As social media usage continues to mature, brands are increasingly opening up to idea of investing in more social commerce functionality.
Customers Are Getting Social
Research firm Gartner recently released new findings on the state of commercial social media use, highlighting the increased effort brands are making to optimize the medium for growth.
Over 400 brands from across nine different verticals were analyzed in the study, and 66% of them stated that they have adopted more social commerce features within the past year. These features can be divided into three key elements: creating awareness, driving more sales, and providing customer service.
Where the Discussions Are
When it comes to engagement, Instagram has completely dwarfed Facebook and Twitter, producing over 90% of interactions while only accounting for 10% of social posts.
From an industry standpoint, beauty businesses are taking the lion’s share of the cut with 27% of all posts and 32% of the interactions on Instagram, but there’s something to be said for various other verticals as well. For starters, both retail and fashion aren’t far behind beauty in terms of post share. Interestingly, when it comes to interactions, activewear and auto were the only two industries that had a higher share of interactions than posts.
Regardless of the highest performers, brands across all industries are heightening their influencer marketing campaigns and user-generated content initiatives, which means that both interactions and content quality are becoming more valuable when it comes to spreading awareness.
Social Shopping
Instagram and Facebook have made strides towards making commerce easier for shoppers who browse on their platforms.
Over half of the brands surveyed in the report stated that they’ve adopted Facebook’s “Shop Now” button, which is typically used to drive traffic to a brand website. As for shoppable content specifically hosted on the channel, Instagram has seen 41% increased adoption, dominating that of Facebook’s 17%.
The large discrepancy between shoppable content on the two platforms is understandable, given the fact that Facebook’s version still has limited visibility compared to Instagram’s, which has recently expanded its program.
Still, with Facebook owning both entities, from a transactional standpoint, things are looking pretty good for Mark Zuckerberg and his team.
Solving Customer Dilemmas
If there’s one thing Twitter has been dominating at over the years, its been the platform’s ability to deal with customer service. Even though Twitter has failed to shorten the gap between Facebook and Instagram from an awareness and purchasing perspective, over 70% of brands rely on it to answer questions and address customer concerns, an increase from last year’s 66%.
With brand loyalty and trust being an essential part of driving repeat purchases, it’s clear that Twitter is still very much a relevant and viable channel to be monitoring and responding to.
Don’t Be Anti-Social
Three quarters of the world’s four billion internet users are currently active on social media. As more users sign up every day and each channel continues to make platform changes designed to provide more value for advertisers, the social realm is becoming even more lucrative.
Whether it’s partnering up with an influencer, experimenting with a new ad format, or simply increasing your overall social marketing budget, competition will ultimately grow, but so will the reward for a well-executed campaign.
For more information on our top selling social offers, contact your affiliate manager today and they’ll be happy to show you all the highest converters!