Social commerce allows businesses to sell products directly within social media apps. Users can buy a product without leaving the app, and the social media platform keeps a percentage of the sale as a fee.

Sounds easy, right? The question is, between owning your own eCommerce website versus selling via social commerce, which is best for you? Let’s take a closer look at both.

Social Commerce’s Growth

TikTok is planning to increase its social commerce offerings over the year. The company recently appointed a new head of eCommerce and Data Operations and will be ramping up its eCommerce options in 2023 to diversify its income streams. TikTok Shop lets merchants sell products directly on TikTok through videos, live streams, and a product showcase tab.

Meta offers a service called Shops that lets you sell products on Facebook, Instagram, or Facebook Marketplace. Instagram has some unique options for its “Checkout on Instagram” feature, such as product launches and live-stream shopping.

If you can sell products directly within social media apps, where your customers already are, then why should you bother developing and maintaining your own eCommerce store? Can’t you cut out all that trouble and just sell on social platforms?

Don’t Close Your eCommerce Shop. Here’s Why.

The social media landscape is unstable. Young people born in the 2000s or later are growing up with social media as an integrated part of society and view it as a staple of the world, but anyone older has lived through the churn of these platforms and has experienced their volatility.

Sometimes, social media platforms lose their luster.

Myspace is a classic example of this social media churn. Launched in 2003, Myspace was the first social media site to gain global adoption.

From 2005 to 2008, it was the largest social media platform, but it was overtaken by Facebook in 2009. Myspace has declined in usage ever since. It has been bought and sold by various entities but hasn’t been considered a major social media network for years.

Vine is an illustrative example of the rise and fall of a popular social media app. It was a short-form video service, letting users share six-second video clips long before TikTok exploded in popularity.

Vine launched in 2013 and was shut down by early 2017. It was one of the first social platforms that generated popular personalities, which paved the way for the “influencers” we know today. These stars gained money and fame on the platform, which all disappeared when the app was discontinued.

The sudden shuttering of the app was a shock to these creators. Some of them moved to YouTube and continued to find success, but others lost their careers overnight.

Algorithms provide a challenge.

Even on the more stable platforms like YouTube, algorithms change all the time, causing frequent headaches for creators. Trying to keep up with the latest algorithm updates can be a full-time job.

Content creators are constantly battling these updates. The algorithm changes force creators to modify video titles, descriptions, thumbnail images, video length, video content, and more. It affects creators’ income, so it’s not something they can afford to ignore.

Meta is undependable.

Facebook and Instagram are popular places to sell products, but these platforms are notorious for showing posts erratically, even trying to get people to pay to “boost” their content instead of simply adding it to their followers’ feeds.

The Oatmeal, a popular comic artist, famously created a comic about this situation, in which he laments creating posts that are never seen by his followers. Ironically, Facebook prompted him to pay to boost that post. He all but gave up on promoting his work on social media and asked his followers to visit his website directly instead.

Twitter is unstable.

Between 2022 and now, Twitter has experienced a lot of upheaval because of its change of ownership. Additionally, Twitter is heavily intertwined with politics in the US and around the world. Users’ and advertisers’ perceptions of leadership, including business decisions, political affiliations, and even morality, have caused many to abandon the site in protest.

Other platforms have emerged as competitors affecting Twitter’s numbers and engagement. Meanwhile, the news is full of scandals at Twitter headquarters regarding layoffs, policy changes, and the possibility of bankruptcy.

TikTok could be banned any day now.

TikTok, currently one of the most popular social media apps, is constantly under scrutiny due to its Chinese ownership. The US House of Representatives has banned it from any electronic devices used by House staff, and the US government is expected to ban it from all federal devices.

US policymakers consider TikTok to be a national security risk and are concerned that the Chinese government will misuse the personal data of US users and spread disinformation. Across the board, various nations are expediting efforts to ban TikTok.

The social media landscape is ever-changing.

