Social media has evolved from a place to share memes and baby pictures into a full-fledged marketplace, where real money changes hands.

Social commerce goes beyond standard social media marketing. Shoppers don’t just use social platforms to be entertained. They discover, research, and buy products there, and most major platforms now have some form of built-in shopping feature.

This guide shows you how to build a social commerce strategy in seven steps. If you’re new to the topic, start with our guide to what social commerce is, why it matters, and which platforms to use.

How to build a social commerce strategy in 7 steps

Here are the steps to build a profitable social commerce presence:

1. Identify your target audience
2. Set goals
3. Create a content strategy
4. Optimize your profiles
5. Set up in-platform shopping and keep inventory accurate
6. Collaborate with creators and influencers
7. Measure, analyze, and keep improving

Here’s a closer look at each one.

Step 1: Identify your target audience

It doesn’t matter how fast you run if you’re running in the wrong direction. Your target audience is the foundation of your whole social commerce plan, and shortchanging this step wastes time and money. Here are practical ways to find your ideal customers on social media:

• Conduct market research. If you already have an audience elsewhere, use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to learn about their demographics, interests, habits, and which social channels they use.
• Analyze your website and social data. Web analytics shows the demographics and interests of your visitors, and the social platforms they come from. Each platform’s own analytics shows who engages with your pages and ads.
• Use social listening. Social listening tools track mentions of your brand and competitors, so you can spot trends and see which platforms your audience prefers.
• Look at your competitors. See how every competitor in your niche does social commerce, including whether they sell natively on each platform. You’ll learn what works, and what to avoid.
• Talk to people. Industry events and networking are one of the fastest ways to hear what your market cares about and how they use social media.

Step 2: Set social commerce goals

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Common goals for social commerce include:

• Increase brand awareness: grow the visibility and reach of your brand
• Improve customer engagement: strengthen the interaction between customers and your brand
• Boost website traffic: send more people to your site or product pages
• Generate leads: build interest in your products or services
• Increase sales: promote and sell your products directly on social platforms

Whatever you choose, make the goals SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. “Boost website traffic a lot” isn’t SMART. “Increase website traffic from social by 40% by the end of Q2” is. Clear goals focus your plan on what matters.

Step 3: Create a content strategy

Now it’s time for a plan of action. It should include your goals, your target audience, and the channels you’ll use to reach them. Your content strategy depends on your goals, but these principles apply to most brands:

• Base content on keyword research. What people type into Google or YouTube shows what they’re actively looking for. Those are the topics to cover, and you can repurpose the same content for search.
• Study competitors. Look at the content they post and how they interact with followers. It also gives clues about which kinds of paid ads work in your niche.
• Test different formats. Try short videos, Stories, live streams, polls, and quizzes. Experimenting helps you reach more people and find what resonates, and it gives you customer content you can reuse.
• Create a repeatable workflow. Starting from scratch every time is slow and expensive. Use a checklist and a simple tracker so each piece of content follows the same process.
• Batch and schedule. Write, design, and film in dedicated sessions, then schedule posts ahead of time with a scheduling tool. It saves you from panic posting.
• Automate carefully. Automate the repetitive parts, such as scheduling and reusing your own content, so you have more time for creative work. Don’t automate replies or reposting other people’s content without checking permissions.
• Follow each platform’s best practices. Each platform has its own format and language, and what works on one often doesn’t on another. Study each, and adapt your content to it.

Step 4: Optimize your profiles

Before you start promoting products, complete your social profiles. On every platform, use a professional profile image and banner, a clear description, contact information, business hours, and a link to your website. Complete profiles show customers you’re a legitimate business that’s actively engaged.

Step 5: Set up in-platform shopping and keep inventory accurate

Next, register your products on each platform. Most major platforms let you connect a product catalog so shoppers can view and, where supported, buy products without leaving the app. Setup requirements and available features differ by platform and country, so follow each platform’s current guidelines. For TikTok, see our TikTok Shop guide.

