How can you sell on social networks? (2)

We go on with this series of posts that responds to your question about how you can sell on social networks. In the first part of this series, we worked on the segmentation and the choice of media. In this on, we roll up our sleeves. 

As the reality of social networks has been developing, they also have been getting more complex and acquiring a greater strategic depth. 

Some years ago, when there were no advertising platforms integrated into Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, all passed through the scope and visibility our profiles could obtain organically. As time goes by, networks understood that there was an option of direct monetization through advertising, so they and jumped into it. 

How to sell on Social Networks through these two channels,organic and payment, is what we are going to study now. In this post, we will specifically focus on the organic. 

Honestly, this is always the hardest. There was a turning point at the time they began to sell ads and promote publications. At that moment, different algorithms began to limit the scope of the brands, and the way to maintain a presence goes through investing. 

This Statista graph corresponds to a study carried out in 2014 in which can be seen very clearly how the reach of brands has fallen on Facebook that is the paradigmatic case: 

This does not mean that Social Networks are useless at the organic level, not at all. Strategically,  it is worth working networks  organically because it is the base of a much close relationship between the user and the brand, which has a direct influence on the sale, although it can be in a slightly more indirect way. 

The strongest points, which is still adding, are not insignificant: 

It is obligatory to have them the most polished possible. On networks where there are corporate pages, complete all information as possible, do not miss any field. On Facebook or LinkedIn it is worth working in this sense.

We can also play much on more limited networks such as Twitter or Instagram. Especially on the space provided for links. These are not immutable, so we can change them depending on what the strategy requires. You can point them to different landings according to the season, or the product that interests you (they do not always have to go to the homepage, right?). 

This recommendation would apply to Facebook. Zuckelberg´s guys allow us to create our own auxiliary shops within his platform with a complete catalogue. The effectiveness is perhaps not the biggest, but allows access to other interesting strategies on the own Facebook and Instagram. 

Upload our catalogue is a mandatory step in order to be able to label products in our publications as we would with people and that,no doubt, is a great idea because even the price is displayed as in this example from the profile's Due Home. 

If you want to go on depth in the implementation of the catalogue on Instagram Shopping take a look at this post. 

By the way: not all are Facebook networks in this regard, remember Pinterest because it can give you many joys and allows you to link to products directly. 

It does not have the same impact on networks. Play with the different formats to get a greater engagement that turns into sales in a medium term. 

Videos (live or not), Stories on Instagram, panoramic images and 360 videos, pics... do not get stuck on the dull text update without further. There are many creative possibilities to highlight your products. 

In reality, I do not mean not to create viral content of nothing(I wish), but you can show your business and items of your catalogue in an attractive way. Why not doing a virtual tour to your office? Would not be a good idea making your own unboxings and upload them to YouTube? 

You are not going to sell on your Twitter or Facebook profiles as good as they are , in the end everything is about sending reference traffic to your online store. 

We already mentioned that Pinterest makes it easy because it integrates the link very naturally (we wish Instagram let us share links in the posts), this is what we have to achieve and we will do: 

If we encourage them to do so we will be expanding our reach and getting that validation. When a customer purchases a product which motivates him particularly (due to status, novelty or whatever the reason is) he is prone to tell about it. This can help some of his contacts decide. 

It is always a good idea to make them feel protagonists, making them feel part of the brand. Encourage them to share their purchases under a certain hashtag on Instagram and Twitter in order to keep reinforcing that sense of community. 

images | Fotolia and Statista.