Use it or lose ‘em: Use Volusion social media integration to help boost sales

Social media may not always be a worthwhile investment for every type of business, but if you are marketing to the end user, it’s a good idea to brush up on your social media skills.  For example, a company that manufactures school uniforms does not have a strong need for social media because it is a B2B model.

However, a company that sells its own custom clothing to the general public will greatly benefit from social media because the company is a B2C model with products that are purchased frequently. Social media helps keep your products in the mind of potential customers.

If you’re a business owner using Volusion and you can benefit from using social media to help promote and sell your products, but don’t know much about social media, we’ve provided some guidance for getting started with using Volusion’s social media integration features.

Facebook

Our first topic that is up for discussion is Volusion’s Facebook store.  With a few simple clicks you can have your Facebook store up and running in no time.  Setting up a Volusion Facebook store is definitely not an all day affair and can be done with little headache.  One of the coolest features (other than the quick setup time) of a Volusion Facebook store is the ability to sell items right from Facebook without redirecting customers all the way back to your website.  This allows the customer to focus on the item that they want without feeling pressured from everything else on the website.

A few other neat features are the display of Volusion’s Deal of the Day feature and the ability to offer a discount to people that “Like” your page.

Note: Before you configure your Volusion Facebook store, you must be SSL certified.  You can purchase an SSL certification from volusion.com.

1. Login to your Admin Area.

2. Navigate to Marketing > Facebook Store

3. Click Yes – Display products for purchase on my Social Store

4. Under the Select Products menu, click the checkboxes that correspond to the products you want to display in the Facebook Store.

If you have a large inventory, you can search for a product by name.

5. Navigate to Design Your Store.

6. Click Browse or Choose File and select the image file with your business logo.

7. Click Open, then Upload and when you’re finished, click Save.

8. At the bottom, click Install Social Store App.

If you are logged into your business’ Facebook page, click Add Our App.  If not, login and click Add Volusion Social Store.

9. Now that the app is installed, it needs to be activated on your Facebook page.

10. Click the Social Store app icon.

11. Enter your domain name.

12. Click Create My Store and then View My Store.

Congratulations!  You have successfully created your Volusion Facebook Store.

Now that you have your Facebook store up and running, it’s time to take advantage of the other social media integration features that your Volusion site has to offer.

For this next part, you will need to be signed into your Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as enable Volusion to work with both accounts.  For Twitter, make sure the Volusion Social app is authorized in the settings.  For Facebook, make sure you allow Volusion Social to post messages on your behalf.

1. Login in to your Admin Area.

2. Navigate to Marketing > Social and click Sign In.

3. In the text field, you can craft your message.

A counter will keep track of the characters of a message so it fulfills Twitter’s post requirements.

4. Click Submit when your post is ready.

Volusion’s social media integration options are not only good for messages, but they also let you directly share products with your followers.

1. Copy the URL you want to share via social media.

2. Paste the URL into the URL field.  It will be automatically shortened to help stay within your character limit.

3. Click Add.

Twitter will only display the URL, but Facebook will display a graphic associated with the page the link leads to.

The greatest part about social media is that everyone can be a part of it.  Let your customers help sell your products by allowing them to share your products directly from your website.

1. From the Admin Area, navigate to Inventory > Products > Settings > All Products Settings.

2. Clicking Enable Facebook Like button places a “Like” button to your product pages.

3. Clicking Enable Facebook Send button places a “Send” button to your product pages.  Send allows your customers to send the link to your product

4. Clicking Enable Share Button places a “Share” button to your product pages.  Share allows your customers to share your products via Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and e-mail.

Where Social Commerce Stands Today

The mechanics in the steps above are platform-specific to an older Volusion build, but the underlying idea — sell where your customers already spend time, and let them share your products — is more true now than when this was written, just executed differently. Today the equivalents are a Facebook/Instagram Shop connected through a product catalog feed, shoppable posts and tags, Pinterest Product Pins, and (for the right audience) TikTok Shop. The setup is no longer a one-time admin toggle: it runs off a synced product feed so price and availability stay correct automatically, which is the same goal the old "select products to display" step was reaching for, done in a way that scales.

Pick the Channel by Where Your Buyers Are

The original B2C-versus-B2B point is the right filter, and it extends to channel choice. Visual, lifestyle, and impulse products do well on Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok; considered or community-driven purchases often do better with Facebook groups and content. Rather than enabling every share button, concentrate on the one or two networks where your customers actually research and buy, build a real presence there, and make those product pages easy to share with accurate preview images and titles (controlled today with Open Graph tags rather than per-button toggles).

Connect Social to SEO and Retention

Social and search reinforce each other. Social drives discovery and branded search; the resulting traffic and engagement, plus the reviews and user photos customers post, feed the credibility signals that help organic ranking. Capture that audience into channels you own — email and SMS — so a follower becomes a repeat customer rather than a one-time visit, and use the same product content across social, on-site, and search so the brand stays consistent. That combined motion is what turns social activity into durable sales, exactly the outcome the original article was aiming at.

Editorial note: the step-by-step instructions in this article describe Volusion's older admin, its built-in Facebook Store, and sharing to Google+ — Google+ was shut down in 2019, Facebook's native commerce has since moved to catalog-feed Shops, and Volusion's admin has changed substantially, so those exact menu paths no longer apply. The strategic guidance added above reflects how social commerce works today; the original walkthrough is retained as a historical record of the intent.

Now that you’re an expert on using social media to promote your ecommerce business, your next step will be focusing on your site’s SEO to improve your search engine rankings.  We offer our clients a thorough SEO strategy plan specially-designed to promote ecommerce sites.  With your newfound social media skills and our expert knowledge of SEO best practices, your ecommerce business will be booming before your next Tweet.