Is Your Business Using Social Commerce The Right Way?

For online retailers, small businesses, and anyone else hoping to succeed online, social commerce is more relevant than ever before.

Is your business using social commerce the right way?  And, you might be wondering, what is social commerce, anyway?  Before you answer the first question, and scroll down to find out the answer to the second one, consider the following:

• According to eWeek.com, a recent survey of 1,200 independent small business owners showed that 50% of them did not have an established web presence.

• 15% of participants in this same survey did not have a website for their business, and of those that did, 65%  of them did not have a way to take online payments via their website.

• The number of users on Facebook is quickly approaching 700 million as of the date of this post.

• Social commerce in the United States alone has increased 56 percent in the past four years.

What do these statistics and others like them mean for the average business owner or online retailer? Simply put, social commerce is a growing trend, and those who are slow to adapt, like the business owners in the survey who still don’t have a website or an online payment system on their website, are quickly being left behind.

Defining Social Commerce

Social commerce is a mixture of ecommerce marketing and promotional strategies and social media interaction between retailers and customers.

Mobile commerce has played a big part in the emergence of social commerce and the ability of retailers to create and facilitate these types of personal connections and interactions. 

Instead of focusing solely on marketing and selling their products and services, online retailers (the successful ones, anyway) now use a variety of channels to offer customers useful information, relevant content, exclusive coupons, advanced notification of product releases, and more.

For example, social commerce-savvy merchants will let their fans and followers know in advance that the product is coming, and may even create interactive polls to let people guess exactly what the product might be, or even whether they are considering purchasing the product once it is released.

Offering some exclusive coupons and the opportunity for loyal customers to purchase the product before anyone else are some other ways that online merchants can increase brand and product awareness and gain more exposure for their products and their business at the same time.

You Tell Us

So, is your business using social commerce the right way? If so, which techniques and methods are working best for you? Leave us a comment and let us know, or visit our Facebook page and respond to this week’s poll question.