One of the questions we often receive from our readers is how to use social media for eCommerce effectively.
Over the years, we’ve built over 2 million followers on various social media channels for WPBeginner. Across our partner brands, we also sell software that is used on over 25 million websites.
A big lesson we have learned is that your social media followers’ expectations of you are different from those of your website audience.
Unfortunately, many small business owners treat their social media followers and their site audience the same way.
In this article, we will walk you through what social commerce is and how you can get started with it, even if you are not a social media expert.
Social commerce means the buying and selling of products or services directly through social media platforms.
Think of it like having a virtual storefront built right into your favorite social media apps. While scrolling through friends’ updates, you can discover new products and sometimes even make purchases without leaving the app.
Several popular social media platforms now offer built-in social commerce features.
For instance, Instagram allows businesses to tag products in their posts and display a ‘Buy Now on Instagram’ button. Some profiles may even have a dedicated ‘Shop’ section with a checkout function.
Facebook also lets businesses tag products in photos, where users can then click to view and purchase them.
Similarly, TikTok lets you add a ‘Visit shop’ tab on a brand profile, taking users straight to your product catalog.
Many businesses are making the most out of selling on social media channels.
Take Fjällräven, a popular Swedish outdoor brand whose website is built on WooCommerce. They use Instagram’s shop features to showcase their products and drive sales within the platform.
Bloomscape, another WooCommerce-based business, uses TikTok for social commerce.
They create engaging videos that showcase their beautiful plants and increase traffic to their online store.
If you already sell through an online store or an online marketplace, then you may be asking why you should give social commerce a chance.
Social commerce can be beneficial because it simplifies the buying process for customers. This convenience can lead to more sales and happier customers.
Let’s say a customer stumbles upon a photo of a stylish hat on their Instagram feed. With social shopping features, that customer can click a button and buy the hat on their mobile device, all without leaving Instagram.
When a customer interacts with your social commerce store (e.g., by liking or sharing a product), their social network sees it, too. This organic reach can expose your brand to entirely new customer segments you might not have reached through traditional eCommerce.
Other than that, social commerce can be highly beneficial if your business targets a younger audience like Gen Z and Millennials. These demographics often trust influencers more than ads because their recommendations may feel more genuine.
Partnering with micro-influencers in your niche can help you reach a targeted audience and build trust with potential customers.
Finally, social commerce is a cost-effective marketing strategy. By simply connecting your existing social media accounts to your online store, you can start using social commerce to drive eCommerce sales.
You can also use these platforms’ customer data for advertising purposes. They can be useful for creating personalized ad campaigns that resonate with users’ interests and retarget potential buyers in ads.
While social commerce offers exciting opportunities, it’s important to be aware of its limitations:
All in all, social commerce is exciting, but it shouldn’t replace your existing online store. Instead, they work best together.
Think of social media like a shop window. You can use it to show off your products and make some sales directly on the app. But if that’s not the best fit for your business, then you can still use social media to get people to visit your website.
eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce offer much better control over your online shopping experience.
It provides a variety of secure payment gateways that may not be available on social platforms. Plus, it allows you to customize the checkout flow for a more convenient buying experience.
What’s more, you can use WooCommerce plugins like FunnelKit to optimize your customer journey. This way, you can increase the chances of new users converting into buyers.
For more details, you can see our complete guide on how to start an online store.
Now, let’s see how to get started with your own social commerce strategy. You can use the quick links below to navigate through the article:
Choosing the right platform for your business is the key to driving social commerce sales. After all, different platforms cater to different demographics and product types.
You will want to consider these factors when making your choice:
Here’s a breakdown of some popular social commerce platforms and who they are best for:
If you haven’t already, then you need to create social media business profiles specifically for your brand. This allows you to access features like social commerce tools and analytics.
First impressions matter, so focus on creating a profile that’s both visually appealing and informative.
Here are the key elements to consider:
Now that you have a stunning profile set up, it’s time to start creating engaging content.
You can start by introducing your business. Let your audience know who you are and what your brand is all about. Share your story, your mission, and what makes your products special.
High-quality product photos and videos are essential for social commerce. Use your first few posts to highlight your most popular items or new arrivals.
You can also entice new followers with an introductory discount or special offer. This is a great way to generate excitement and encourage people to check out your products.
Contests and giveaways are a fun way to increase engagement and brand awareness. Offer a free product or discount to a lucky winner and ask users to follow your page, like your post, and tag a friend to enter.
To ensure the success of your giveaway, you can read our case study on how WPBeginner runs giveaways to double traffic and conversions.
Now that you’ve got a captivating profile, let’s create a shoppable social feed. This is where you can integrate product tags directly into your social media posts, making it easier for customers to discover your products.
Keep in mind that the setup process and functionalities for shoppable feeds can vary depending on the country and platform you are using.
