Best online selling solutions
How to create social media posts that sell? Ways to attract new customers
Imagine if your products could reach more than half the people around the world. Seems unrealistic, right? Not necessarily. According to Digital 2022 Report, prepared by HootSuite agency and WeAreSocial, social media is actively used by 4.62 billion users worldwide! So how can you use the potential of social media to reach at least some of these people? Here are four proven ways to get new social media followers.
Grab attention and keep it for longer
Not every recipient of a social media message will immediately become your customer. What can you do to get as many people as possible who see your ad to go into your shop and buy your product? There are several ways to do this. Start by attracting the Internet user's attention to your product and get him interested in its features and advantages. Now it is time to convince him that the product is the answer to his needs and then make the consumer's action result in a purchase.
This is the AIDA model, which stands for: Attention - attract attention, Interest - make the product interesting, Desire - trigger the desire to buy, Action - stimulate action to purchase. How can you effectively use this model to promote your shop? Learn the four proven ways and create posts that will sell.
1. Define your target audience
To ensure your social media posts are effective and attract the right people to your shop, start by developing your brand's buyer persona, i.e. defining your target customer.
How to do this effectively? Buyer persona is the equivalent of your target customer. To develop a buyer persona profile, gather basic data that tells the buyer's story. This data can be divided into two categories:
age, gender, place of residence, marital status, employment status, type of work performed
What values does he/she hold?
What problems does he/she have?
What is his/her daily routine like?
Which habits does he/she have?
What is important to him/her?
Which media does he/she use? Which social media does he/she prefer?
The more precise you can be with this information, the better for you and your brand. With a well-defined persona, you will be able to adjust the language and tone of your messages, their time of communication and also their form. You won't write to a Generation Z representative that you have a "cool product", and you won't reach a 60+ person via TikTok :-).
2. Choose the right channels and... just start
You've defined your buyer persona and established which social media channels they spend most of their time on. Now move on to creating your brand profile. What should you keep in mind? Among other things, consistency in communication and the right keywords.
Branding is nothing more than the image of your brand on the internet. So that your audience can easily find you in all social media, it is important that the elements of your branding (e.g. profile picture, background picture, graphics that you publish) are consistent in each medium.
Make sure that the colours and symbols in your social media are the same as those you use on your online shop website. This will make your audience feel safe and secure when they go to your website, making them more likely to make a purchase.
Keep in mind that each social media outlet has its own built-in search engine. Users use it to find information about companies and products. In order to be easily found by new customers using the search engine, include in your profile name and description keywords that define the nature of your brand's activity.
For example, let us assume that you run an online shop called 'Beauty Flower', which offers organic cosmetics. It is worth including such information in the name of your profile and call it, for example: "Beauty Flower - natural cosmetics online". In this way, you will become known to customers who are looking for products, not specifically defined brands.
3. Prepare a strategy
Now that you've developed your persona and created your social media profiles, it's time to create publishing content. But before you start publishing, use the information you've gained from getting to know your target customer. Develop a strategy that will give you consistency and regularity on social media. How can you do this? Check out the key factors that make for good content.
- What is important to your customer?
The content you publish on social media should be valuable and contribute something. Think about how your expertise and the products you sell can address the needs and concerns of your potential customers.
- What brand do you want to be in the eyes of your audience?
To make sure your posts attract attention and gain new followers, it's a good idea to add emotion (joy, thoughtfulness, laughter, surprise or a sense of security). Think about what kind of brand you want to be in the eyes of your audience: do you want to be a joker who tells great jokes or an expert who is happy to share knowledge? Note, any of these options for presenting your brand will be correct and effective, as long as you make sure you stay consistent in.
- Plan your topics and make them into publication cycles
What do you want to communicate to your social media audience? Will it be information about the ingredients in your products and how they are prepared? Or will you present how your products solve problems? Maybe you should show the opinions of satisfied customers? Think about what you want to share with your social media audience and create cycles from that.
With cycles you can plan, for example, that on Mondays you upload content about your customers, on Wednesdays you organise an advice corner and on Fridays you talk about your products. Doing this will give you regularity, which your chosen social media algorithms will appreciate.
4. Give form to your plans
With your publication strategy developed, it's time to prepare your content. When creating content for social media, remember a few important things:
- Most internet users access social media via smartphones. So the graphics and content you create should be readable and clear on smaller devices.
- Each social media has its own specifications regarding the dimensions of graphics. Therefore, before you start preparing a post, verify the dimensions recommended in a given channel. The safest and most common resolution is a square of 1080/1080 pixels.
- Colours and symbols should be consistent with the whole visual identity of your brand (with graphics on the website, logotype and printed materials)
In a week we will publish the second part of the article about social media in e-commerce, where you will learn, among other things, how to stand out in the huge amount of content, how to engage your potential customers and how to build a relationship with them. Recommended!
If you'd like to learn more about social media management and learn about other tools to help you, watch the recording of the IdoSell webinar.
Autor artykułu
Barbara Kaleńczuk, Brand Manager IdoSell
Basia is fascinated with the internet, marketing and the world of new media. She actively shares her marketing knowledge on her social media channels. Her motto is: "an expert is someone who can explain difficult issues in a simple way"
