Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat… These social channels have long been used by audiences to discover new products, yet the disconnect between discovery and purchase has been shown to cause many potential buyers to fall through the gap.

At each stage in the buying process, valuable leads are lost, so consolidating the discovery and sales stages has been a primary focus for retail businesses over the past few years. Today, social commerce is successfully connecting the dots, and creating a seamless journey from discovery to sale… but how can you get started selling online?

Here are 4 simple tips:

1. Select your channels

Quite simply, there’s no point trying to sell through Facebook if your target audience demonstrates a preference for Instagram. It’s important to be present where your buyers are. Sometimes, this can be more than one channel, in which case one of your biggest priorities should be consistency. While you may wish to tailor your ads to meet the expectations of each channel’s primary audience, your overall message should be the same as this instils trust. This is vital at this particular stage of social commerce; an emerging area that lacks the awareness and trust of more established ecommerce. 

2. Get to grips with ecommerce

It’s important to understand that social commerce is still ecommerce. While its name differentiates it from platforms such as Shopify or Amazon, social commerce is still a form of ecommerce and should be treated as such. So if you haven’t yet ventured into ecommerce, now is the time to do so. Research aspects such as images, optimised descriptions, labelling and product groups, inventory management, and inventory markers, which can all be transferred from ecommerce to social commerce to aid visibility and sales. Also be sure to get to grips with the particulars of each channel. 

3. Monitor progress

As social networks introduce additional features for businesses, more and more are launching performance tracking and measurement options that enable retailers to analyse interest, demand, and sales through metrics such as content views, clicks, shares, clickthrough rate, and conversions. This may not seem vital in order to start selling, but monitoring progress is perhaps most important when you’re just starting out as it allows for your approach to be adapted based on performance and results. This can ensure that you’re always deriving full value from your social commerce efforts.

4. Invest in paid promotion

While paid promotion isn’t an essential, it can help to boost your impact during those early days of social commerce as you compete for visibility amongst businesses that have been selling online for longer. Not all social networks offer this sort of promotion, although Pinterest and Snapchat are experimenting with paid ads through their Shopping Ads and Collection Ads respectively. This can be a great way to get the right products in front of the right eyes, at the right time, and at the right price. Consider investing in promotion of your bestsellers, new arrivals, special offers, and sales items.