Question

Identify the key social media platforms you will use to drive traffic to your online store and how you plan to engage your customers.

Answer 1

1. Send free samples to Instagram influencers

Instagram is quickly becoming one of the most effective marketing channels for ecommerce merchants. A recent study found that Instagram gives brands 25% more engagement than any other social platform and our own analysis found that it generates a higher average order value than Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

It’s also a great way to drive traffic and awareness for your store – especially if you know how to target influencers.

2. Reach out to bloggers and press

There are other people you can reach out to: bloggers, vloggers, and press. The size of their audience varies, but some of them have large followings, and the process of reaching out to them is quite similar to reaching out to Instagram influencers.

The best way to find bloggers is simply by looking for them on Google.

On Youtube, you might try out keywords like: “hair advice,” “hair tips,” and “hair care.” Then see whether the makers of the videos post regularly on aspects of writing about hair products

You may have to play around with your keywords to find the people who may be interested in your product. There are many people who review products on video part-time or for a living.

3. Post your store to reddit

The whole internet hangs out on reddit. In addition to its main page, which aggregates the most popular content, it also has thousands of niches called subreddits. You can find a subreddit on nearly any subject, for example, /r/bicycling, /r/scifi, or /r/corgi.

There are a few threads that you should be paying attention to that may help your business.

First, everybody should be browsing the /r/entrepreneur subreddit. With about 79,000 subscribers, it has lots of interesting tips and discussions on starting a business. You might also be interested in the related /r/smallbusiness thread as another source of general business advice.

4. Get friends and family to share

Are you at the age yet when all of your Facebook friends are posting pictures of their babies? Isn’t it annoying?

Many people are sick of looking at baby photos, but you can probably get away with sharing your online store. People don’t launch businesses too frequently, and so it’ll probably be quite novel within your circle of friends to see you start your own online store.