Setting aside these issues of political intrigue, algorithm difficulties, and disappearing platforms, there is still the consideration of demographics. The demographics of social media users tend to be grouped by generation, but it changes over time.

For example, Facebook started out as a site for college students but is now known for being used by the Boomer generation. TikTok started out as a site used by kids but has gained popularity with a variety of content creators.

If you put all your products on a certain social media platform because you’ve determined that your customers are there, that assumption might become wrong in the future. Your own website is generation-agnostic—anyone can visit it at any time.

What to Do Instead

Take control of your online presence by owning your eCommerce store. You should always own your website’s domain name and have reliable web hosting.

Whether you use WordPress with WooCommerce or a dedicated eCommerce service like Shopify or BigCommerce, you should build and manage your own store without giving all away your power to social media apps.

When you own your eCommerce store, you can drive traffic to it by sharing content on social media or buying ads on the same platforms. You can use SEO, Google Ads, content marketing, and traditional marketing tactics like direct mail to increase your website’s traffic. You can still engage with the same audience on social media without being completely reliant on it.

Have your cake and eat it too.

Look for an option to sell on social media apps by pushing products to the app from your website. Your website will remain the source of the data and feed product information to the social media app.

That allows you to sell from your own website and on the apps while retaining your independence. This is a useful diversification option that creates multiple streams of income for the same set of products.

All in all, it’s never a good idea to completely put your eCommerce business in someone else’s hands. Social media evolves quickly, which creates instability.

Platforms rise and fall in popularity, demographics change rapidly, constant algorithm updates cause fluctuations in results, and apps are sold to new owners who change existing policies. Take ownership of your business by developing and maintaining your own eCommerce site where you are in control of your products and sales.

Ready to launch an eCommerce website? Contact WebDevStudios.

At WebDevStudios, we know how to build an eCommerce website designed for success. Plus, our team knows exactly how to integrate your company’s social media platforms into your website for a seamless experience your customers will love. Contact us. Let’s talk about your new eCommerce site.

The post eCommerce vs. Social Commerce: Which Is Best for You? appeared first on WebDevStudios.

The more connected and engaged you are with your audience and customers, the more likely they’ll return. In the end, this helps drive sales. Lyfe Marketing goes on to state that, “Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networking (95%).” It’s all about brand recognition and awareness. The more social media exposure, the more likely a consumer is going to visit your site. Your business needs to leverage sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to keep up with the competition.

Social Media Statistics

• 3.2 billion social media users around the globe
• Users spend an average of two hours and 22 minutes on their social media accounts every day, including messaging
• 73% of online marketers agree that their efforts in implementing a social media marketing strategy for their business has been effective
• 90% of Instagram users say that they follow a business
• 66% of Facebook users say that they like or follow a brand
• Users are 28% more likely to watch ads on Twitter compared to other social media platforms
• 63 million LinkedIn users are in decision-making positions

[Credit for statistics: Lyfe Marketing]

Integrating WordPress with Your Social Media

Install a WordPress Social Media Plugin

The easiest way to integrate WordPress with social media is to use plugins. All you need to do is download your chosen plugin, install, and activate.

There are a variety of tools and techniques out there to position your business to be successful with integrating social media. Depending on your target audience and preference on vehicle of choice, there are many plugin options for you to choose from. Here are two to consider.

Social Snap

With a rating of four and a half stars, Social Snap is designed so that it, “helps you drive more traffic and increase engagement by leveraging the power of social media.” You can customize buttons and add “Click to Tweet” share boxes across any post, page or sidebar.

Monarch Social Sharing

What makes Monarch stand out is its ability to add sharing buttons in five different locations, so you’re not limited to placement. Additionally, you can choose from more than 20 social sharing networks to display on your WordPress site.

Depend on a Third-Party Platform

There are plenty of platforms that specialize in connecting online services with each other. One option is called IFTTT. This service enables you to create ‘applets’ that connect multiple platforms. For example, you can create an applet that integrates WordPress with Facebook, and enables you to share new posts.

