Ecommerce Sites: Mastering Successful Social Media Management

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.

Facebook

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?

• Keep it visual – updates with large, bright images perform better than those without. Waterstones rarely share just one image with their updates, so consider the aesthetics of sharing multiple images on your page Wall.
• Enrich your updates with interesting links or quotes and share related content created by others, not just content created by your brand.

Twitter

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:

• Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and plan updates which are humorous. But remember never to offend others like Joy The Store did recently.
• Instead of outwardly promoting your products, promote the lifestyle around them…books do make people more attractive!
• Utilise popular hashtags (newsjacking) and conversational topics where appropriate – here’s when it really isn’t.

YouTube

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:

• Be different – whilst testimonials and demonstrations are useful, video content thrives on creativity and often humour too.
• Utilise your contacts and partners to work with you – as Waterstones are a developed brand, they are able to work with authors to promote their books, but there’s no reason why your business cannot begin to develop similar relationships with influencers.

Pinterest

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:

• Invest time in developing your profiles to build followers – it will not happen overnight so commitment is needed.
• Engage – don’t just pointlessly Pin content to your hearts content. Like and comment on relevant Pins.
• Be organised – Have boards that are clear in their intent. Be descriptive with the titles and board descriptions (see below).

Google+

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:

• Secure your page before someone else does. Don’t forget to brand it in a way that people will recognise it as your business.
• Stick to highly visual updates as they are more likely to be +1’d or shared.

Improve Your Social Media Presence

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

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