Major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok usually let you add a product catalog to your profile. However, you must check if your region is eligible for enabling an in-app checkout experience or if you need to direct users to your website via links.
Here are some guides you can check out for more information:
The great thing about social commerce is you can repost user-generated content (UGC) and add it to your shoppable social feed.
You can encourage customers to share photos or videos of themselves using and loving your products with a specific branded hashtag. Besides tagging the products, you can also use these photos as social proof in your feed to show real people enjoying your products.
Or, you can add them to your customer reviews page on your website.
If you use Instagram, one thing you can do is embed a shoppable social feed on your online store, like your homepage. Clicking on these posts will take users directly to the product pages on your website, creating a smooth buying experience.
Plugins like Smash Balloon can simplify this process by displaying your Instagram feeds directly on your website and making them shoppable.
For a step-by-step guide, check out our article on how to add a shoppable Instagram feed on WordPress.
For more tips and tricks, check out these other articles on integrating social media with WordPress:
Juggling multiple social media accounts can get quickly overwhelming. So, you should consider using a social media management tool to simplify your workflows and save time.
Social commerce tools can help you schedule posts in advance so that they are published when your audience is most active. Plus, they often come with analytics to help you gain valuable insights into your social media strategy. Some may also have a messaging feature to respond to customers.
A great example of this is Semrush Social, which offers a comprehensive suite of social media management features.
Once you’ve signed up, you can connect your social media accounts to Semrush Social. The setup is easy and takes just a few clicks.
From here, you can explore any of the available features to manage your social commerce.
For instance, the Social Poster feature lets you schedule content, set up an editorial workflow, and even gather content ideas, all in one place.
Want to keep an eye on the competition? The Social Tracker tool allows you to monitor your competitors’ social media performance.
Simply enter their brand name or domain, and Semrush will gather data on their social media activity. You can take advantage of all of these valuable insights to improve your own strategy.
You can learn more about the platform in our Semrush review.
When you optimize your social profiles for local searches, you will increase the chances of your business showing up in the search results. This means you are attracting qualified leads who are close by and more likely to convert into paying customers.
If you want to localize your social commerce strategy, you can start by making sure your location is clear on your profiles. Include your city and state in your business name or bio, and consider adding your address if it makes sense for your business.
Additionally, you may want to make your ads targeted to people based on location. This means focusing on people within your city, town, or neighborhood, not just anyone scrolling through social media.
Also, remember to optimize the landing page for your ads so that users don’t leave once they land on it.
Other than that, don’t forget the power of hashtags. Adding relevant city or neighborhood hashtags to your posts can help people find you.
Keeping your business information accurate across all online directories can be a pain. Luckily, there are tools like Semrush Local to help.
Semrush Local helps ensure your business information (like your name, address, and phone number) is consistent and accurate across major online directories. This includes social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
This consistency is important for local SEO and can significantly improve your chances of showing up in local searches.
Once you’re inside your Semrush account, just enter your business name. Then, Semrush will check the web to see how your information is listed everywhere.
If anything’s wrong or missing, Semrush can distribute the correct information to relevant websites. It can also help remove duplicate listings that might confuse potential customers.
Creating consistent and engaging social media content can be time-consuming. If you are looking for an extra boost, then you can try using AI content writing tools. They can help you write product descriptions on your website as well as on your social media posts.
While AI can be a helpful starting point, it’s important to remember that your brand voice and style are unique. Always review and edit the generated content to ensure it resonates with your audience and reflects your brand personality.
One powerful tool you should check out is ContentShake AI from Semrush. It helps you create high-ranking content on your site with AI and Semrush’s SEO data. You can also use it to create social media posts.
To use ContentShake AI, simply provide some details about your business, the type of post you are creating, the desired tone, and the post format. ContentShake AI will then generate several unique social media copy options for you to choose from.
You can then fine-tune your generated content further by interacting with the AI chat function.
This allows you to refine your message, add specific details, or simply get a creative nudge in the right direction.
ContentShake AI also allows you to establish a brand voice for your content simply by pasting existing content.
The tool will analyze your writing style and target audience. This lets you generate future content that aligns perfectly with your brand identity.
You may also want to see our guide on how to use AI to boost your marketing.
Let’s answer some frequently asked questions about social commerce.
Is social commerce rising?
Absolutely. The social commerce industry is booming and projected to grow 3 times faster than traditional eCommerce by 2025. This means social media platforms are becoming increasingly important for businesses to drive sales directly to consumers.
What is the difference between social commerce and social marketing?
Social marketing focuses on building brand awareness and improving relationships with your audience. On the other hand, social commerce has a more direct goal: converting followers into paying customers through your social media channels.
However, these two strategies work hand-in-hand. A strong social media marketing presence can lay the groundwork for successful social commerce efforts.
