Social media for e-commerce: the ultimate guide to stand out in 2025
Social media is becoming increasingly popular for e-commerce businesses; it can help e-commerce brands increase reach, boost engagement and generate sales. Almost every e-commerce business is utilising social media, so if you haven’t already, it is time to get advertising on social media.
Social media for e-commerce has multiple benefits. There are several ways you can use social media to reap these benefits as well as specific social media platforms that are best for e-commerce. So you have all the information you need, we have produced an ultimate guide for social media e-commerce success in 2025.
To find out everything you need to know about social media e-commerce and how you can make sure your paid social strategy is successful, keep reading!
What do we mean by ‘social media for e-commerce’?
Social media e-commerce is a strategy whereby brands use social media to promote their e-commerce business and generate sales. Social media platforms are effective tools that help advertisers increase reach, attract attention and build brand awareness. By building a community and loyal customer base through social media, e-commerce businesses can boost engagement and generate more sales online. Let’s explore the benefits of using social media for e-commerce.
6 benefits of using social media for e-commerce
1. You can increase your reach and grow awareness easily
With people all over the world using social media, it is a powerful marketing tool that helps e-commerce advertisers reach a wider audience. The more people that see your content and view your social media profile, the higher your chances of increasing brand awareness and boosting engagement – that’s why social media for e-commerce is so important, because it gives you to opportunity to get in front of lots of people.
Not only that, social media platforms are becoming popular search engines; over half of GenZ use social media to discover new brands and search for new products. Utilising social media for e-commerce is an effective way to get your name out there and speak to people beyond your current customers.
2. Social media allows you to build relationships with potential customers organically
Potential customers want to feel valued, respected and heard. Communication and transparency are crucial for building brand trust with your audience. Having a quick customer response rate is also likely to impact the customer experience; the more positive a customer’s experience, the more likely they are to trust your brand, deem you as credible and engage with your business. Social media offers several communication avenues that you can utilise to connect with your audience. For example, posts, comments, direct messages, live streams and so on.
You can also build connections with customers by humanising your brand, adding content of value and responding to audience feedback.
3. If your target audience is active on social media, you can get your ads in front of them
It is important to understand which social media platforms your target audience is active on. They may use one more than another or ignore a social platform entirely. Therefore, you need to be sure of which social media platform to invest your time and resources into. Once sure that your target audience is active on a specific social media platform, you can create relevant, valuable content that aligns with the platform and resonates with your audience based on their interests, behaviours, needs and wants. The more relevant the content on your e-commerce social media profile, the more likely your audience will engage with your brand.
Paid advertisements are an effective way to get your ads in front of your target audience. Social media platforms offer advanced targeting options so you can narrow down your ideal audience and target your ads to them. Paid ads are also an effective way to boost your ROI; by targeting ads at the people most likely to engage with them, you are likely to drive results and generate more sales.
4. Social media for e-commerce allows you to stay in the loop
Social media can be used to understand where your brand ‘fits’ within the industry. Social listening is the process of using social media to research, learn and understand how your brand is perceived and if there are any relevant industry conversations you should be aware of.
You can use social listening to better inform your decisions, improve areas of your brand strategy and ultimately generate more sales for your e-commerce business. You can take note of what your audience wants from you and refine your strategy to reflect this.
Social media can also be used to source potential customers as well as partnership opportunities to help you promote your e-commerce business.
5. Social media allows you to increase and maintain engagement
As mentioned above, your brand to be as engaging as possible to increase sales. Social media is a great way to showcase your brand values, products, services and brand personality engagingly. Platforms offer a range of ad formats that you can experiment with to increase audience engagement.
Maintaining engagement from existing customers is essential. Repeat customers are crucial when it comes to building an e-commerce business and generating consistent sales. Social media is a brilliant way to keep your brand in customers’ minds and keep them engaged.
6. You can use social media to drive traffic to your website
The ultimate benefit of using social media for e-commerce is to generate more sales. All the benefits mentioned above, lead to this one.
Not only can you transform some of your social media platforms into online shops, and sell directly to customers on the platform itself, but you can also use social media as a way to drive traffic to your e-commerce website. Social media is an effective way to promote your brand, build trust and then direct your audience to your main hub for sales.
As you can see there are several benefits to using social media e-commerce, now let’s explore how you can make the most out of social media.
Must-know tips for social media e-commerce success!
Leverage success stories and testimonials
Potential customers need to trust your e-commerce brand. Reviews and testimonials are forms of social proof; they are likely to influence the customer decision process.
By showcasing real opinions and promotions from previous customers on your social media profile, your audience will view your brand as more credible and are more likely to engage with your brand because of this.
Create high-quality content
We have spoken about relevancy concerning content but you must also use high-quality images and videos to attract attention and establish brand credibility. Nearly 80% of shoppers say a product image can influence their buying decision. Therefore, when showcasing your product on social media, you must ensure the image is clear, visually appealing and attention-grabbing.
