When it comes to marketing for eCommerce brands, social media activities seem to be valuable for an increasingly competitive industry like online retail.

Marketing ideas on social media offers an effective way to grow brand awareness and bring qualified traffic to your website. The method includes activities such as posting content in the form of text, image updates, videos, or other types to drive audience engagement.

The top social media networks include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Youtube

A successful social media marketing strategy must begin with a clear goal. There are several questions to ask to define your social media’s targets:

What do you aim to achieve when choosing social platforms as marketing channels?

Who is your target audience?

How does your target audience use social media?

Your target audience and marketing aim are essential in choosing the proper social channels.

For example, Facebook is the most popular and can suit just about any business with a massive audience reach. Facebook’s users are primarily between the ages of 18-34, with 56% male and 44% female. About 96% of its users visit the platform using their mobile devices.

This is the perfect platform to promote content from external sources or to share guides with your readers. And Facebook’s algorithm loves video too, don’t forget it!

LinkedIn, on the other hand, seems to match B2-B businesses whose goal is to reach audiences with a professional image. It is ideal for sharing any changes you are making in your business to adapt to a current trend or to provide unique industry insights.

Furthermore, the brand’s industry will inform and drive your social media strategy. For example, most eCommerce businesses have a strong visual presence, which makes Instagram a powerful channel to share their images with potential customers.

To help get your Shopify website one hell of a social media strategy, there are some promising practices below:

Proven strategies for Shopify brands

Social media influencers

Influencers share their posts on social media to attract their followers’ attention in the form of engagement (like, share, comment). Influencers get a high reputation in a specific market, and people tend to trust their friends, relatives, and people they admire more than the selling company. Having an influencer as your brand ambassador would give you a higher chance to approach potential customers.

“Influencers are an essential part of the current media landscape, and as the country opens back up, the demand will likely only be greater,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential.

Depending on your market characteristics, you should pick out which kind of ambassadors you want to collaborate with. Initially, it would help if you answered the following questions:

Where does your customer hang out?

What is your goal?

Where could your product be best illustrated?

What is your budget?

On the other hand, to choose the right voices for your brand, keep your eyes on someone your industry listens to. Once you narrow your list to the most potential influencers, you’ll want to reach out to them.

Measuring the partnership is another critical step. The collaboration format can be with a fixed upfront payment or commission on each successful referral; either way, it is essential to have a tracking tool to be informed of how many conversions the ambassadors bring to your business (clicks, sales). With Affiliate Marketing by Secomapp, you can build a professional relationship with influencers while tracking all the data accurately.

Share user-generated content from your fans and followers – Social media marketing ideas

User-generated content (UGC) is any content: text, videos, images, reviews, etc., created by people instead of the brands. On social channels, users share posts featuring a brand, exposing the products or services; the brand can then share that content with its audience, which helps boost credibility.

As stated by Stakla ( a famous visual content engine) about Consumer & Marketing Perspectives on Content in the Digital Age“, Consumers are 2.4x more likely to say user-generated content is most authentic than branded content.

In addition, to improve the brand authenticity, it also creates the trust (92% of consumers trust the recommendations from their friends, while 70% trust online buyer opinions) and drives the purchasing decision.

There are some best practices for sharing user-generated content with your fan. First, asking for permission is essential; you can search for a brand hashtag to see who mentions you. However, re-sharing that content without permission from the owner is a surefire way to kill goodwill and annoy some of your best brand advocates. Plus, you should tag the original creator directly in your post. Providing owner credit shows that brands recognize content creators’ work and helps ensure that person stays excited about using and posting about your brand.

Giveaway or contest

Free stuff appeals to everyone! A contest or giveaway could be an excellent way to urge your followers to engage with your social accounts, thus, increasing the brand presence to more audiences.

The essential giveaway would start by offering something beautiful for your fan base; make sure it shows real value. Next, a few steps are required to get the gift, such as like/follow the fan page, tag friend(s), comment, all of which will boost the engagement.

Running a contest on social channels is super easy; it could be a photo contest, an essay contest, or Sweepstakes; the ideas for the competition are endless.

A cool contest idea for Shopify brands can be seen from Mad Millie as below:

Use “Stories” 

Snapchat first released stories. Recently, Youtube’s Reels and Facebook Stories became the latest in the list that also includes Instagram Stories and Twitter Moments (in a way)

Stories seem to be one of the most trending social media storytelling formats that allow users to create photo and video collections that can be viewed before disappearing after 24 hours.

Each platform updates the Stories constantly feature, which helps brands to communicate with their audience in a new, exciting way.

For example, Instagram users can create a story using text, boomerang, layout with multiple images, superzoom video, or Photobooth; you can also tag a location, add a song, or use stickers in your story.

The creativeness is endless to create unique and exciting stories to get people impressed with your brand.

Be present and communicative 

When building your content on social channels, you can’t expect much when you only post random links, @mention a few folks, and call it a day. Your strategy must include consistency and communicativeness.

If there’s a common thread among the biggest brands on social, it’s that they post consistently. Creating a fixed schedule for your content publishing is essential because it keeps your social media presence organized while maximizing your content reach.

It’s recommended for Shopify brands to try an auto-post tool like Facebook & Twitter Auto Post to save time on manually posting your products. The app can either the following options:

• Auto-post your latest products and discounts on social media to keep your audience engaged.
• Random publishing products from selected collections to social media automatically.
• Auto-post customer reviews on your website to social media to get customer trust and grow sales

Not only is it essential to keep your fan page constantly updated, but showing up when your audience reaches your brand is also crucial. Show them that your brand is ready to talk whenever someone needs assistance. Get someone in charge of your accounts’ inboxes and reply in time.

Many Shopify businesses integrate their eCommerce stores with multiple Facebook pages and accounts using Live Chat, Chatbot, and Messenger+ by Socialhead. It helps to boost your sales and support your customers better through live chat.

In conclusion, Social media platforms are constantly evolving; it is essential to keep yourself updated with social media trends and try testing the marketing ideas to find the most effective one.