as an acknowledgement and send a small thank you message in reply. This will help you win more followers.
• Twitter Chats: You can host Twitter chats on different topics of your niche to boost engagement. Choose a hash tag, for example #kitchentalk, and ask all your followers to Tweet with this hash tag. Hosting Twitter chats can be fun, and can win you lots of new followers.

5. Structure Your Tweets for Maximum Engagement

Each Tweet has only 140 characters, but it still involves a lot of science in driving engagement (Re Tweets, Replies, and Favorites) on Twitter. The structure of your Tweets is crucial for your chances to attract new followers. Here are a few things you should keep in mind.

Note: The stats used below are based on a research by Dan Zarella, a social media scientist at Hub Spot.

• Tweet Length: Tweets between 110 and 115 characters attract the highest engagement and RTs.
• Link Placement: If your Tweets have links, place them near the start of the Tweet. An analysis of around 20,000 revealed that Tweets containing a link in the first 50 characters attracted more RTs and a higher click through rate (CTR)
• Hash tags: Tweets with hash tags get 55% more RTs. Use up to 3 hash tags with every Tweet.
• Quotes: Tweets with quotation marks get 30% more RTs.
• Images and Vines: Tweets with images and visual content get almost 200% more RTs.
• Tweet Timing: Tweets between 9AM – 6PM get the highest engagement on weekdays.
• Mentions: When tagging someone in a Tweet, make sure the Tweet does not start with a Twitter handle. Otherwise only the tagged person will be able to see it.

6. Track Your Performance With Twitter Analytic

Twitter analytic is a relatively new feature. But it gives you great insights on your Tweets and engagement levels. It shows you a timeline of your previous Tweets highlighting the Tweets that attracted the highest engagement and the users who showed the most interest in your content. Looking at these stats, you can make changes to your Tweet structure and content mix.

You can see your detailed account analytic s from your profile menu.

7. Encourage Sharing on Your Website

You need to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to share your products and website pages on Twitter. You can do this by:

• Adding social media sharing buttons on your product pages. You can use services like AddThis or Digg Digg to embed sharing buttons.
• Add a statement like “Share with your friends” or “Sharing is Caring!” with your social media buttons. Simply asking your visitors can also increase your sharing numbers.
• Add a Twitter follow button on your website.

8. Use Twitter Lists to Monitor Your Target Audience

Twitter Lists is another feature that can help you target your customers much more effectively. Twitter is a noisy place and it can be very hard to focus on your target customers with so many people Tweeting at the same time.

With this feature, you can add specific people to a Twitter list and monitor them in isolation. You will only see the Tweets of the list members. This will cut the noise and help you focus on your target users.

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