Are you wondering how to use social media to grow your business? Do you want to learn how to increase online sales through social media?
Social media is a great channel to improve brand awareness, engage with your target audience, and get your business in front of potential customers.
It’s also a fantastic way to generate sales when you use the right techniques. In today’s post, I’ll share 9 expert tips on how to increase online sales through social media.
Ready to get started? Let’s jump right into the list.
How to Increase Online Sales Through Social Media
Here are 9 ideas that you can use to increase sales with the help of social media. Feel free to use this table of contents to jump directly to the section that interests you the most::
- Use Interactive Posts to Entice and Educate
- Share User-Generated Content
- Use the Social Media Networks Your Audience Uses
- Leverage Shoppable Posts
- Get Help from Influencers and Customers
- Promote Flash Sales
- Create Brand-Specific Hashtags
- Post Consistently
- Be True to Your Brand
1. Use Interactive Posts to Entice and Educate
Just because you want to boost sales through social media doesn’t mean you should hard-sell your products or services on each post you publish on social media platforms.
Social media management is an extension of content marketing strategy. And you should use it as a way to entertain, educate, and entice your audience.
The vast majority of people use social media in their free time. That means they use social media either to relax or see things that entertain them instead of being actively pushed to spend money.
But that begs the question: ‘How can I use social media to drive sales without being too pushy?’
One idea is to create quality content that encourages people to interact, such as running online contests, quizzes, or freebie giveaways.
These types of posts invite customers to interact with your brand on social media. Interactive posts have the potential to quickly spread beyond your direct social media followers, especially if you make sharing or tagging friends part of the entry rules.
Using interactive posts is the easiest way to go viral on social media and reach new customers.
That’s because the more eyeballs you get on your social posts, the more engagement they get. Eventually, this will help you drive traffic to your website and increase sales.
If you want to promote engagement, start generating buzz a few days before starting your giveaway or contest.
Wondering how to run contests or giveaways on social media? With RafflePress, it’s really simple:
RafflePress is the best social media contest and giveaway tool. It allows you to create and run contests and giveaways to help your small business grow with viral marketing.
RafflePress has everything you need to launch a successful social media contest, including built-in rules and random winner generators.
You can use the online giveaway tool to run different types of contests, with most offering 1-click entry and the option to verify entries.
With RafflePress, you can:
- Design gorgeous free giveaway templates with a drag-and-drop builder.
- Integrate with major social media platforms.
- Automate contest start and end times.
- Prevent fraudulent entries with anti-spam and fraud protection.
- Build a distraction-free giveaway landing page.
- Go viral with the refer-a-friend social sharing giveaway action.
- Extra giveaway templates for Instagram, X.com (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and YouTube.
- Allow entrants to log in to your contest via Facebook or Twitter.
- Bonus giveaway actions like Facebook likes, shares, or leaving a comment.
And the best part? You need zero coding or tech skills to set up and launch a social media marketing campaign with RafflePress.
2. Share User-Generated Content
Customer reviews, case studies, and testimonials are some of the best ways to market your business and build trust with potential buyers. According to social selling statistics:
- The average consumer reads 10 online reviews before buying a new product.
- 88% of buyers trust user reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- 57% of consumers will only buy from businesses that have at least a 4-star rating.
- Between similar online products, 35% of buyers say that they rely on better reviews to buy a product even if it’s more expensive.
Social proof in marketing is a powerful tool because it helps people make choices based on the behavior and opinions of others.
An increasingly large number of people turn to social media to find authentic reviews and see products and services in action.
So how can you get these reviews into your social media presence to help prove your brand is worth their hard-earned money?
If you have customers sharing positive experiences with your products or services or showing them in use, share that content with your social media followers.
Also, use different content formats to repurpose the content for a specific platform. For instance, you can write a post about it on X.com, create an Instagram story, or make a TikTok video.
This also brings an added level of authenticity to your online presence that you can’t get by creating your own social media content.
According to a study by Stackla, 79% of people say user-generated content (UGC) highly impacts their purchasing decisions. And only 13% say content from a brand is impactful.
So how do you get your current customers to generate content for you?
Find ways to encourage people to share their positive experiences through videos and photos on social media. Also, ask them to tag you or use a company-specific hashtag if you have one.
You can also get this content on your website by adding a social media feed. If you’re using WordPress, we recommend using Smash Balloon:
Smash Balloon is the world’s top social media feed plugin for WordPress.
With Smash Balloon, you can easily display social media feeds from the most popular social media sites like:
- X.com
- YouTube
Smash Balloon is user-friendly and lets you sync your social media profiles to your site. That way, all the user-generated content you are sharing is instantly displayed on your website.
Plus, it lets your visitors engage with your social media profiles in real time directly from your website.
