A Quick Guide to the Social Media Platforms' Social Commerce Features
If you read our recent article on what social commerce is and how it could benefit your business, you might now be indulging the thought of joining the social commerce sphere, but at the same time be thinking… where and how do I get started? Every platform has its advantages when it comes to social commerce, and we’ve put together the key ones below for you:
Instagram Shops
Instagram is a great starting point for social commerce. When you consider that 130 million users interact each month with at least one Shopping post, you can’t help but have your curiosity piqued. Instagram feeds are full of digital marketing from the biggest brands around, with influencers inspiring a staggering 87% of users to purchase goods.
Benefits
Each individual product can have a detail page with pricing, product description and different media types - photo, video, etc. included.
Shopping tags can be added to posts or Stories which link directly back to the product tags on your brand page. Talk about staying connected.
The collections feature will allow you to collate and catalogue sets of similar products and present them in your digital shop window.
There is one potential drawback for some businesses - Instagram allows sale of products only. If you’re a service-based business, look elsewhere for your platform needs (see Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest below).
SETUP: Create an Instagram Business account connected to a Facebook page. To link the two, edit your profile and look for ‘Public Business Information’. Then you’ll be able to start uploading. The Shop is found on the bottom feature bar with the home, search and profile icons in-app.
Facebook Shops
Facebook Shops are also a great place for social commerce. With Facebook Shops, you can create custom collections of products you want to showcase, get valuable insights through Facebook’s Commerce Manager, and reach interested shoppers with ads.
Facebook also offers business pages, which allow you to create a brand presence, connect with your audience, and spread awareness of your business. This is especially great for service-based businesses; you can set up pages and engage with your network of followers by posting and updating your page regularly, while utilising the live chat features to engage with consumers and provide content users will want to share.
Benefits
You can customise the Shop with your brand colours, fonts and images.
You can import your existing product catalogue directly from your website or start afresh.
There are in-app checkouts or direct Messenger chat options available to support your customers every step of the way.
SETUP: Create a Facebook Business account and go to ‘Commerce Manager’. Use the ‘Create a Catalog’ feature to begin uploading your products. If you already use other platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce, you can integrate using the Facebook Commerce Manager. After a review, you will be free to use Shops. To create a business page, simply add from the left toolbar from your main profile.
Snapchat Creator Marketplace and Screenshop
When it comes to social commerce, Snapchat’s current opportunities are generally more about attracting creators and partners than about consumer shopping. Creator Marketplace was launched in May 2021 to help boost collaboration between businesses and creators. Snap says:
“It will initially focus on helping businesses discover and partner with our top AR Lens creators. The marketplace will gradually extend to different types of creators (e.g. video creators and Snap Stars) and launch additional features to make it easier for brands and creators to work together.”
But with the acquisition of Screenshop in May 2021, Snapchat is now also aiming to use its signature filters to help people shop online and ‘try before they buy’. Users can scan their friends’ outfits and get recommendations on what brands to buy from before using the ‘shop now’ button to make in-app purchases. Snapchat also plans to incorporate users’ Memories, a feature used to save photos and videos for later consumption, into the Screenshop feature which will then provide suggestions and items of interest based on the user’s saved content. This is currently a work in progress though.
SETUP: You can choose to advertise traditionally with a 10-second ad, but Snapchat offers several other, more effective features, particular for smaller businesses with smaller budgets. Businesses can now set up product catalogues, geo-filters, branded AR filters and lenses (Snapchat’s most popular feature for businesses) to customise their sales approach, branded with their logo, and allows users to buy in-app. To set yours up, take a look here.
Though not strictly a social media platform, Pinterest is working hard to bring a series of 'social' commerce features to compete in the market. It does have an active monthly user base of approximately 440 million people worldwide, but this is a figure substantially smaller than other platforms (Instagram’s monthly active user base is 1 billion whilst Facebook’s boasts 2.7 billion per month).
Pinterest is an image sharing search engine which takes users directly from product pins to businesses’ websites - as opposed to offering in-app shopping features Facebook and Instagram. That said, with Pinterest’s most recent release Shopping List, users can save all their product pins in one place and receive notifications when there are sales or price drops, a unique and useful feature for regular online shoppers.
If you’re a service-based business, Pinterest may be good for generating interest and allowing people to share your services on boards. With the right branding and information linking back to your profile and website, you could benefit from greater exposure and develop closer community networks.
Benefits
Shopping List will allow users to save product pins in one place, which will contain various details including shipping costs, reviews and price drops directly linked to the retailers websites and their live information.
The catalogues containing product pins and benefits are uploaded by verified retailers with a blue tick.
TikTok
TikTok’s not just about videos going viral (although that can also be a winner for your business). Social commerce figures show that shopping on TikTok has increased by 553% (not a typo) since 2020. Though Instagram and Facebook still top the lot, TikTok’s popularity is ever-increasing, especially among digital natives who are avid online shoppers.
Previously, TikTok partnered with Shopify to help creators sell merchandise, but it’s believed they are now looking for an in-app feature similar to Instagram. The platform is hoping the popularity of its video content can be utilised for advertising and promotion purposes. It’s also very likely we’ll see the arrival of live shopping on TikTok moving forward, as its sister company Douyin is already becoming a hub for live shopping opportunities with brands and customers in China.
This is a work in progress so keep an eye open for developments.
Twitter is working on a series of new commerce-led tweet features, including ones that contain a Shop button linked directly to retailers and businesses. This is still very much developmental and a concrete update is still yet to be announced.
Twitter did previously create Twitter Offers (way back in the day), which benefited advertisers who wanted to share promotions with users. If users saw a Twitter Offer on their timeline, they could directly redeem offers on a credit or debit card, which could be automatically deducted when the user visited the promotional store.
A service-based business is more about listening to your consumers, building relationships and trust and working out their requirements before pitching at the optimum time. Twitter is a perfect platform for this, allowing multi-user engagement through Twitter Lists, which allows businesses to set up specific audience groups based on criteria such as company or geographic locations. You can build a timeline of tweets which provide vital information that can resonate with your consumers and put you front of their queue when they consider selecting a service.
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