Imagine Commerce Session Recap: Maximizing Social Media

Ecommerce marketers recognize the power of social media to connect with their audience. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and Instagram are nearly ubiquitous in our everyday lives. The power of social networking is such that the number of worldwide users is expected to reach some 2.5 billion by 2018, around a third of Earth’s entire population. As of 2015, over 70 percent of the United States population had a social networking profile.
Do we have your attention now?
We use social to communicate, find information quickly, share our lives, and increasingly, to shop for products and services. That’s why we made sure to attend today’s Magento Imagine session: Maximizing Social Media – Opportunities to Enable Commerce Success.
During the Sponsors Marketplace Reception, our very own Kelly Schmalz, Marketing Manager extraordinaire, sat down with our Product Manager Jarrett Board to recap key learnings from this afternoon’s session.
What was the key message from today’s session? 
Social is a cost effective way to acquire new customers and keep existing customers engaged. The reason is because social media (and, therefore, customers) can always be connected to via desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone. Since it’s so widely relied upon by users, it’s easy to understand the power of social media as a driving force for customer retention and acquisition.
What were some interesting insights you gleaned from this presentation?

• Gain loyalty and trust by letting employees post content (something we strongly encourage at Springbot). Let customers get to know your employees and the “daily life” of your brand.
• Commerce success can be achieved using social. People use social to find ideas, and successful stores use social to inspire their audiences through both written and visual content.
• Re-engaging your existing customers is easier and less expensive than acquiring new customers. Once they’ve purchased from you, make an effort to keep them engaged via social – you just need to know which social sites resonate with your various customer segments.

Why is this topic important for retailers like our customers/prospects?

• Social allows smaller stores to compete with the giants if they have great content. Think cool behind-the-scenes pictures, lifestyle images, and user generated content.
• Most social is used via mobile, so make sure you use responsive design to build your sites.
• Strive to be the reason why customers search on mobile rather than waiting for them to find you at random in a search.

Social media can be a powerful, revenue-generating tactic for your Magento store. But it’s all about how you use it and what social channels you use to drive those sales. Certain stores sit in specific niches that may make some channels a more progressive, and realistic, approach than others and certain audience segments prefer one social channel over another. Jarrett’s preference for example? Instagram.
Did we miss something? Comment below or tweet us @springbot. We would LOVE to hear from you. And if you’re here at Imagine, make sure to visit us in booth 412! We’re the ones with the green shoes and friendly smiles.