Selling on Facebook
Multiple apps allow shoppers to either complete a purchase directly from your Facebook page or be directed to another website to finish buying. Go to www.facebook.com/business/help/912190892201033 for more information.
Selling on Pinterest
Pinterest requires merchants to have a business account to sell on its platform. (See Book 7, Chapter 1 to learn how to set up a Pinterest business account.) Once you sign up for a business account and claim your website, you get access to Rich Pins. Rich Pins grab current products from an existing online store and place a link back to that product on each Pin you add to Pinterest. These Rich Pins are set apart from search results into a separate category called Shop. When you click a Rich Pin under the Shop category, you’re taken to that Pin, which contains a link back to that specific product on the vendor’s website (see Figure 1-4).
Courtesy of Blue Nile
FIGURE 1-4: The Buy section of the search results page (top). Click on a specific result to see the Pin with a link back to the product page on the vendor’s website (bottom).
Selling on Instagram
You have to have a business account in order to use Instagram Shopping. (See Book 7, Chapter 3 to learn more.) After you have a business account and set up Instagram Shopping in the Settings section, you’ll be able to customize a storefront to sell your products and tag your products in posts and stories, so users can tap on the tags to shop the products and gain access to important data insights about your shop.
You’ll need a company Facebook page in order to connect a product catalog to Instagram. In other words, you need a product source.
The product sources supported are
Facebook Catalog Manager
Shopify
BigCommerce
Magento
WooCommerce
Facebook Shop
Once you select the catalog you want to connect, just follow the specific instructions provided for that platform.
https://flutterwave.com/sd/blog/blog/selling-on-social-media-with-an-online-store-vs-selling-on-social-media-without-one-which-is-best-for-you or http://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-selling-advice/best-apps-tools-use-selling-social-media.
Reviewing third-party products for selling through social media
The following sections discuss some of the many third-party tools and products available for selling products through social media as an alternative to linking to a storefront on your website, or to selling directly using the sometimes limited solutions provided by the social media platform. Instead, most of these solutions link from social media to an independent storefront. Consider these items as examples of the range of products available. You should research and evaluate products to meet your own needs.
MAKING A ROYAL LIVING FROM SOCIAL SALES
Living Royal, whose website appears in the next figure, proudly describes itself as a “funky printed sock company.” Started in 2010, the company makes all its socks at its Wheeling, IL, headquarters.
Courtesy of Living Royal
According to its president, Michael Elyash, “We knew the only way to be successful selling online was to have a large social media following. We started with Facebook, then went to Twitter, Pinterest, and lastly Instagram.” Initially, social media was the only source of traffic for the newfound company.
The firm tested just about all social media channels to see which ones would best achieve various marketing goals, from online sales, retail customer acquisition, social following, and email collection to wholesale customer acquisition and branding.
The company found, for example, that at the time “Facebook was great at getting people to buy product,” citing Facebook’s capability to tightly target an audience. However, “Pinterest and Instagram were great for spreading awareness about our brand [but] were not as good at converting visitors into customers.”
To manage its social media activities, Living Royal took advantage of an Instagram visual-posting program from Later. “We typically posted once a day in the late afternoon,” Elyash explained. “A team of [four] people focused on social [media] from photography to social outreach,” with the goal of making the company’s social presence as good as possible. To back up their results, the team relied on Google Analytics and Shopify. To get out the word, the team placed social media icons on every web page and pushed engagement through various contests and giveaways. They now have a “Shop our Insta” link on their main website where customers can shop the products they see on Instagram, as well as a “Shop Now” button on their Facebook Page that links directly back to their website.
Courtesy of Living Royal
It wasn’t always easy, Elyash noted. “Getting the attention of our audience at first was a real challenge. Finding out which style of imagery to get the right conversions also was a big issue for us. [But] if you test anything enough, you will find the right, winning combination.”
Following is a list of Living Royal’s web presence: