How to Do Social Commerce, or: Leadster's SC Manual

Social commerce is a divisive activity in the digital marketing world

All marketing professionals have a lot to say about social commerce and its advantages. About how it’s one of the best ways to sell and how, in many cases, it’s practically mandatory for e-commerce businesses.

But if you talk directly with the owners of e-commerce stores, the story changes a bit.

Many store owners either don’t apply social commerce to its full potential or do so but, due to not seeing great results, end up abandoning the strategy.

Today’s article is for those store owners. Are you trying but not feeling confident about what’s needed to make it work? Or have you already tried and it didn’t succeed?

Keep reading this article because today we’re bringing you Leadster’s definitive guide to social commerce.

Let’s dive in?

The Pillars of Social Commerce, or: Why Isn’t What I’m Doing Working?

The first point we need to understand in this guide is what makes social commerce successful. What are the key characteristics of a successful social commerce strategy?

Or better yet: what makes a social commerce strategy work?

Well, it’s important to understand that social commerce is a very particular activity. Each e-commerce store has a different approach on social media, since each has its own target audience.

However, some pillars are quite general and, although they don’t guarantee success 100% of the time, they are the foundation for making social commerce work as best as possible.

It’s like playing soccer. A good pair of cleats doesn’t guarantee a goal, but try playing in a pair of All-Stars, and you’ll have fewer chances of even reaching the goal area.

The main pillars we’ll discuss here that help your social commerce strategy take off are the following:

Focus on products
Well-developed ICP and personas
Interaction and engagement
Social proof
Promotion

It doesn’t sound like much, and it’s really not. These actions are standard procedures in social commerce.

What differentiates brands that succeed in social commerce from those that don’t is the dedication to applying these pillars.

They’re simple, but it’s necessary to apply them in every post, in every story, in every interaction with followers.

Let’s dive deeper into these pillars:

Focus on Products

You don’t need much to execute this fundamental pillar of social commerce well.

The focus on products can be achieved with simplicity. You just need two key ingredients: deep knowledge of the product and great descriptions.

These descriptions typically have two main elements: the product photo and a good caption. In cases where the product isn’t physical, a good description might involve videos, solid captions, and the experiences of other customers (social proof).

Here’s a quick example to keep the conversation going:

This is a post by Editora Mnema on Instagram.

Notice how the product is in focus despite the simple photo. The carousel has just two images: the first shows the book, and the second shows the price.

In this case, one image is enough to show everything a potential reader needs to see. Multiple angles aren’t necessary—the book cover and a good description in the caption were sufficient.

Of course, each product has its unique characteristics. In many cases, it’s important to show as much of the product as possible. But the basics are to have at least one well-valued photo of the product.

Demonstrating mastery of what you’re selling is the first fundamental pillar of social commerce. It conveys authority to your followers and sparks desire for the product on display.

However, it’s essential to understand who you’re speaking to so that the experience is as appropriate as possible.

ICP and Personas

ICP stands for Ideal Customer Profile, which determines who you believe is best suited to buy from you. In other words, what type of people do you have the best chances of selling to? Which market is most likely to accept you?

The persona is a creative, almost theatrical effort to build a character that effectively illustrates this ICP.

This study is what typically informs the strategies you’ll adopt in social commerce.

Here’s an example to illustrate it better:

This is a video ad from Bullpad, a manufacturer of custom mousepads.

Notice how the scene was constructed to look like a home office that remote workers dream of having. This is no coincidence.

If your target audience was different from what they selected—middle-class professionals working from home—the product photo would have been much simpler. It might have even been similar to the previous example of the book.

A good ICP helps you not only understand the best ways to tailor your content but also informs decisions related to social media ads, like demographics and interests.

Interaction and Engagement

It is very, very important for your e-commerce to have good interaction on social media.

This is where most store owners find the biggest difficulty, especially with profiles created from scratch.

The two points above help solve this issue. You need to present the product in a way that resonates with your target audience.

What your target audience asks for and what you deliver will always generate good engagement. The difficulty many store owners face is understanding exactly what the target audience is asking for.

This can be solved with solid research to understand your target audience’s preferences.

And of course, trial and error. The attempts must never stop. You need to have critical judgment to quickly understand if a strategy is generating engagement or not.

The fail-fast flow on social media works like this:

Create a post based on a hypothesis informed by audience research.
Draft and post it.
Analyze the post after 3 to 5 days—important to consider the number of followers you have. Are 10 likes and 1 comment bad results? It depends: if you have only 100 followers, that’s 10% likes and 1% comments, which isn’t so bad.
Decide whether to maintain the post style or create a new editorial line.
Repeat the process.

