Top Online Social Commerce Trends in 2023

Trend 1. Growth of e-commerce in social networks

Firstly, in May 2020, the possibilities of creating online storefronts inside the Facebook and Instagram networks using the Facebook Shops tool were presented. The advantages are obvious: now you can create an online store within the network and communicate with customers directly without any special conditions and e-commerce experience.

Trend 2. Targeting user engagement

 Engagement Rate, abbreviated as ER) is the ratio of the number of reactions to a publication (comments, likes, reposts, clicks) to the reach of the publication (or to the number of subscribers), usually expressed in %. As a rule, it is calculated for a certain post (engagement per publication) or for several posts for a certain period (average engagement).

This indicator answers a simple question: how interesting is your content to your audience. If it is not interesting (or published too rarely), then – at least – no one simply sees your publications, and you are wasting your time. As a maximum, unsubscriptions follow, and you lose time, subscribers and money.

If the content is interesting, then engagement grows, followed by it, and trust in you as an expert and seller grows and, accordingly, the conversion to your sales increases. The “engagement” trend makes authors look for ways to increase interest in publications and increase their reach in social networks. And this, in turn, gives rise to more targeted mini-trends, among which I single out the top 5 tools for increasing engagement:

• gamification: the game is always perceived better than advertising;
• “series” in stories – implementation of the “storytelling” technique, when the next story complements the plot of the previous one;
• content funnel – sequential placement of engaging posts about the product, leading the client from dating to initial order;
• niche hashtags – unique hashtags by which you can quickly find an author, brand or product;
• AR-masks on Instagram – specially created in the Sperk AR app (for entertainment and / or advertising) elements of augmented reality.

Trend 3. Promotion in social networks: paid, personalized, legal

Focusing on increasing subscriber engagement, most accounts refused to cheat (mass following, masslooking, etc.). (It is important, of course, that the social networks themselves block accounts for shady ways of promoting.)

Legal ways of advertising are “trending”:

• Point targeting, retargeting and micro-audience advertising, customizable through social media advertising accounts.
• Working with bloggers, and today many advertisers rely on nano and micro-influencers with 1,000 to 30,000 subscribers. There are two reasons for this: as a rule, a small audience is more targeted and cheaper for the advertiser. At the same time, social networks are trying to take control of opinion leaders by creating their own blogger exchanges (like BrandConnect from Youtube).
• A relatively new format is the use of AR masks for viral advertising of goods and services.

Trend 4. Promising platforms for promotion in social media

Everyone’s favorite Instagram, of course, is in the top 5 most popular social channels, but you should also pay attention to other promising social media for promotion, namely:

• TikTok – world’s most downloaded app
• * Oct 2020 data from Sensor Tower

** Data for August 2020 from Web Index Mediascope

There are still opportunities to recruit subscribers and promote for free. Moreover, these are no longer schoolchildren and students, most of the users are at the age of 24+.

 Try to use the promotion service for that like a top4smm.

There are already many experts and quite “big brands”, but not yet as “crowded” as in other social networks. Perfect for brand promotion in the B2C segment.

Trend 5. Promotion formats – video, texts, photos and animation

Video is still king. Videos still deliver higher conversions than other ad formats. Short vertical videos in stories and ads are still popular.

The text is more relevant than ever. Especially against the background of the fact that Facebook has removed the restriction “text is not more than 20% of the advertising banner space.”

The text is simply transformed into new formats:

• longreads (long posts) are still read with interest (an example of this is the popularity of articles and channels on Yandex Zen);
• storytelling is still pretty damn involving (an example of this is “serial stories” on social networks); user content (reviews, recommendations, cases, etc.) is still very, very trusted (for example, 39% of purchases based on positive reviews in social networks);

It is only important to speak with your audience in the same language and competently adjust different types of text content to its needs.

Photos and animation are everywhere: from covers to advertisements. A well-crafted visual is especially important in targeting, where further user actions directly depend on the banner / video.

Successful marketing strategies and sales in 2021!