Smash Balloon gives you the freedom to create fully customized social media feeds that you can tailor to match your brand’s style. It’s a great tool for driving sales through social media.
Related Content 21 Best Social Proof Marketing Tools to Build Trust and Boost Sales.
3. Use the Social Media Networks Your Audience Uses
It may be tempting to just go out to the internet and sign up for all the social media channels and just cross-post your content on all of them.
While you may decide this is the best for you, a one-size-fits-all strategy rarely works in digital marketing. In fact, doing this may be doing more harm than good.
Each platform has a different user base and a different type of content that it specializes in.
For instance, Facebook has been losing favor with younger audiences for quite some time. Meanwhile, Instagram and Snapchat are big draws for millennials and Gen Z.
And, of course, if you are a B2B brand, LinkedIn would be an ideal starting place.
Study the key demographics of your audience and meet them where they are at. When you create content that resonates with your target audience, you’ll soon improve your lead generation efforts and see an uptick in your sales numbers.
But what kind of content should you create for each social media network? Here are some tips:
- Facebook: Videos and longer written content.
- Instagram: Photos with a story-like description.
- Snapchat: Short videos that have entertaining content.
- Pinterest: DIY tips, inspirational quotes, and high-quality infographics.
- X.com: Short posts, threads, and memes.
- YouTube: Long-form videos that are entertaining or informational.
If you want to just get on social media, where should you go to get the most out of your efforts while you refine your strategy?
For more tips on finding the right network, check out: Your Ultimate Guide to the Best Social Media Platforms for Business.
When creating posts or other content, just remember to stay authentic to your brand. You don’t want to start jumping on a platform and creating content that isn’t your brand.
That won’t attract your target audience.
For instance, take a look at the Instagram profile of popular camera manufacturer GoPro. It has a distinct look to the page that represents GoPro’s brand personality really well:
When you’re on the right social media platform and posting the right kind of content, your odds of reaching your target audience tend to skyrocket.
Once you gain momentum on a specific platform, your chances of seeing an increase in sales improve dramatically.
4. Leverage Shoppable Posts
Shoppable posts are posts on Facebook and Instagram that are integrated with Instagram Shops or Facebook Shops. Shoppable posts let users buy items featured on the post and pay for them from within the app.
And they are an amazingly useful tool for driving sales through social media, especially for eCommerce brands. Instagram is a perfect example of this.
For instance, you can tag products and services in your Instagram stories and posts. This helps your customers see the product you are promoting. From there, they can click on the call-to-action (CTA) button to go to your site and buy the product within just a few taps.
The tag has the description, price, and name of the product.
Then, they can click the ‘checkout’ button on the product page.
After that, all they have to do is enter their name, payment details, delivery address, and they’re good to go.
GoPro is a master at using shoppable posts on Instagram to promote its products and generate sales. Let’s look at how the brand uses social media advertising to promote its products on Instagram.
When you visit their account on Instagram, here’s how it appears:
To view their shoppable posts, click on the Shop button. Here’s what you’ll see:
Thanks to these features, boosting sales through social media is a lot easier.
To get started, you will need to make sure you have a business account on Instagram.
On Facebook, there is a shop section of your company’s page to list your products. Also, Pinterest offers buyable pins where people can also purchase products directly from the app.
Shoppable pins make the customer experience easier and give you the best access to your customers.
5. Get Help from Influencers and Customers
What if you are just starting, have a brand new social media strategy, and want to get in front of many people fast? Influencers are go-to experts that can help you boost sales through social media.
There are many influencers out there, all with different audiences.
Build partnerships with influencers who have built an audience that overlaps with your niche. This will ensure that they have followers interested in your product or service.
How does influencer marketing work?
Ask them to promote your brand by honestly reviewing your products on their profiles in exchange for a discount, affiliate link, or potentially a free sample. Most influencers monetize their social media following to grow their affiliate marketing business.
Some influencers do charge for these reviews. However, partnering with influencers will put you in front of their massive following and is proven to increase sales.
If you aren’t quite ready to use influencers, you can reach out to your more passionate customers. Ask them to review their experience or promote your products in exchange for things like discounts, freebies, or other perks.
Some companies offer a referral marketing program that allows their customers to share their referral codes or links with their followers, friends, and families on social media.
Just like in affiliate marketing, the customers can get perks or a percentage of the sale when their code is used.
Either way, this gets your products in front of a larger portion of your target audience, increasing sales.
6. Promote Flash Sales
Promoting flash sales is another important way to increase sales through social media.
A flash sale is, just as the name suggests, a limited-time offer. They are different from regular sales, which are usually held at the same time every year.
