Social media tricks of the trade for online sellers

Using social media is a great way to establish your brand’s identity, as well as increasing brand awareness and positive brand association. You can communicate directly with customers and potential customers, engaging with them by sharing content and images which will establish your brand’s voice and identity - this is a great way to make your online shop stand out from the rest. Over time, increased awareness and identity for your online shop should lead to more traffic on your site, and an increase in sales.

This kind of marketing is perfect for smaller businesses. Establishing a routine for your social media marketing will make it very simple and quick to create the kind of awareness that will increase your sales. We share some useful advice about how to make a success of your social media marketing.

Plan your social media campaign.

Identify which social media sites you are going to use, who your audience on each one will be, what type of posts and tone you are aiming for.

Schedule your social media marketing into your work routine.

Set aside an hour or two at the beginning of each week to plan your posts (and schedule those that you can). If you then allow 10-15 minutes each day to add pictures, pins, or posts that you can’t schedule or that are more spontaneous, this means you will have a consistent online presence, without it taking over your life.

Link between each of your accounts.

Start with one account and begin to build a following before you set up other social media accounts. It is better to focus on one to begin with than to set up four and not be able to keep on top of any of them. Once you have set them all up, promote other accounts and share the same content (when it's suitable) across your social media accounts.

Give yourself time to learn and practice with each site before you work on gaining followers, it’s better to take your time and make mistakes or post the wrong thing before you have a large following

Only use the social media sites which suit your business.

Don’t use all of them for the sake of it, Pinterest and Instagram may not suit every company and that’s fine, just focus your efforts on Twitter or Facebook. If you don’t have time to use multiple social media sites identify which site is most used by your target customers and only use those ones.

Download the apps for each social media site to your phone.

Then you will always have access to all your accounts. It will make it much easier to respond to any comments and messages, rather than having to be sat down at your computer and logged in.

Always respond to questions, comments and messages.

It will hurt your brand if there are queries or complaints left unanswered for everyone to see. If you do receive public complaints on your social media accounts (ie. as comments or Tweets) respond publicly apologising and say that you will message or email them to try and resolve the issue. If it appears that issues are ignored it will give your eBay shop a bad reputation.

Asking questions in your posts invites people to respond to you, therefore increasing engagement. This is a great way to gain more attention, especially on Twitter or Facebook as any comments will be displayed in that person’s follower’s newsfeed.

Establish a  hashtag for your business from the start to provide consistency, make it something distinctive that no one else is already using.

Engage regularly with your audience.

Not just by responding when people interact with you, but by actively liking and commenting on other people’s posts - this will raise awareness and increase your brand’s identity.

Another way to increase your audience is to use your social media accounts to show people using your products. Either take pictures yourself of people with your products or ask your followers to Tweet, Facebook or Instagram pictures of themselves with the products.

To find potential followers/customers, look for similar businesses and brands and look at who follows them. If any of these users are relevant then follow them, and/or like their posts to get their attention.

Images can be words.

If you’re using Instagram, you can post an image of some text - maybe a discount code, or a relevant and interesting quote that will appeal to your followers. Infographics and blog posts work well as pins for Pinterest.