Social Commerce Definition: 5 Types of Social Commerce

Social commerce is a form of marketing and retailing in which brands promote and sell products via personal blogs and social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok. Online marketplaces on social commerce platforms, like Instagram and Facebook Shop, allow brands to share shoppable posts that reach potential consumers all over the world as they habitually browse their favorite social media sites.

Developing a social commerce strategy allows a brand to streamline the online shopping experience and target consumers with products tailored to their specific tastes. Social selling allows brands to cultivate brand loyalty, customer engagement, and direct relationships with their customers. This can drive the customer to purchase more products or share the brand on their own social channels.

Social commerce works by allowing brands to feature their products and services in social content that users can interact with while they scroll through their favorite social media networks. Social commerce differs from an e-commerce platform (which refers to a brand’s stand-alone shopping websites), but will often drive to a brand’s dedicated e-commerce website so that customers can purchase merchandise.

Some social shopping strategies rely specifically on a storefront hosted on a specific social media platform. This strategy often offers greater conversion rates (or purchasing) than brands see on their dedicated online stores. This is because social shopping makes for a quick and easy buying process, encouraging urgent purchase decisions in the customer.

Here are some of the ways that brands can engage social media users through social commerce:

1. 1. “Shop now” links: A brand can share products in their posts or stories that have a “buy now” button, swipe up feature, or checkout feature. This directs users to purchase the products featured on the brand’s social media product page or e-commerce site. Product pins on Pinterest allow brands to leverage pictures of their merchandise alongside online shopping links for purchase. Users can share and shop these items by pinning them to their own personal boards.
2. 2. Videos: On Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, videos allow brands to highlight product features and present items from their product catalog in more native and relatable ways. This can encourage customers to purchase their products.
   
3. 3. Influencer marketing: Brands can collaborate with influencers, who will share a product or service on their own social media platforms, driving consumers to engage with the brand's site. This form of “word-of-mouth” marketing allows brands to leverage the authenticity of a customer’s connection with an influencer to promote their products.
4. 4. User-generated content: Brands might encourage users to produce their own content related to their products or services as a marketing strategy. They often do this by launching user-generated content (UGC) “challenges” accompanied by hashtags, giveaways, or polls that encourage customers to answer questions for discounts. Having users create and share content connected to a brand spreads brand awareness further. It also allows brands to collect valuable data about their customer base, which allows them to tailor product discovery suggestions to subsects of their target audience.
5. 5. Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a fast-growing marketing strategy where businesses use third parties to advertise their product and pay them on a commission basis. Brands will commission bloggers or influencers to promote or review their products in dedicated blog posts, embedding links in the copy in an attempt to drive sales. In exchange, the affiliate marketing partners will earn a percentage of the sales made from their blog posts.

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