Tips for Using Facebook To Boost Your Ecommerce Store

With more than 1.5 billion registered users, a figure continuously rising, Facebook is a social networking powerhouse. It’s worth more than the annual output of many countries and has users from all across the globe. The amount of data Facebook has, and the detail with which people willingly share information about them on Facebook, makes it any marketer’s dream platform. Just look at some of these stats.

• Facebook has more than 1.5 billion registered users.
• More than 699 million people log in to Facebook every day.
• An average person spends around 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook every month. This makes it a total of 700 billion minutes globally.
• More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.

Currently there are thousands of Facebook pages where people are selling products directly to their fans. While it’s not always the best strategy to depend completely on Facebook for ecommerce sales, it certainly can be a part of your broader ecommerce plan.
If you have an ecommerce website or an online store, you can use the power of Facebook to reach your target customers much more effectively and drive them to your online store and boost sales.
Here are a few tips for using Facebook to strengthen your ecommerce store.

1. Content is the King – Even on Facebook

Quality content is the king everywhere. But the kind of content that resonates with Facebook users is very different from blog content or articles. Here, if you write 1000 word status updates, very few of your fans will have the patience to read till the end.
Facebook users like short, catchy, visually appealing and action oriented posts created in a fun way. Above all your posts should provide users value. Demonstrate your knowledge about your niche and products in your status updates.
Also, don’t be obsessed with your own product images, links and blog posts all the time. Regularly share stuff from other blogs and websites that your fans may find useful (not from your competitor’s site, of course).

2. Optimize Your Store for Facebook Engagement

Your ecommerce store should also be optimized for maximum Facebook engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares). You can do that in a number of ways. Offer sign up via Facebook. Make sure your store’s product pages have clearly visible social media sharing widgets. Add the Facebook comments widget to your product pages so that the user comments are visible on their Facebook profiles as well. Add a small statement below the product images encouraging users to share on Facebook.
These are basic things but many ecommerce stores don’t have them in place because of which they fail to take advantage of Facebook.

3. Use Engaging Descriptions and Smart Calls To Action

Whenever you add new products to your store, you’d most likely share them on your Facebook page. When you do that, make sure you add an engaging 1-2 line description with your links. Engaging or catchy descriptions drive more clicks as compared to simple link shares.
Use high engagement words in your posts. Research shows that status updates that include the words Facebook, Why, Most, World, How, Health, Bill, Big, Says and Best get most engagement and shares. Similarly,

• Posts with less than 80 characters attract 23% more engagement.
• Using emoticons increases comments by 33%.
• Question posts get 100% more comments.
• Quotes get 26% more Likes and 19% more shares.

Also, make your descriptions action oriented and add clear calls to action with them. Facebook recently introduced the “Add Call to Action” option with status updates. Always use it with your status updates and link shares.

4. Boost Sales With Contests, Deals and Special Offers

Facebook users love contests and discount deals. Running competitions is found to be the most effective engagement technique for ecommerce stores. Almost 35% users “Like” Facebook pages to participate in contests. So give them what they want. Ask questions and use “Like for Yes, Comment for No” type techniques for feedback. These small fun activities can boost your engagement significantly.

5. Focus on High Quality Visual Content

I’ve already mentioned the importance of content, but visual content deserves a separate mention. Facebook users love visual content like images, info graphics, videos, memes etc. Image based content gets almost 40% more interaction as compared to simple text posts.
But to get the best results, you need to mix up your updates with a combination of text only, text+image and image/video only updates. For ecommerce stores, product images get the highest engagement.

6. Run Targeted Facebook Advertisements

There’s no better paid advertisement mode for ecommerce stores than Facebook advertisements. Facebook Ads have improved drastically over the last couple of years. They’re not only much simpler to configure but also bring much more targeted results as compared to other advertisement modes. You can target users based on their location, interests, gender, like/dislikes, recent activity, pages liked and dozens of other criteria. Start with a small budget of around $50 and test different ads to see what works well for you. Once you understand how it works, increase your budgets gradually.

7. Simplify the Buying Process

One important thing is to make the payment and buying process as simple as possible for your customers. Normally ecommerce stores add a link to the product pages with their Facebook status updates. There’s nothing wrong in doing this, but since it involves multiple redirections, there are high chances that buyers would abandon the purchase mid-way through. A smart option is to use a direct link to the checkout page or, even better, use a Facebook app to accept payments directly on Facebook. There are several Facebook ecommerce store apps where you can configure your products for direct selling on Facebook.

8. Use Facebook for Customer Support

A great way to show your fans and prospective buyers that you care about them, is to move the customer support to your Facebook page. Ask users to share their product feedback, compliments/complaints and concerns of your Facebook page. Actively respond to such comments, and ensure quick problem resolution. This will show the world that you really care about your customers.

9. Use a Combination of Manual and Automated Posts

Most ecommerce stores serve customers belonging to multiple countries, due to which they need to operate in different time zones. Of course you can’t stay on Facebook all the time. So it’s recommended that you automate some of your posts to stay in touch with customers from all time zones. You can use the BufferApp or HootSuite for this purpose. But keep posting manually as well.
Research shows that the engagement levels are 18% higher on Thursday and Friday, and 32% higher on weekends. Every day, around 1PM gets the most shares and 3PM gets the most clicks. Keep these time slots and days in mind while scheduling your automated posts.