Top tip: the interactive carousel feature on Instagram/Facebook is an effective way to promote different product images in succession and increase engagement.
Make the user experience as positive and simple as possible
The last thing you want to do is turn customers away because of your social media profile. Making the customer journey seamless is crucial when generating e-commerce sales. If it’s proving difficult to find information or view a product, your audience will give up and disengage with your brand.
Social media platforms, like Instagram, allow you to make this customer experience easy. By enabling ‘Instagram shopping’, your profile is transformed into an online shop and people can browse/purchase products directly on the platform.
Your social media bios should provide information so your audience clearly understands who you are, what you do and why you do it as well as any relevant links that provide more relevant info.
The easier your audience can get to grips with your brand and purchase your products, the more sales you’ll make!
Increase engagement and build connection by using user-generated content
We have mentioned the importance of brand trust throughout the blog. One way to increase brand trust is to incorporate user-generated content into your content strategy.
Your audience is more likely to trust and connect with real people, so using user-generated content for your e-commerce business will increase engagement, enhance brand trust and encourage customer loyalty.
Treat social media like an e-commerce customer service tool
As mentioned, communication is key when it comes to building community and trust with your audience. Therefore, if you change your social media mindset from ‘promotional’ to ‘customer service’, you will increase the likelihood of engagement, community and ultimately … sales!
2 simple ways to improve social media customer service:
- Respond to comments, direct messages and questions as soon as possible – where you can reply to everyone.
- When asking for customer feedback, on social media, take it on board and make changes based on this. By showcasing you have listened, your audience will feel valued and heard.
Utilise the power of social media influencers
Social media influencer marketing can be a game changer for e-commerce businesses. By partnering with an influencer, your brand can increase reach, speak to a wider audience and boost engagement.
It is important to note that not every influencer will drive results for your brand. You need to choose someone who aligns with your brand values, shares a similar target audience to you and maintains a positive reputation online.
Make sure your social media profiles are optimised
Social media SEO is essential when wanting to increase online visibility and reach for your e-commerce business. Here are some top tips to make sure your social media profiles are optimised:
- Fully complete all profile sections (e.g. header image, profile photo, bio, links etc)
- Use keywords within your bio and post copy.
- Utilise visual assets that get your brand noticed and make sure all content fits within the platform guidelines.
- Pinned posts are available on many social media platforms. You can pin top-performing posts to the top of your profile to increase engagement.
Re-purpose content on social media
The beauty of social media for e-commerce is that there are multiple different ad formats and platforms where you can re-purpose content. Why is re-purposing good? Well, let’s say you notice one particular post is generating lots of conversions. You can re-purpose this content and provide your audience with similar content in different ways to further increase conversions. It saves you time and money because the chances are if it worked once, it will work again!
Make the most out of #hashtags
Hashtags are a powerful advertising tool as they can help increase engagement and boost reach. They increase discoverability, provide additional context to your content and increase brand awareness.
Monitor and learn from your social performance
To ensure your social media e-commerce strategy is driving the results you want, you need to monitor key KPIs and metrics in real-time. By doing this, you can learn from the data, refine your strategy and hopefully see improved performance.
Top tip: Be open to experimentation and adapt your strategy when needed. There is no point in sticking with a strategy that isn’t working just because you thought it would. Many factors affect social media performance, so updating your strategy to reflect the data is crucial.
4 of the best social media platforms for e-commerce
Facebook’s huge user base and advanced targeting options make it a powerful tool for e-commerce advertising. Not only does it have targeting options that allow you to increase reach and engagement and re-target previous customers, but it also has a range of ad creatives to encourage audience engagement.
As a visual platform, Instagram is an effective way for advertisers to creatively showcase e-commerce products. As mentioned, Instagram features like ‘Instagram shopping’ make the platform extremely beneficial for e-commerce businesses. Another feature, Instagram highlights, is also of benefit to advertisers as they can direct potential customers to top-performing content and provide valuable insights about your business.
Top tip: As Instagram and Facebook are owned by parent company Meta, by using these platforms you can reap the benefits of both.
TikTok
With over 80% of users engaging with shopping-related activities (browsing, following, watching live shopping events, and purchasing on the platform), TikTok is becoming the front-runner when it comes to an e-commerce business. The platform improves your chances of going viral and content is often inexpensive to produce as it is often filmed on a phone.
Pinterest is a powerful e-commerce platform because its user base is in a ‘ready to buy’, open-minded, discovery mindset. Unlike other platforms, people use Pinterest to search and discover products/brands. You can increase engagement and reach effectively by using Pinterest pins.
Looking to improve your social media strategy?
Here at Embryo, our paid social experts can help you create a new strategy or improve your current strategy so you can drive results and achieve your goals. Get in touch with us and let’s start your journey to social media success today.
