5 ways to use social media in your ecommerce website — #30DSM: Day 9 – 30 Days of Social Media

Integrating social media into your ecommerce website can help build trust, increase sales and create a sense of community.

Today’s post  from guest contributor Clare Lancaster of Dot Marketing shows you 5 ways to use social media in your ecommerce website.

How can you integrate social media into your website?

Let’s get back to basics.

Social media is about two things:

1. Connecting with other people
2. Creating and sharing content – as conversations, articles, videos, images, recommendations

Social media happens wherever these two things happen. They can be on social networking platforms, news websites, forums or on your own website.

Here are 5 ways that you can use social media in your ecommerce website.

1. Add customer reviews and ratings

Social media technology allows you to go beyond publishing your own product descriptions and reviews – and allows your visitors to contribute their views about a product.

Internet users are valuing the recommendations of others in their network higher then advertising. As an eCommerce website owner you can help sell products by allowing visitors to add reviews that are published on your website.

Visitors can read the opinions of people other than the business owners – therefore building trust that will help you secure transactions.

2. Add a Twitter widget that pulls through your latest tweets

The keyword to remember when using Twitter is that it is social networking. It’s about sharing, not selling.

That’s not to say that you can’t talk about your business – engage with your followers and use your products to illustrate interesting points, reflect the personality of your brand.

To extend the value of the time you’re spending on Twitter and integrate your ecommerce website with the social networking platform you want to add a Twitter widget to your website. The widget is available free through your Twitter account and will publish your latest Tweets wherever you place it on your website.

Add a “Follow me” link to encourage website visitors to connect on Twitter also.

3. Add sharing buttons

Another great feature of social media is its ability for visitors to share content from your website and distribute it through their own social networks.

Content sharing buttons like Tweetmeme take the title of your page, automatically adds a link and connects to the users Twitter account to post the information.

This is a free way to distribute your content – taking it from one visitor seeing it to potentially thousands. Add it to your product pages.

4. Create video and embed it into your website

Creating video is cheaper to produce than ever before – it gives visitors another perspective of your products and allows you to do a bit of selling.

You can use video to showcase your products and embed them within your product detail pages. Alternatively get creative and invent a fictional character that blends your brand’s personality with product reviews. Here’s a great example by ArteryStore.com.

Remember with video – keep it short (under 2 minutes) and keep it entertaining.

5. Add a blog and share the story of your products and your business

With the popularity of social media (emphasis being on social) it’s become important to not only add personality to your business, but reveal more of what goes on behind the scenes.

Adding a blog to your website is a good way to do this.

If you’re not sure what to write about – keep the focus on storytelling. Tell the story of how you selected a new product. Let people know how your week was in the office.

A blog is a good way to build community and get feedback from your customers. Mention emails that you’ve received or a conversation you’ve had on Twitter. Keep the focus on social and you’ll be rewarded with a loyal community and audience.

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Clare Lancaster – Dot Marketing

Clare Lancaster is the founder of Dot Marketing an online strategy and marketing consultancy and has been working on the Internet since 2001. She writes a business and online marketing blog for small business owners and has recently launched www.twitterguide.com.au.

Visit www.clarelancaster.com.au to find out more or follow her on Twitter.

TODAY’S TASK

Can you implement any of these strategies into your e-commerce site? If so, which ones make the most sense to implement?

Tell us here.

Until tomorrow,

Suzi