Social Proof

Social proof is one of the most important aspects of social commerce. In fact, it’s a crucial concept for any store, even physical ones.

Social proof in social commerce happens in several different ways:

Posts of customer reviews
Posts mentioning customer reviews but not specifically for that purpose
Positive comments on posts
Stories sharing posts
Tagging users in your posts
And of course, good old word of mouth.

You’ll notice that among all these points, only the first two are under your control. The others are generated by followers and customers themselves.

It’s possible to encourage users to create this type of content, known as UGC (User Generated Content).

Some stores even send free products to influencers to gain positive social proof. This is a crucial aspect of Influencer Marketing.

However, most of the social proof you receive will be a direct reflection of a good shopping experience.

Promotion

The last element is also part of the classic marketing mix: the P for Promotion.

There’s nothing that moves your audience on social media better than a good promotion.

Lowering the price of a product seasonally and without a clear reason is a very common strategy for e-commerce stores, often paired with a solid paid media campaign.

Promotions attract a lot of attention, but they don’t have to be limited to just price reductions. You can also do:

Giveaways
Free shipping
Coupons for the first purchase
Coupons distributed by followers
Seasonal campaigns with overall price reductions
And other ideas tailored to your specific needs.

Types of Social Commerce, or: Can I Do Social Commerce with My Product?

Now, we’ve covered the fundamental pillars of social commerce, or how the game is played when selling on social media.

These aspects are universal, as we discussed in the previous section. But at the same time, in some cases, it’s necessary to think about other factors, depending on the type of business you’re running online.

There are different types of social commerce. The very definition of the term opens the door to other kinds of businesses that don’t just involve selling physical products in an e-commerce store.

Let’s talk more about these types and try to understand which types of merchants social commerce is best suited for.

Spoiler: due to its broad and democratic nature, social commerce can be used by many different types of businesses without any issues.

Here at Leadster, for example, we use e-commerce strategies even though we offer a SaaS product— a completely different branch from e-commerce.

So, let’s analyze how social commerce works across different types of businesses.

Informal Social Commerce

This occurs when two individuals make transactions using social media platforms.

This point isn’t particularly interesting for us, since we’re not talking about a systematized sales process, but rather cases where transactions happen in a more informal manner, usually just once or twice a month.

However, it’s not uncommon to find businesses advertising on Facebook Marketplace, for example.

Typically, those working with this type of social commerce rely solely on ads to attract potential customers. These ads need to have good photos and copywriting.

Other resources are very limited due to the platforms, which are usually Facebook Marketplace, OLX, etc.

Group Buying

This business model was quite popular at the end of the first decade of the 2000s and, although it still exists, has lost quite a bit of popularity today.

Nevertheless, it remains a valid form of social commerce, albeit applied differently.

Here, the focus is not necessarily on selling products. The “social” part refers to the social integration between product and service providers and consumers, with the platform acting as the intermediary.

Service-Based Social Commerce

It’s not just e-commerce that sells through social media.

This is an important point to highlight. E-commerce businesses see direct returns from product sales through social media. However, companies that offer services can also apply the same strategies we discussed in the previous section with considerable success.

Each brand’s concerns are quite different, though.

In e-commerce, the biggest worry in social commerce is running out of stock. If a sale happens through any channel other than the website, it can lead to stock shortages.

In service sales, the biggest issues are related to the logistics of delivering the service, double bookings, a lack of professionals available for immediate service, etc.

Social Commerce in SaaS Products

SaaS products also perform well with social commerce strategies, but they have an extra feature: community building.

Community marketing can also be considered one of the pillars of social commerce.

But since we’re focusing more on e-commerce here in the article, I thought it would be better to address this topic separately.

There are several ways your product users can create communities around it, using or not using the more conventional social media platforms.

Community marketing happens when you create a Discord channel just for your product’s users, for example.

Or when you assign team members to moderate Reddit communities related to your product, for example.

Even creating groups on Telegram or WhatsApp to talk about your products is valid.

The community aspect of social commerce is quite strong in SaaS products and can even be applied in e-commerce as well— promotion groups are great examples of this.

Creating Content for Social Commerce, or: Do I Need to Say Something? What?

Today, social is synonymous with content.

Everything you do on social media is intrinsically tied to content. All of your posts are content, even purely sales-driven posts.

Content is the most important part of social commerce because it’s through content that social commerce happens.