Each shop is another channel, and a post that takes off can sell out stock quickly. Keep your catalog and stock levels accurate by connecting channels to a central inventory system, so you don’t oversell. See our guide to multichannel inventory management. Linnworks connects to 100+ native channel integrations, including TikTok, and syncs stock in under 10 minutes.

Step 6: Collaborate with creators and influencers

Creator partnerships can be demanding, but they’re one of the most effective ways to build an audience and trust. People believe recommendations from people they follow.

• Look for creators whose audience matches yours (bonus points for a local audience).
• Reach out with a clear proposal that includes compensation, free product, or an affiliate arrangement.
• Consider teaming up with other local businesses for giveaways and cross-promotion.
• Follow advertising disclosure rules, such as the FTC’s in the US, so paid partnerships are clearly labeled.

For how creators fit into TikTok selling, see our guide to TikTok social selling.

Step 7: Measure, analyze, and keep improving

Posting isn’t enough. Track engagement rates, click-throughs, impressions, website traffic, and sales to see how each piece of content performs and where to focus. Use what you learn to refine your content, target specific audiences, and plan new campaigns. Success doesn’t happen overnight, so be patient and consistent.

An example of a well-executed social commerce campaign

Here’s how the steps might play out for a business that sells eco-friendly cleaning products.

• Audience. Research and customer data point to environmentally conscious shoppers who use Instagram and Facebook regularly, with a growing interest in short video.
• Goals. Increase social-driven sales by a set percentage over the next quarter.
• Content. Keyword research suggests “eco-friendly cleaning tips,” so you write a comprehensive blog post, then repurpose it into six or seven short posts and videos, scheduled in advance.
• Shopping. You connect your catalog to each platform and tag products in your posts, and you pitch products now and then, when it’s natural and useful.
• Creators. You offer a free product to eco-friendly creators in exchange for an honest review and a tag.
• Measurement. Every week, you review what worked and adjust.

It takes some hustle, but the roadmap is clear.

Don’t depend on a single platform

Social platforms are happy for shoppers to buy on their platforms, but you should always have a plan to bring customers back to your own store. You’re always one algorithm or policy change away from losing reach, and in-app checkout features come and go. Provide an offramp to your own sales funnel and encourage customers to visit your online store. For more on the risk, see our guide to avoiding single points of failure as an online seller.

Most important metrics to track in social commerce

With so many data points in social media, it’s easy to confuse vanity metrics with the ones that move the needle. Depending on your goals, track the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter:

• Conversion rate: the percentage of people who click your post or ad and buy
• Revenue per impression: how much revenue each impression generates
• Average order value (AOV): the average amount spent per order
• Return on investment (ROI): what you earn relative to what you spend, usually most relevant for paid social
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): the total revenue a customer generates over time
• Stock health: sell-through, stock-outs, and returns for the products you promote on social

Use each platform’s analytics, along with third-party analytics and reporting tools, to report on these. Tracking them reveals patterns in customer behavior and helps you optimize.

Best practices for more profitable social commerce

Use storytelling

People are more likely to buy when they connect with the story behind a product. Share the story of your brand and products, including the values and mission behind them.

Use social proof and user-generated content

Few things beat customers saying kind things about your products. Repurpose reviews, testimonials, and customer photos into graphics and video, with permission, and encourage customers to share their experiences so you can feature them.

Use retargeting

Retargeting ads reach people who’ve interacted with your brand on social but haven’t bought yet.

Use messaging and chatbots

Messaging and chatbots help customers during the buying process, on your website and on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Use them for quick, personalized help, and make it easy to reach a person.

Try live shopping

Live streams are a way to show products in use, answer questions as they come in, and give audiences a behind-the-scenes look at your brand.

FAQs

Final thoughts

Social commerce can reach, engage, and convert customers when you do it with a plan: know your audience, set clear goals, create content that works on each platform, keep your inventory accurate, and measure what happens. Start small, learn quickly, and expand from there.

For the basics, see our guide to what social commerce is. To keep stock accurate across every channel you sell on, request a demo of Linnworks.