What is Social Commerce and Why Does it Matter?

Social commerce refers to the marketing and sale of products and services directly through social media channels. Customers complete the entire shopping experience, from discovery to research to the final checkout, without leaving the app.

As businesses started to recognize the power of social media, the natural first step was using it to promote their ecommerce websites. Links, ads, and calls to action that direct users to product pages via a third-party browser are common practice.

Social commerce essentially cuts out the middle man. Once a business sets up their shop on a platform, users can discover their products, browse, and purchase without leaving the app. In fact, without even pausing the video they’re watching!

While social commerce and ecommerce overlap, it’s important not to confuse them.

Ecommerce refers to the selling and buying of goods and services digitally. Social commerce is a branch of ecommerce, where trading is carried out directly through social media.

Pros and Cons

The nuances between social commerce and ecommerce mean that not all businesses should use both. Here are the key pros and cons to be aware of:

Social commerce is powerful for many reasons:

• Improves convenience and boosts sales: By meeting your target audience where they are and reducing the steps it takes to complete a purchase, social commerce makes it easier than ever for customers to move through the sales funnel. Plus, algorithms repeatedly push your products to customers who’ve shown interest in the past, helping to reduce abandoned cart rates.
• Grow your audience: The top social commerce platforms have billions of active users seeking product recommendations. Leveraging social commerce will give your brand a stage on which it can share its offerings and find new customers.
• Fosters strong relationships: With regular posting and interactions with your audience, you’ll enhance your brand personality and form connections over time, which leads to increased brand loyalty and repeat purchases.
• Additional revenue streams: On top of product sales, social media platforms provide plenty more income streams for added financial security, such as rewards programs and live gifting.

The ever-changing search landscape is seeing a trend toward social media platforms being the most trusted source for online recommendations and brand discovery. Continual developments in social commerce features have meant that social commerce has been on an upward trajectory, creating almost $700 billion in worldwide revenue in 2024 alone.

Below, I’ll go over the standout features of the top social commerce platforms.

Facebook Shops

Best for: Brands with diverse audience segments and local sellers

Facebook business profiles are often the first stop for customers looking to connect with brands online, so creating a Facebook Shop means you’re giving them the opportunity to buy right away. Once you set up a Facebook Shop and upload your products, you’ll be able to tag items in your media posts, promote them through Facebook ads, and add an in-app checkout.

The most impressive feature of Facebook Shops is that you can automatically optimize your storefront to suit different customer segments. For instance, when a male user visits your shop, they’ll be shown menswear collections first.

Instagram Shopping

Best for: Brands harnessing storytelling and influencer marketing to drive sales of visually appealing products

Facebook and Instagram Shopping are largely intertwined, which means you’ll be able to link the same shop to both social media platforms. That said, Instagram’s primary audience skews young, and has a preference for visual content. And in terms of promoting your shop, Instagram provides greater creative freedom over where and how you present your products. It’s also one of the leading platforms for influencer collaborations.

TikTok Shop

Best for: Brands looking to connect with young, trend-led audiences through an interactive approach.

Since launching in the US in 2023, TikTok Shop has become one of the leading social commerce platforms, providing businesses with the tools to capitalize on TikTok trends with seamless product tagging on almost any content. TikTok particularly excels with its powerful live stream shopping tools, allowing you to engage with your customers and react to their feedback with real-time product promotions and discounts.

Let’s take a look at a couple of brands that are succeeding at social commerce:

The White Company: Product Cross-Selling Through Visual Storytelling

The White Company is a luxury lifestyle retailer that weaves an emotive story into every collection. Its Instagram presence is an extension of this, and it uses Instagram’s key social commerce features to promote groups of products:

• Shoppable posts: The White Company creates shoppable posts using a mixture of group lifestyle shots and photo collage style guides
• Story highlights: Instagram highlights for peak seasons, themes, and new collections are pinned to the top of the profile

Made by Mitchell: Leveraging Livestreams

UK makeup brand Made by Mitchell started selling on TikTok Shop in 2022, expanding to US markets the following year. Since then, it has achieved impressive milestones, such as making $1 million in TikTok Shop sales in a single day. The brand’s sales are largely attributed to daily live shopping events, which are promoted rigorously.

By creating a repetitive schedule and delivering on promises, Made by Mitchell has developed a high level of trust and routine with its customers, who repeatedly tune in to make purchases and send live rewards to the team.

With the right social media platform, you’ll have a powerful set of tools to help you achieve social commerce success. Here are my top tips to help you get the most out of your platform(s):

• Enable native checkout: Many social commerce platforms give you the choice between an in-app checkout or a “Visit website” button. It’s a good idea to opt for the former, since this will streamline the payment process for your buyers.
• Offer exclusive promotions: Create a sense of urgency with limited time deals and free shipping offers.

• Utilize user data: Social media provides insightful data into your audience and their online behavior. It’s important to assess this information and build the best social commerce strategy for your business. For instance, it could inform the best times to post and the most high-conversion content formats.
• Engage with customers: Regularly reply to comments, story replies, and direct messages to show your customers that you value them. Be sure that your responses are timely and clear up any queries – clarification could secure you additional sales.

To reap the benefits of social commerce, you’ll need a clear plan of action. There’s a plethora of social commerce tactics to experiment with, but here are the most important steps to get started:

1. Choose The Right Platform(s)

First and foremost, you need to sell in the places your target audience spends its time. Find the platform that’s most popular among your key demographics, such as age, gender, interests, and location. You should also consider the unique features and drawbacks of each platform, and whether these align with your overall business goals.

2. Optimize Your Profile for Shopping

Profile optimization is an important part of social media SEO, and it’s the key to enticing and retaining customers. As standard, you should use your business logo as your profile picture, include your business name in your username, and have a clear, descriptive bio.

Once you link your shop to your social media accounts, optimize further by signaling to it in your bio, using high quality product photos, and writing compelling product descriptions and titles.

3. Share User Generated Content

Want to influence users to buy your product? Don’t let them take your word for it, show them that it works for real people. Studies show that 85% of customers trust user-generated content more than brand-made content.

Use incentives to encourage customers to share their experience with your product, like entry into a giveaway or discount codes for future purchases, and feature this content in your posts and stories as often as possible.

4. Work With Social Media Influencers

Collaborating with trusted influencers who’re relevant to your business is a great way to attract new customers and build brand awareness. Typically, you’ll pay them a commission fee for every sale they make, which is largely determined by their audience size: micro, macro, nano, or mega influencers.

The advantage is that influencer marketing is accessible to even the smallest of budgets – micro influencers often yield the best results!

Social commerce has revolutionized the process of selling products online, making it easier than ever for consumers to purchase from trusted brands and discover new ones. Setting up a shop is the simple part, and from there you should optimize your profile and posts to make the buying journey as seamless as possible.

When experimenting with social commerce tactics, be sure to listen to your audience and adapt to their feedback. Finally, if you find something that works for your brand, don’t be afraid to repeat! Having a schedule will help your customers know what to expect from you and when.