Conclusion

Like any other social network, Facebook thrives on user engagement. The more closely you engage your audience through high quality visual content, contests and comment responses, the more action you’d be able to drive from them. But remember that your goal is to route users from your Facebook page to your store, because that is where you can convert them into subscribers – your biggest online asset.

By supporting ‘Digital Equality’ on Facebook, actually you supported an ‘Evil’ or 'Angel' ?

Facebook Launches 'Save Free Basics' Campaign in India

Facebook's has launched a campaign that shows up on the top of its feed for Indian users, exhorting them to send a message to the Trai in support of Free Basics in India.

Claiming to support digital equality, the Save Free Basics campaign page provides users with a pre-written response to Trai saying the initiative could connect a billion Indians online. The pre-written message says that over a billion Indians would be hurt by the shutting down of its Free Basics program.

The page exhorts users to send the response, claiming "Free Basics is in danger in India." Directly pointing to the SaveTheInternet campaign, the page adds, "A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis of net neutrality. Instead of giving people access to some basic Internet services for free, they demand that people pay equally to access all Internet services, even if that means 1 billion people can't afford to access any services... Unless you take action now, India could lose access to free basic Internet services, delaying progress towards digital equality for all Indians. Tell the Trai that you support Free Basics and digital equality in India.The pre-written response to Trai is reproduced in full below:
"To the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, I support digital equality for India. Free Basics provides free access to essential Internet services, such as communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming information and more. It helps those who can't afford to pay for data, or who need a little help with getting started online. And it's open to all people, developers and mobile networks. With 1 billion Indian people not yet connected, shutting down Free Basics would hurt our country's most vulnerable people. I support Free Basics and digital equality for India. Thank you."


The Web form has a 'Send Email' submit button that lets Facebook allegedly send your response, name, email address, to Trai, but it also works in incognito, so the user doesn't have to be signed to Facebook to support the campaign. Users can send anonymous messages with random names, without having to enter an email address.


Two people familiar with the net neutrality debate said that this seemed like a new development.

"This is something new, that Facebook is officially doing," said Karthik Balakrishnan, one of the volunteers behind the SaveTheInternet campaign that sent over 1.1 million emails in April this year in response to Trai's consultation paper.

"I would be very surprised if they send emails to Trai for every submission that happened. Even though the campaign says email, it's mostly a signatory thing, they will collect all of this and send a collated list to claim that certain number of people have campaigned to save Free Basics." he said.

In an emailed response, a Facebook spokesperson offered the following quote:Hundreds of millions of people in India use the Internet every day and understand the benefits it can bring. This campaign's goal is to give these people the opportunity to support digital equality in India and help connect the billion who remain offline by giving them a voice in the public debate that is being held by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on differential pricing for data services."

This Is what was visible to us now time to think about this also -

By supporting ‘Digital Equality’ on Facebook, you supported an ‘Evil’; Don’t fall in TRAP

Now we know that Facebook can play any kind of mind-game to promote its free basics. It already knows that Indian people are not ready to accept its ‘Free Basics’ just because we do not want Internet to be ruled by Facebook and its partners who can pay. So, Facebook has started an emotional campaign called ‘digital equality’. If you are too emotional to support this, I want you to know that it is a trap.

Earlier morning, I received few notifications from friends who supported ‘digital equality’ campaign from Facebook.

When I clicked on this, I found that it was not the support to ‘digital equality’. It is a campaign to get support for its ‘Free Basics’. This is irony. Facebook is talking about ‘digital equality’ but promoting ‘Free basics’ to snatch the digital equality of web publishers.

Why ‘Free basics’ is just opposite to ‘Digital Equality’

‘Free basics’ is a platform to offer Internet for free but this Internet will be paid by advertisers. So, it is just an internet with the websites which can pay for the visits of their users. Now, see it like if Flipkart is paying for its customers, ‘Free basics’ users will only be able to access Flipkart for free and hence they will stop using Snapdeal or others. Is it giving, e-commerce store an equality? No, it is promoting its advertisers and offering them more customers.

Now, see it in broader way. There are various startups which do not have enough budget to advertise the visit of new customers. They will never get most of the people just because people want to access free Internet now. India is the country where free thing is more important and people become blind to use it. So, think how medium and small websites will grow in India. They will never get equal chance?

Is it the equality? No, it is the ruling of Internet by Facebook. Facebook and its telecom partner will decide what ‘Free Basics’ users will see.

I am very sorry to say that our country is too emotional. And most of the companies exploit this to advertise their product. Just by seeing see ‘equality’ and ‘feminism’ words, People in our country blindly support the cause without thinking about its pros and cons. Life is a like a chess game, always think the effect of what you are doing.

In directly, thousands of users sent support email to TRAI. This is disappointing.

I hope TRAI will consider this TRAP in mind before deciding anything about ‘Free Basics’.

Kindly share Your valuable thoughts. 

Source - Techlomedia & NDTV Gadgets