Use the Platform’s Embed Functions

Try out your social media platform’s embed functionality, by embedding your publications manually on other websites. For example, you can click on the three dots at the top of any Facebook publication, and you’ll find an embed option. Each platform’s embed functionality works a bit differently, so keep that in mind. If learning various processes is annoying to you, a plugin might be a better option.

Tips on Placement

Another item to keep in mind is the placement of where you’d like your social media links to live on your site. The answer really depends on your marketing strategy and what you’re looking to achieve. Whatever you decide to do, one thing is for sure: avoid over-placement.

For example, we previously mentioned that the Monarch plugin offers various types of placement—floating sidebar, above and below content, on images and videos, automatic pop-ups, and automatic fly-ins. Here’s the question, will you ever need to use all five at the same time on your WordPress site? Likely, the answer is no.

The goal of social media is to develop brand awareness, build relationships, and increase website exposure and engagement. By using some of these plugins and tips, you can inspire your website visitors to follow your social media and engage further with your website. If you understand your target audience, you will be able to personalize your messages and grow your reach.

Need a team to build a website that includes easy access to your social media? Whether you’re an enterprise-level corporation or a big media company, you definitely want to integrate WordPress with your social media. Contact us and let’s chat about it!

Additional Resources

• 15 Reasons Why Marketing Through Social Media is a Must For Every Small Business
• 3 Easy Ways to Integrate WordPress with Social Media
• 30+ Best Social Media Plugins For WordPress in 2020

The post Integrating WordPress with Social Media appeared first on WebDevStudios.

When I’m not slinging code for WordPress here at WebDevStudios (WDS) and Maintainn, my wife and I run a small online store where we sell our handmade leather goods. We’ve been at if for just over three years now, and social media drives 70%-80% of our sales. We rank pretty well for some key search terms in our niche, but even with Google’s domination of the search market, it doesn’t send us anywhere near the sales that social media does. That’s not to say you should ignore trying to rank well in search engines, just that you should definitely put some energy into social media, as well.

I’m going to share some of what works well for our shop and hope it can help you get more sales from social media. A lot of this is going to seem obvious once you read it. Most good advice is, but sometimes you just need to hear someone else say it. It’s just like when you ask someone how they lost weight. You already know the answer is that they ate better and exercised. There is no magic method to losing weight. It’s like that with social media, too. The things you need to do are simple, and you probably already have a pretty good idea of what you should be doing. The biggest challenge is sticking with it. Don’t get discouraged if a social media post doesn’t do well. Just keep at it and put in the work. That’s what will set you apart from everyone else.

Be visual.

Social media is a very visual medium. You are competing with not only people in your niche but with every other social media post in your potential customer’s feed. They are seeing memes, family photos, videos, ads, and more. Having great images or video to share will give you an instant advantage over someone else in your niche who’s not taking the time to get great content to share. Everything you do to market your shop starts here. Not only does it help you stand out in your customers’ feeds, it also tells them a lot about what you have to offer with just a quick glance of the product. Modern smart phones can take great pictures; you don’t need an expensive camera. Instead, take time to plan out your shots, develop a style to suit your brand, and make sure you have great lighting. Tell a story with your pictures. Your customers will engage with you more, and you’ll increase your sales.

Be seen.

Even with the great products and photos you still need to make sure your posts get seen. There’s no simple algorithm to this. Sometimes a post will be popular, and other times people won’t notice it at all. Some of this is just random luck.

You have more control over being seen than you might think. You need to consider when you post. Most people are online during the day throughout the week. On nights and weekends, people get away from their computers more. You also need to know your customers and what works for them. Start with posting during the day, Mondays through Fridays. But experiment with posting during other times, too.

For our site, I do most of our stuff during the day, but I like post a couple at night and on weekends, too. With our customers, we pick up a lot of extra sales and engagement this way because not all of our competitors post after normal business hours. You also need to go where your customers are. For us, that’s Instagram and Pinterest, with a little bit of Facebook. Look at where your potential customers spend their time and be active on those social media websites.