Think of it this way: lunch usually happens around noon. Noon isn’t defined as lunch in the dictionary, but everyone in the country typically has lunch around this time.

So when noon comes, you’re hungry.

It’s the same with social commerce. Its definition isn’t “content creation,” but it actually happens through content creation. Without one, you don’t have the other.

But how do you create sales-driven content on social media? We have five simple steps you can apply today. Read on:

Step 1: What Kind of Content Does My Network Expect?

Don’t believe in gurus who claim to know exactly what the “right” kind of content is for social media. That doesn’t exist.

What exists is the right content for the people in your network. What do they expect? What kind of content moves your persona?

To find this content, you need to repeat the trial and error process we mentioned earlier, at the beginning of the article.

Here’s that process again for easy reference:

Create a post type based on a hypothesis informed by target audience research.
Create and post it.
Analyze the post for 3-5 days—important to consider the number of followers you have. 10 likes and 1 comment—bad result? Depends. If you have only 100 followers, that’s 10% likes and 1% comments, which isn’t so bad.
Decide whether to keep the post style or create a new editorial direction.
Repeat the process.

Step 2: How to Organize Content Production for E-Commerce?

To create social commerce content, you need a dedicated content team, preferably those who’ve worked with e-commerce.

At the very least, you need a copywriter with a social media background and a designer.

Alternatively, a social media manager with a copywriting background and a designer.

This team needs to work based on an editorial calendar, which should be planned weekly or monthly. Below is a link to download the model we use here at Leadster for simpler posts:

➡️ How to Create an Editorial Calendar? + Free Template

And of course, you need graphic and photographic support to ensure these posts come to life. Let’s talk about that in the next step:

Step 3: How to Bring Posts to Life?

Step three is crucial: you already know how to test ideas for posts, you have a dedicated content production team, and you have a monthly plan for production.

But what now?

As we discussed, you always need good product photos to make the best out of social commerce. Start there.

Gather all the photos you have and think of post ideas related to these photos. Even if the posts are simple, showing just the product’s features.

These posts are necessary for social commerce, and they need to keep happening even if they don’t yield great results initially.

Next, still focusing on products, think about what kind of posts you can make about them that go beyond just showcasing them.

Some examples:

Clothing store showing how to create outfits with the products.
Tool store showing a repair done with a product.
Electronics store unboxing a new product.
Auto parts store showing a specific guide for a model.

The key to post production is thinking outside the box— instead of just showing my product, what kind of ideas can I generate using it? What kind of discussions does my product open up? What problems does it solve?

Crises in Social Commerce, or: I Post, Post, and Post but Get No Results

To close the article, we need to discuss what happens when you put everything into practice but nothing works.

This is actually quite common. Look at this profile, for example, and try to imagine how many likes their post gets:

With 531k followers, it’s natural to expect at least 1% of the base to like the posts—meaning an average of 500 likes per post.

But this doesn’t happen all the time. Take, for example, completely organic posts, with no ads, simply showcasing the product:

This post received 55 likes, which is about 0.1% of the total followers.

At the same time, this other post received many more likes and comments, almost reaching 10%:

Meanwhile, this other post, which is a video, got over 14k likes and 27 comments:

You can analyze them in more depth directly on Amvox’s Instagram.

Now comes the experience part. I, the person writing this article, have worked with Amvox’s outlet e-commerce and had the chance to collaborate on some brand strategies when this Instagram was first launched.

That was over 5 years ago. The strategy hasn’t changed much since then: influencers, product photos, product shoots, and a few posts aimed at engagement.

In this case, what made Amvox take off was time and dedication.

In other words: find your posts that generate results, even if they’re small, and spend a long period investing in them.

Always test new formats, as they have viral potential.

And never give up. The secret of social commerce is this, even when nothing seems to work: insist, invest in attracting new followers, and never stop producing content.

So, what do you think about applying social commerce to your operation?

The truth is, having a presence on social media has become basic. Many stores just follow the trend and create an Instagram account for the sake of it.

That’s not the best way to go about it. Not even close.

Social commerce is an art. If you’re going to do it “out of obligation,” it’s better not to do it at all. The ideal is to understand your niche and, above all, keep trying until you succeed.

Another essential point is understanding that customer service in your e-commerce greatly influences your sales. People have questions about your products, and they want answers immediately.

The best way to solve this is through Leadster. It’s the first AI-powered chatbot on the market focused on the e-commerce experience.

Request a demo by clicking on the banner below. I’ll be waiting for you!

How to Do Social Commerce, or: Leadster’s SC Manual