Social Media influences us in many ways: people who just want to socialize, follow favorite celebrities, and as buyers. You may still think of them as a friendly platform for talking to your friends, but in reality, they have become sales giants that promote businesses as no other platform could. That is exactly our today's 'food' for discussion: how e-commerce merges with social media, and what to expect soon.

What is Social Commerce?

You must have visited your local store's Facebook page at least once, and looked through it. Social Commerce is a tandem of an e-commerce company with its social media presence: more customer interactions, more brand visibility, and more sales. But that's only the tip of the iceberg!

Influencers

Influencers have become a unique platform for brand advertising. Deriving from early bloggers that used to be limited to platforms like YouTube in the past, they have a lot more choices now. Instagram and TikTok take the cake, as more and more people are using them as a simple way to wind down after a hard day, unaware, that they are actually watching their favorite blogger advertising a certain product. Basically, we are at the stage when you can't escape seeing paid people promote paid stuff: it's only natural in the digital age we live in.

Platform Choice

As I've said earlier about the bloggers, they've had pretty limited tools in their arsenal, and so it was for the businesses too. Now, you can pick the right platform for your business, as there is one for every purpose. Different age groups (and that's only one criterion!) use Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and the list goes on. A little research and you know where your target audience resides: the only thing left to do is take action.

Customer Interaction

Having pages on different social media gives your business a personal touch: you'll be able to interact with your customers, gather feedback, and work on retention all at once! People enjoy when their favorite brand answers their questions and listens to them, which makes them stay and bring more business your way. I recommend not to miss out on this opportunity, because all of your competition does that!

Mascots

They have been around since feels like forever, but companies never stop creating them and never will. Why? Well, it makes your brand more recognizable. Nobody will remember just your name and what you do, but it is significantly easier to relate to a cartoon animal or something of that sort. We all know mascots like Tony the Tiger, and again, he has been around for more than 60 years. We have one ourselves, MovaCat, you may have seen his fuzzy face all around our website. He is a good writer too, check out his articles on our blog!

Memes

I am sure you didn't expect this one, but it was me, Dio! You surely have seen internationally recognized brands like Wendy's getting into small fights with Burger King or McDonald's on Twitter. Some people may see it as silly, but that is exactly what they are going for: you thinking about it. The moment you catch yourself analyzing these little skirmishes — you are instantly hooked. You might also want to hop onto this train, but please, don't make it too cringy! Or do, meme people will make everything else for you.

Chatbots

Okay, getting more serious now. Chatbots are taking our wallets by storm. Not only it is convenient for the companies to AI taking over most of the conversation with the customers, but it is also easier, faster, and less anxiety-producing to talk to a robot. Telegram is one of the best platforms for this, as it's relatively easy to build a bot there and connect it to your business.

Live Streams

Some companies even go as far as streaming on different platforms to engage their audience. In times of a pandemic, this became a really popular solution to connect with the customers without doing too much organizational work — the only things you need are an engaging person in front of a camera, and viewers!

User-Generated Content

When somebody is looking at your product, the first thing that people turn to is the pr... Reviews, of course! Nobody wants to buy something that has a 0 rating and non-existent reviews. The best thing you could have is a wall of user reviews with photos: literally, nothing works best than a dozen smiling individuals posing with your calorie-free yogurt.

What's Next?

Social Commerce is set on a quick rise, and we will most likely see more of the ways to engage viewers shortly. The most awesome thing about it is there is no limit to what can be done in our days: there are a lot of tricks that people come up with every day. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?