If your ecommerce business is not utilising social media, it’s time to catch up. There are many brands finding success through social media marketing, growing their communities and seeing significant engagement across the board. Effectively managing your social media platforms allows you to not only promote your products, but also create and monitor conversations with existing and target audiences.
In order to analyse best practice for social media use for your brand, it is best to look at other brands that are not only developing successful campaigns, but are also bossing the day-to-day management of their networks.
A well-known bookseller you might have heard of, Waterstones, are a great example of a brand which are able to do this. Let’s take a look at each of their networks and what we can learn from them.
At time of writing, Waterstones’ Facebook page has over 78,000 likes. The page is kept regularly updated with news of book releases, Book Club reviews, events and much more.
Instead of sticking to plain, dull updates just promoting their products, they share images and links to relevant content; such as an interview with an author or a fun quiz like in the update below which has been one of their most shared posts of September 2014.
So what can we learn from how Waterstones run their Facebook page daily?
The real champions of Waterstones’ Twitter presence are the individual stores. Many of the chain’s shops have dedicated accounts that are (ostensibly) managed by team members.
The most well-known account belongs to the Oxford Street branch, which currently has over 69,000 followers, plus a Buzzfeed article all about it. The account shares witty updates, including this special offer below which received over 100 retweets and favourites:
The account also jumps on popular hashtags such as #WorldCupFinal and uses a very tongue in cheek approach to promoting its products:
Note the 630 retweets – that’s a whole lot of reach.
The takeaways to Waterstones’ approach:
Many ecommerce businesses look to use YouTube for product demonstrations and testimonials, but Waterstones works much harder to generate plenty of videos for subscribers and to share on other channels.
Content includes introductions from authors of their newest books, as well as this brilliant video about their ‘new delivery service’, O.W.L.’s, to compete with Amazon’s announcement of Prime drones.
In addition to this, in 2013 Waterstones created a campaign called ‘The Book That Made Me’ which asked people to share their stories of how their lives had been changed by books. As well as setting up a site for people to share their stories, they set up a whole YouTube channel of authors who share their responses. The Neil Gaiman video alone has had over 10,000 views.
Lessons learnt:
With a surplus of 3,000 pins and 35 boards, Waterstones have worked hard to develop their Pinterest presence. From book related jokes, tattoos and interiors through to a collection of their Book Club picks; the account is kept populated for its 16,000 followers.
Not only are they sharing content, but they have also ‘Liked’ over 700 other pins, meaning that they are actively engaging with other Pinterest users too.
Points to consider:
Many brands have all but given up on Google+. Waterstones on the other hand keep their page updated regularly, primarily sharing their own content.
It pays off for them as they have over 48,000 followers. A recent post from last month garnered 45 +1’s and 3 shares, which is quite significant for the platform.
Whilst they will always receive greater interaction on other platforms, Waterstones appreciate the importance of keeping the page populated for those that do follow it.
Get plus points for considering the following:
The above examples should give you an indication of just some of the activities that can be carried out on social media to boost your brand’s awareness and encourage engagement with your audience.
Here at Koozai we work closely with our clients to ensure that your social media campaigns are designed to help your business flourish. Get in touch today to find out what we can do for you.
Image Credit: Oez | Bigstock.com
Great article, Cat. Really loved all the examples.
A key area I’d like to add and have a lot of experience in is paid social which can work wonders when used in the right context. Particularly, paid social applies if you’re looking to target a particular niche by demographic information or interest.
Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, paid social can be used to help grow/enhance a lot of the community driven goals you’ve described here but is also extremely effective when used as more of a direct digital marketing channel (much like traditional PPC such as Adwords).
We’ve got some great case studies, for example, using the Page Like data on Facebook to target users based on their favourite TV shows, brands etc. which when combined with the usual demographic info like age, gender & location creates a highly targeted campaign.
We’re experiencing extremely high conversion rates and unbelievably positive ROI.
Any ideas for integrating paid social into some of the examples you’ve provided in your article?
Hi Cat,
Nice article.
I recommend trying to get on the many group boards that are available on Pinterest. We do this all the time and the repins, likes and traffic are very good. It goes without saying that engaging and following others should also be a priority. But the key is not just following anyone.
Take Pinterest for example. If you do a search for the topic of your choice, then take any popular image that has loads of likes and repins.
Then follow these people – they have already shown an interest in your niche so there is a strong chance they will follow back.
This technique can also be easily be applied on Tumblr too – which was not mentioned.
Kind Regards,
John
Nice Article. Social Media has definitely made the world look so small, no one is alone in this world of internet now. Also the features of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ helps to promote your business while sitting at the shop or home, you have not to paste advertisements anywhere or call anyone to buy. But using social media needs a strategy and you have to be careful. Proper use of #tags in your posts can do wonders.
Thanks for your input Stream Market! I agree that social media really has redefined marketing tactics, although I am still a firm believer of supplementing online efforts with offline ones. Traditional marketing definitely still has its place and can actually become an extension of social media promotion too!
Great article. Love the examples provided throughout. Providing what to do and what not to do allows us to learn how far is too far sometimes when it comes to humor on social media. Also, by showing some personality through social media allows followers to connect on a different level and build a relationship rather than just promoting your own products or service.
Hi Diana,
Thank you for your kind words – I’m glad you enjoyed the article and found it useful. I completely agree that it is important to know the do’s and don’ts around social media, even if every brand has a different strategy.
Personality in social media is key, but mustn’t be overly informal – it needs to best suit your customers in order to work.
For eCommerce also, utilizing Facebook Ads and let it run for 7 days is a great way to capture more followers or audiences.
Hi Biyaya,
I agree that utilising Facebook ads can indeed capture more interest, as long as you are promoting the right content, to the right demographic.
Many thanks for your input!
Excellent tips, Cat.
Thank for sharing a good strategy with facebook,Twitter,YouTube,Pinterest and Google+ .
I think with Pinterest you should find people who have large amounts of followers and are relevant to a niche
Begin the initial ‘following’ phase to get your base following of people who automatically decide to follow back
You grow your following, publish fun content, add CTA’s into pins, and rotate more fun posts.
Have a great weekend!
BTW, Awesome design you have at your blog.
Hi Robert,
Many thanks for your comment!
Great Pinterest tips – engagement on Pinterest is key to success and providing pins which people can relate to or find useful is vital.
Being a digital marketing consultant, I would like to share a very good strategy we can use to increase our social media presence. I think, using twitter and Google plus and targeting #Hashtags can be very effective. All you need to know is how you can merge your content with the latest trending #hashtags. This way, more and more people will be able to see your feed and ultimately it’ll result in increased followers over social media.
Hi Abid,
Many thanks for taking the time to comment.
Hashtags are great for increasing reach on social – newsjacking with content can be really effective as long as the piece is carefully planned (there are plenty of brands out there that get this wrong!).
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