Here’s an example of a flash sale campaign from an apparel brand:
Most companies announce flash sales at most an hour or two before they start. These types of sales are great for creating a sense of urgency in your customers, especially since these sales usually only run for a day.
Scarcity is a good tool to trigger fear of missing out (FOMO), a psychological trigger that gets most people to act quickly for the fear of losing a good opportunity.
You can promote your flash sale on your social media to get the most engagement and sales. Most companies turn to Facebook and Instagram for these types of sales promotions.
For your Facebook followers, you can create an event if you want to start generating buzz early. For Instagram, you can publish posts or Instagram stories about the sale.
If you don’t have a large following, you can also run pay per click (PPC) ad campaigns on these platforms.
7. Create Brand-Specific Hashtags
Hashtags bring attention to your brand by letting you be discovered more easily.
It also can bring fans of your brand together as a community since they can find each other by browsing the hashtag.
Hashtags are an important tool in social media to drive sales.
But, you can take it to the next level by creating and using unique brand hashtags. They help people understand your posts, drive engagement, and increase your brand’s visibility.
Hashtags also are a key way to help people discover user-generated content related to a brand.
For example, take a look at GoPro’s profile on X.com:
See the #GoProHERO12 hashtag?
You can click on it and see hundreds of posts from people using the hashtag and talking about GoPro’s Hero 12.
Here are all media content from X users that have used GoPro’s hashtags in their posts:
Using the right hashtags is one of the most effective ways to leverage word-of-mouth marketing through social media.
And they aren’t just limited to X.com, too. Pretty much every social media platform uses them for community engagement and search purposes.
When you are creating a branded hashtag, remember to keep it simple and memorable. It should also match your brand’s personality.
At the end of the day, everything you do on social media should feel authentic to your brand and your message.
Pro-tip: Want to monitor who is mentioning your brand on a social media platform without tagging your brand or using your branded hashtags? You can use social listening tools like Sprout Social, AgoraPulse, or Brand24.
8. Post Consistently
People don’t use social media at the same time. That means you should be posting content on social media consistently, and at varying intervals, to make sure you have a wider coverage.
The lifetime of a social media post can vary from just minutes to hours, depending on a social media platform’s algorithms. These lifetime numbers are when you will see the most engagement or when the post will disappear, as in the case of TikTok videos.
So how long do your posts live on the different platforms? According to research:
- Instagram: 21-48 hours
- Facebook: 5 hours
- YouTube: Up to 30 days
- TikTok: Just a few minutes (unless it goes viral)
- X.com: 15-20 minutes
- Pinterest: 4-12 months
To get the most out of social media, you will want to generate fresh content to have something new for your audience.
However, you shouldn’t be posting all the time. This can bombard or annoy your audience.
Try different frequencies and posting schedules to see what resonates best with your audience and stick with it.
You can use automated social media scheduling tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, or MissingLettr to save the hassle of posting everything manually. These tools let you schedule social media posts in advance so that you can cater to your audience across all time zones.
The tools also offer analytics that you can track to understand the following metrics:
- What kind of posts work best for your audience
- What social platforms are most suitable for your brand
- What day or time gets you the most engagement
9. Be True to Your Brand
Like I mentioned earlier, using social media is essentially extending your brand presence across various social networks. It’s like creating a strategic sales funnel to improve the success of your marketing efforts.
For many people, your social media accounts will be their first impression of your brand.
Once someone sees your content, they will likely check out your profile to learn more about you. That means your profile, content, and message must represent your brand authentically.
If you stick to your brand’s true identity, you can get more followers, more engagement, and improve your online conversion rate.
But how do you set up your profile to best reflect your brand? Here a few tips:
- Use a username that reflects your business.
- Share your website’s URL on each social media account.
- Use high-quality profile and cover photos.
- Make sure your content is visible to the public.
- Create content that’s useful for your target audience.
- Engage with users who mention you in posts, replies, or comments.
These are also building blocks to fostering trust between you and potential customers. Having a full and professional-looking profile makes you look credible.
Also, make sure that your social media pages have a uniform look across all platforms. This way, people will recognize your brand no matter where they see you.
Make the Most of Your Social Media Marketing
Social media is a perfect place to improve your brand’s visibility and increase your sales. Apply the expert tips discussed in this blog to maximize your marketing potential on social media.
If you are looking for more tips to improve your social media presence, you might also like these posts:
- 31 Social Media Marketing Hacks Guaranteed to Grow Your Followers
- How to Raise Awareness on Social Media: 5 Unique Strategies
- How To Incorporate Social Media Into SEO Strategy
Do you want to increase your following on social media? With OptinMonster, you can create a ‘Like Us On Facebook’ or add a custom ‘Follow Us On X.com’ popup to get more followers.
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