Social Media and eCommerce. WooCommerce publishes another great rundown on ecommerce and social media. As you learned in Nine Ways to Use Social Media, it can be lucrative for online stores to prioritize social media marketing. There are dozens of platforms, and each one caters to a unique audience with different interests, characteristics, and locations.
But spreading yourself too thin keeps you from being successful. So which social media platform should you focus on and how do you combine your efforts for success?
Comparing popular social media platforms
Who’s on it?
Since Facebook is the most widely-used social media platform, you can reach:
- 2.5 billion active monthly users in all age ranges.
- As much as 80% of Millenials and Gen-Xers.
- Seniors — they’re its fastest-growing demographic and nearly 40% of those born before 1945 are on Facebook.
- People all over the world — only about 10% of users are in the United States and Canada.
What can you do?
A robust advertising platform allows you to reach previous site visitors, target ads based on interests and affiliations, collect leads, promote content like videos, pictures, or testimonials, send direct messages, and more. Stores can create a dedicated business page to share information, gather reviews, gain followers, and interact with fans.
You can also build aFacebook shop where users can view products conveniently on the platform, then purchase them on your WooCommerce site. This extension syncs all your store data so you don’t need to manually add each product.
Who should use it?
Almost any brand can find a way to tap into Facebook’s diverse audience and tools. If you can only focus on one social media platform, this is usually your best bet.
Who’s on it?
With Instagram, you can reach:
- 37% of Americans and as much as 75% of 18-24 year olds.
- More women than men.
- Fans of nearly anything: fashion, cars, food, nature, sports, travel, wellness, and more.
What can you do?
Instagram is centered around images. While you can add text and interact with followers, most people quickly scroll through their feed and stop to admire photos they like.
It’s owned by Facebook, so you can piggyback off of Facebook’s advertising platform to reach Instagram users even if you don’t have a profile for your store. You can also advertise on Instagram’s platform directly, though targeting is more limited than with Facebook.
Instagram influencers have become incredibly important to businesses. In some cases, they’re celebrities outside of social media, but many of them are famous solely for the work they’ve done on Instagram. By generating unique, relevant content, they’ve amassed credibility and attention from a group of people interested in a particular subject matter.
Partnering with the right influencer to promote your products provides instant validation for your brand and helps you reach a very specific audience that an ad platform often can’t compete with.
