What is social commerce and how to use it for your business?

Social Commerce is basically the platform where the buying and selling of products take place with the help of social medias and online media through interaction and development of new relations. In other words, social commerce is the use of social networks in the background of e-commerce transactions. The concept of social commerce was introduced by David Beisel  and by Steve Rubel and the terms was introduced by Yahoo in 2005. E-commerce has expanded so much these days that almost every transaction be it a purchase or selling, takes place through the e-commerce platforms. Some of the social commerce includes ratings, reviews, referrals, recommendations, communities, social advertising and many more.

Facebook is one among the giants in social media platforms. The Facebook commerce, f-commerce or the f-comm all refers to the selling and buying of products through the Facebook page, either directly or through the Facebook Open Graph. Similarly is the Twitter social media where Twitter Commerce rules and makes it easy for the buying and selling of products.

Since there is a huge option of the products, one was confused while purchasing products for better rates and comparison of products. For this the social commerce brings the best products and the best shopping to one place helps one in better comparison and decision making.  There are both the offsite and onsite social commerce. The Onsite social commerce refers to retailers whereas the Offsite social commerce includes activities that happen outside the retailers which includes Facebook storefronts, Pinterest and other social networks.

If one need to build up a good audience they would have to basically implement the 6C`s of Social Commerce, which includes Content, Community, Commerce, Context, Connection and ultimately Conversation. One has to have a good content first to attract customers, then build a community where interactions happen and build sustainable relationships. Then fulfill customers needs with the help of transactional web presence. Tracking of real world events helps to understand and stay in touch through commercing platforms and hence the matter has to be genuine and clear. It all depends on relationships and the more and relationships maintained the more open in the social commercing. And finally conversing. A clear conversation helps in clear communication and thus in a happy deal between two people.

Social commerce also works on a few elementary elements like reciprocating, building a community and being with the community of one’s choice, having social proof like positive feedbacks from consumers on a public platforms that builds confidence in new visitors, liking of the page which shows that more and more people are confident on our product and when recommendations work, people are more confident in joining and buying products and finally being there for customers and showing the importance of having the product and how much availability would be there, so that the customer would genuinely want to buy the product.

Based on al this is how social commercing works and social platforms are the best marketing platforms these days for any kind of products.