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Brad Ahrens Fevereiro 16, 2015

How to use Social Media & Analytics to increase sales

Hey, I’m Brad. I work with the GetSocial team and I’ll start writing some content on our blog from now on. In thisseries of blog posts, I’ll examine the e-commerce conversion funnel from Awareness to Advocacy and showyou how to use social media & analytics to increase sales. I’ll briefly compare a brick-and-mortar store to anonline store and then give tips and tools to help you improve your site each step of the way.

Note that I won’t be discussing paid advertising or SEO, but rather content thatencourages user engagement.

The Five Steps of the Purchasing Funnel:

In today’s post, we’ll discuss the first step, Awareness.

Awareness:Brick-and-Mortar : Customer walks by storeOnline : Customer sees content related to your store fromfriends on social media

How to optimize this? Test, analyze data, repeat.

1) What to post?

Hint, hint, it’s not your advertisements. Talking about yourproducts straight away is like being a door-to-door salesman. At this early stage, potential customers aren’t ready to buy anddon’t want to be overwhelmed by product information. Doingthis will merely push people away.

Don’t be this guy.

Instead, you need to develop a relationship with potential customers . Share content that people want to see andthey’ll be more interested in your store, increasing your sales funnel eventually. Remember, this is a marathon,not a sprint. Post images, articles, and other content that is related to your store or the services that you offer. Your audience wants to learn something or be entertained. They don’t want to listen to your sales pitch. Makesure that your content is related to your product, but it shouldn’t be the product itself.

Share content that people want to see… not your advertisements

Take a step back. Make your content about, for, and even contributed by your audience. For example,crowdsource pictures posted on Instagram. Have your audience share their photos and then repost them. Onegeneral rule of thumb is the “5-3-2” rule which is how many pieces of original content, reposts, and promotionalpieces you should share. The bottom line here is that few of your posts, 20% or so, can be promotional, but eventhese must be discrete. Start with none at first and then build up.

Then, A/B test your images, title, and copy to see what works: what your audience shares and what brings inmore site visits and pageviews to your store. If you have WordPress, give Title Experiments Free plugin a try.

Lastly, don’t post the same content on all of your social media. Imagine receiving the same email 4 times. Wouldn’t that be annoying? Develop specific content for each network.

2) Where to post?

To decide where to post, you should know your customer base. Know where your audience is most active andevaluate the channel itself to make sure that your brand belongs there. For example, according to BusinessInsider, 84% of 18 to 29 year olds have a Facebook account, while only 45% of those 65 and over have one.

Post where your audience is most active, but don’t spread yourself too thin.

But, don’t spread yourself too thin. Pick 3 or 4 social networks where your users are most active and stick tothose. Go ahead and register for an account under your company’s name in the other networks, in case youwant to use it later on. In general, a safe bet is going with Facebook, Twitter, and either Pinterest, Google +, or

both.

3) When and how often to post?

This question really depends on several factors including on which social network you are publishing, where youraudience is (geography), and the content that’s being published.

Facebook engagement is highest on Fridays and Saturdays in North America and users aresharing, liking, and commenting mostly between 8am and 8pm with peaks before and afterworking hours. But, this could be different for your specific audience in your country. Test atvarying times during the day, keeping the day of the week constant, to see which posts receive themost interactions. Post on Facebook no more than once or twice per day.

Twitter is a bit different as the posts don’t last as long in the news feed. Post on Twitter severaltimes per day, even up to 10 times, just to reach your audience. But be sure to strike a balancebetween informing your audience and annoying them. A good tool for measuring when the besttime to Tweet is SocialBro, which also offers audience insights and competitor analysis.

LinkedIn shares should be no more than once per day and rarely on weekends.

Summary:

If there’s one thing you should get out of this post it is this:

Share content that is related to your products (but not your products themselves!) and that your specific audiencefinds interesting, useful, or otherwise wants to see. Timing, placement, and everything else is just testing. Followthe numbers.

Check out the next step in the conversion funnel, consideration, here.

How do you bring your customers into the buying decision funnel?

Have any tips/tricks to share? Apps or plugins that you love?

Comment below!