Use hashtags.

You also have to hashtag your posts on most social media services, especially Instagram and Twitter. Think of hashtags as adding keywords that your customers might use in a search. Users click on these hashtags and browse similar posts. When they do, this click may lead to your posts on the “Discover” or “Trending” pages related to these hashtags. I can’t stress how important adding those hashtags are. Hashtags let your social media posts be seen by people who aren’t on your feed and increases your potential reach.

Here is an example of what an Instagram page for the hashtag #leatherwork looks like. Using a hashtag like this can land my Instagram post on this page, which is then seen by potential customers.

Pro Tip: Keep a note of hashtags on your phone so that you can just copy and paste them. This will save you tons of time. I have several sets of hashtags for each of our products. Copying and pasting streamlines my efforts. Work smarter, not harder.

Be efficient.

Running a business means that you have lots to get done. While marketing through social media should be a high priority, it does take time. Here are two tips that help me:

Recycle images and content.

When you take photos, create a batch of photos in a single session so you can use them over the next couple of weeks or even months. Reuse and re-purpose images or content you’ve created in the past in new ways.

Schedule in advance.

Take advantage of scheduling social media whenever possible. For example, Twitter and Instagram both allow you to save drafts so you could create several posts, save them, and publish later. But I like to go a step further and queue up posts with a tool like HootSuite. It’s a paid service, but it saves you a lot of time sharing your work on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. At WDS, we currently use Buffer but also recommend Social Web Suite.

If you are a little more tech savvy you could save some money and use a service like IFTTT (If This Then That), which has applets to auto share your posts from one social media service to all the others. I use this personally and for our shop.

Make a plan.

Even if you end up scheduling your posts in advance, you need to also consider how often you post. Like most suggestions, this is going to depend on your customers and the niche you are in. For ours, I post one to two times a day when we are at our most active. Eventually, I’m planning on posting a little bit more frequently. Our audience is hungry for this kind of content and the more we post the more sales we make, but you can’t just spam the feed all day long. It’s a big turn off for me, personally, as a consumer. I want to avoid doing that to our customers.

I suggest picking a social media schedule that you can maintain. Repetition is also key. Your customers will learn your social media schedule, and they’ll be on the lookout for your next post. If you want to test out posting more often, just start with a slight increase and add more posts slowly and test the reaction. If you keep getting positive results, then keep it up. If not, slow down a bit. It’s pretty simple.

You can’t automate engagement. That’s a good thing.

One of the hardest parts about marketing your brand with social media is engaging with your customers, even though it’s very rewarding. There’s no easy way to automate engagement; and even if you could, I wouldn’t recommend it.

We’ve gotten tremendous benefit from talking to our customers through our social media channels. It’s a great way to provide customer support and generate sales leads. People love that they can reach out to us and they’ll get a real person to interact with.

I’ve had chats with our customers about the most random topics. This helps build customers for life. You’ll only get out of social media what you put into it. Don’t be afraid to share your personal side. Our customers love seeing behind-the-scenes stuff, such as our day-to-day life and other non-product related photos.

In our case, we, ourselves, are our brand, but even if you are a big eCommerce brand, make sure to show off the human side of your business. Customers connect with people and stories. Making those personal connections can build life-long fans. You can’t buy that with marketing dollars. You have to earn that. And anyone who’s run a any kind of business for long knows that it’s easier to keep customers than it is to get new ones. Sharing your brand’s journey through social media lets you connect with them on a personal level and grow that relationship over the course of months or even years.

Email marketing still works!

Email marketing has been around forever. It doesn’t seem as sexy as social media. However, it’s still around because it works!

While it’s not social media, I wanted to include it in this article because email marketing drives a lot of sales for us, and we use it to drive our customers to our social media profiles. So if you are on the fence, make sure you have an email list for your shop. Just don’t abuse it. We only send out mailings six-eight times per year. You should do what makes sense for your business, but don’t ignore email marketing or you’ll be missing out on sales.

You don’t have to just sell products with your list. We use it to promote giveaways, social media accounts, highlight work we’ve done, and share content that we put out there on social media or our site. Try it out and see what works for your customers.

I hope this gives you a good starting point for using social media in your digital marketing efforts. If you have any questions or suggestions of things you’ve tried, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

The post Using Social Media Marketing for eCommerce appeared first on WebDevStudios.

With Facebook broken, how will these organizations market their brands and charities? To them, when Facebook goes down, it means that their bottom line takes a hit. That is no laughing matter.

However, many other businesses and nonprofit groups are not at all impacted by the interruptions of these social media platforms. Do you know why? It’s simple: they all have performant websites.

Here’s a piece of advice to keep in mind always. Think about writing it down and taping it to your laptop:

A Facebook Page does not a website make.

Oh sure, having a Facebook Page seems like the easiest and cheapest way to create an online presence for your company. It’s free, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to create one. But, knowing that Meta isn’t a dependable platform, do you really want to leave the success of your business or nonprofit in the hands of Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform? Naturally, you do not.

Having your own website gives you three things you’ll never get from social media: control, freedom, and ownership. Let’s dive into these elements further.

When you have a website, you’re in control.

What makes your Facebook Page different than any other page out there? They all look alike, restricted to a style of design created by the platform. With your very own website, you decide color scheme, fonts, layout, etc. It’s all in your control.

You also get to control content, user experience, and your own experience as the owner. For example, how happy are you with how you receive messages on your Facebook Page? Have you ever received a notification of a new message, only to log in and find no such message? Owning your website lets you control how you receive customer communications.

And there are, of course, views. Oh… Facebook loves to control how many views your Facebook posts get, having developed an algorithm that the average business owner cannot figure out. When you have your own website, blog regularly, and apply SEO tactics, the world of organic views is your oyster!

Owning your own website gives you freedom.

With your very own website, anything is possible. That isn’t the case with a Facebook Page.

It’s true that, as a website owner, there are still a few restrictions to consider. For instance, you cannot steal or borrow content from other sites and add it to yours. But for the most part, you’re free to do what you want on your website.

Think of having your own website like owning a home where there is no HOA. You set the rules. So long as you refrain from illegal activity, you have the freedom to do as you wish on your own website.

You own your website. Everything on it is yours.

Have you ever seen one of your Facebook friends post something along the lines of, “I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents…”? It’s a hoax, actually, but Facebook has been under investigation for its data deals.

That is something we should all be thinking about. So, while you shouldn’t be quick to believe that Facebook owns anything you’ve ever shared on its platform, you shouldn’t presume it’s not sharing it with others.

In terms of social media content, the waters are awfully murky. When you have your own website, you can rest assured that, yes, you own its content and images. Your website is yours. Facebook and other social media sites belong to, well, them.

Whatever you do, keep your social media.

Should you delete your Facebook Page? By all means, do not! Keep your social media. Keep investing time into it. Keep its activity robust, helpful, and entertaining. However, do not fully rely on it. It will never provide you with the same benefits as a website does.

Social media should be used as a marketing tool to drive traffic to your website. Your website should be the center of your digital universe—the platform you use to funnel leads, make a sale, share company news, promote an event, collect information, and communicate and engage with your customers or visitors.

If you find yourself running a business or nonprofit group solely relying on social media and lacking a website, contact us.  Let’s talk about getting you the control, freedom, and ownership you need to grow your organization. This way, the next time Facebook goes down (and it will happen again), your business or charity group won’t even notice.

Editor’s note: This blog post was updated on March 5, 2024.

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“How do you find content?”

