The Social Five
If you can point to just five social platforms — and by platforms, I mean features within social channels (like Facebook Videos) — that are emerging as massive growth opportunities for ecommerce ventures this year, these would be it.
- Facebook Messenger
- Snapchat
- Instagram Ads
- YouTube
- Facebook Groups
Facebook Messenger — because conversational commerce and because it’s easier to convert a casual visitor into a buyer when you talk to them. Messenger bots are crowding this space already (and probably doing a shoddy job by the way). The ones that use Messenger the right way are making better connections with customers.
Snapchat — because it’s still riding high on the growth curve. Adoption is immense. Over 75% of Snapchat users are millennials, the group that’s doing most of the online shopping.
Instagram Ads — because here’s a new ad platform. And also because Facebook (cue: things like retargeting, better ad targeting, quality of ads).
YouTube — what used to be just a massive video platform is now becoming a creative hub with sponsorships and more. When I write YouTube, it’s not just video and it’s definitely not ads. It’s finding popular video channels relevant to your niche and sponsoring / getting featured.
Facebook Groups — because some interesting stroke of luck (and thinking) revived a dead product into the most happening place for selling stuff. Lots of buy/sell groups. Lots of private groups created, managed and used by online sellers.
