Social media marketing tips from the experts

Social media marketing is an easy and accessible way of promoting your ecommerce business, but to be successful it does take some time and practice. We asked a carefully selected group of social media experts to answer some common questions that online sellers may have about using social media.

When asked...
How do you make great social media content for less exciting products?

Nothing is boring if it solves a problem or answers a question for a prospective customer. Your product or service might be the very thing someone has been looking for and, as such, could have a huge positive impact on their lives.To ensure your social media posts deliver the right message, you need to try and understand your clients’ problems and the best way to do this is engage them in conversation via social media and ask questions.

John Hayes
http://www.becomingtheexpert.co.uk/

When asked... 
How do you strike the right tone on Twitter and Facebook?

Talk to your customers as if they were your friends. Use the language that they use to talk about their pains, their problems, and your product. "But," you ask, "how will I know what to say?" Study your customers. Find them in their watering holes on Twitter, Facebook, on other community sites and see the actual words they use. Then, reuse that language in your content on Twitter and Facebook. By studying your audience, you'll better understand how to talk to them as a peer and friend, not a brand.

Kai Davis - Outreach Consultant
http://doubleyouraudience.com/

When asked...
What are the most common mistakes E-commerce businesses make on social media?

Talking too much about yourself is one of the most common mistakes ecommerce businesses make on social media. Instead of touting how great you are, share content that helps educate your customer with topics related to your offerings, identify gaps in your industry and provide valuable content to answer key questions to build trust with your audience.

Brian Honigman - Content Marketing Consultant and CEO of Honigman Media
http://www.brianhonigman.com/

When asked...
How to make social media promotion/marketing part of your routine?

In my job as an eBay Specialist Consultant I can't express how important social media marketing is to my business clients.  I hear the excuses of age, time and resources from many clients. I attended a Facebook Marketing Boot camp early this year and a staggering 28 million people in the UK check their Facebook account at least four times a day. That is a staggering amount of marketing power to be tapped into.I tell my clients that the best way to incorporate this as part of a daily routine would be to use an app such as Hootsuite so you can do your marketing quickly across many platforms in one place and to attach the job to something you do during your working day, e.g. when you make a coffee do some marketing, or when you get back from lunch for instance.

Jane Bell - eBay Specialist Consultant
http://www.janebell.co.uk/