That’s one of the top three questions seasoned social media professionals are normally asked. Along with finding the perfect time to post and which social media channels to post on, business owners, entrepreneurs, and those new to digital marketing are often faced with the challenge of finding interesting and engaging social media content to share with followers. It’s not easy. And frankly, it’s a time-consuming process, but with a few thoughtful tactics, curating content to share with your Facebook and Twitter followers (and everywhere else you’re at) can be simplified. This is how we do it at WebDevStudios (WDS).

We rely on Buffer Content Inbox.
We use Buffer for social media scheduling, and our social media brand management includes three brands: WDS, Maintainn, and Pluginize. Juggling three brands that offer three different products and services, each with its own individual brand voice, can be a heavy load. Using Buffer helps a lot. One of the ways it helps is the Content Inbox tool.

With Content Inbox, you can add up to 15 RSS feeds per profile. That’s a lot of content. I recommend selecting the feeds of respectable and reputable brands that complement your line of work. So for example, let’s say your business sells flooring. It’s pretty safe to assume that your social media followers have interests in home decorating, DIY, and home buying. So adding the feeds and sharing the content of places like HGTV, home improvement companies (especially if they carry your flooring materials), and interior decoration magazines and websites are safe bets. Once you do that, you can open your Buffer Content Inbox daily to find various pieces of content to share. They won’t all be hits, but at least you’ll have quite a selection to choose from.

BONUS TIP
Buffer now offers a Chrome extension that allows you to easily add and/or schedule an article straight from the internet to your Buffer queue in one swift click. I highly recommend installing it.

We sign up for email newsletters.
The concept is the same as it is with Buffer Content Inbox. I sign up to receive newsletters from various places where I know I can find some good content options. Does it make for a heavy email inbox with many emails to sort through? Yes. But at least I have quick and easy to access to shareable content without having to search the internet.

We rely on social media.
I mean, seriously. What better place to find engaging social media content than on social media? Look at what your followers are sharing and either re-tweet them (which your followers will enjoy, especially if you credit them for sharing great content), or schedule the content to be posted at a later time.

We rely on our teammates.
Some of the best content I have ever discovered was because one of our own developers shared it with the company. What are your employees sharing on their social media or commenting on? Your team is a great resource of information.

We set up Google Alerts.
One of the first things I did when I started at WDS was set up a Google Alert for the term WordPress. Again, straight to my inbox, I receive relevant articles that I can share on our social media.

We stay current with news and trends. 
Things like changes in TSA rules for laptops, the new internet privacy bill, net neutrality, and “WannaCry” hacking are all current topics that affect our social media followers, most of whom are developers, marketing executives, key decision makers, and entrepreneurs. Stay on top of what’s going on in the world and keep your followers informed. They’ll appreciate it.

We have a blog.
Our social media goal is to share engaging content with our followers, and maybe we’re biased, but we think our most engaging content are the articles on our blog. Sharing content that your followers can benefit from is a great service to provide. But in the end, the best thing you can do for your business is to give them a reason to visit your website. Having a blog where you regularly update content is a results-oriented way to do that. If you don’t have a blog on your business website right now, make one. Write on it weekly. Share that content on your social media. Need inspiration? Look at the blog we designed and developed for Microsoft Office Blogs.

BONUS TIP
But how do you share content, especially your own website content, on Instagram? After all, the app doesn’t allow you to include a hyperlink within your post. Here’s our solution: we use InstaGo. I like using Instagram to promote our blog posts, which I normally do by creating an image that includes the title of the blog post I want our followers to read. Then, I just make sure the InstaGo redirect is set to that blog post and instruct our followers to use the ‘GO’ link in our profile. Super easy. Check out our Instagram feed to see what I mean.

Social media is not a fad or a trend. It is an important part of your digital marketing efforts (with an emphasis on the word ‘efforts’). Curating content to share doesn’t have to be a daunting experience. Use our tips to simplify your strategy, and sure enough, you’ll find yourself with all kinds of articles to share with your followers.

If you like this blog post, you’ll probably like the social media content we share, too. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Like us on Twitter. Connect with us on LinkedIn.

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