Is TikTok a social commerce platform?
Yes, TikTok is a major player in social commerce. They’ve introduced features like TikTok Shop, allowing users to discover and purchase products directly within the app. This focus on in-app purchases makes TikTok a leader in social commerce trends.
What is the largest social commerce platform?
While Facebook Marketplace is a major contender, TikTok Shop is currently considered the biggest social commerce platform due to its massive user base in China (where the app is known as Douyin).
Which countries allow Instagram Shopping?
Instagram Shopping is available to businesses in many countries, including the United States, Canada, most of Europe, and many countries in Asia-Pacific. You can find a full list of supported countries in Facebook’s Help Center.
We hope this article helped you learn about social commerce and how to get started with it. You may also want to check out our expert pick of the best Twitter plugins for WordPress and our complete social media cheat sheet.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
A CEO is no longer expected to talk candidly about open source. Maybe business leaders have never expected open source to be anything but serve their business interests. Not every CEO takes advantage of open source to the degree we have seen in recent months. But no one is free of blame. Open source means different things to different people, and everyone uses it for their own purposes.
The colloquial use of open source gives companies like Meta the opportunity to use open source as they wish. Even high-ranking people in the open source community discount the problem. They say it’s OK. Open source is still moving forward. The kids don’t care — all they want to do is build models.
There is no playbook or good versus evil here. Many thoughtful people want to find a way to solve the mess we’ve seen surface in the WordPress saga of the past few weeks.
To recap, for those who haven’t been sufficiently online the past few days: Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, the popular open source content management system, has been accusing WP Engine, a WordPress hosting provider, of violating WordPress’ trademarks and using its servers without compensation. The two organizations’ lawyers have exchanged cease-and-desist letters (more on those later). At the stroke of midnight UTC on Tuesday, WordPress blocked WP Engine’s access to its servers.
As this episode unravels, a fresh flow of ideas about open source has emerged. At least one CEO has established an important approach to solving issues like those we see with WordPress and WP Engine.
In a thoughtful post on his personal blog, Dries Buytaer, creator of Drupal, described the issue today as a makers-takers problem, where “creators of open source software (“Makers”) see their work being used by others, often service providers, who profit from it without contributing back in a meaningful or fair way (“Takers”).”
CEOs are on both sides of the perspective he details. He knows the people involved and has a solution that makes sense for the Drupal community. He calls it a “contributor credit” program.
Buytaer comes from the same world as Mullenweg. Drupal and WordPress are open source content management systems.
Still, open source is a tool for CEOs to use for profits, sometimes illusions, and leverage against commercial competitors. We’ve seen this with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who calls Llama, the company’s large language model, open source, which it is not.
And now we face someone who has long enjoyed a gleaming image in the open source community but now faces many questions about his intent.
Earlier in the week, we interviewed Mullenweg, who said WP Engine should fork WordPress.
“I think a fork would be amazing,” he told TNS. “They should fork WordPress, because what they offer is not actually WordPress. They call it WordPress, but they really screw it up.”
Mullenweg now wants to own a chunk of WP Engine, and he’s using his bully pulpit to pound away until he gets what he wants. He’s called WP Engine “a cancer.” He openly rails about the WP Engine executive team and Silver Lake, the private equity firm that has invested in it, using tactics we’ve become far too accustomed to from all sorts, who we don’t have to name here.
It’s a victim tactic. Mullenweg and Automattic, his holding company, talk like they are the victims of an evil plan, rooted in trademark violations. Following the victim’s logic, Mullenweg has to attack. He and his team have to block WP Engine from the WordPress servers.
Now comes the news from The Verge that WordPress demanded 8% of WP Engine revenues each month in exchange for being considered a contributor to the WordPress open source project. That would also mean WP Engine could not fork WordPress, but it would allow WP Engine to use the trademark.
The Verge:
“[C]hoosing to contribute 8 percent to WP Engine employees would give WordPress.org and Automattic ‘full audit rights’ and “access to employee records and time-tracking” at the company. The agreement also comes with a ban on ‘forking or modifying’ Automattic’s software, including plug-ins and extensions like WooCommerce.”
This raises questions about Mullenweg’s hearty support for a WP Engine fork. For perspective, WP Engine competes with Automattic. Just be clear on that one.
Mullenweg has made it confusing for almost everyone involved. There are huge supporters who want WordPress to survive, and there are end users who don’t have any clue about open source or even that their sites run on WordPress servers.
WP Engine, on the other hand, has its own issues. It does not give much in return for using WordPress. The company, under CEO Heather Brunner and founder Jason Cohen, uses the WordPress name. They call it fair use.
Further, WP Engine uses the work invested by the WordPress community into the service without the engineering overhead required if it had to maintain its own fork, which would cost millions and take quite some time to develop — a year, two, three?
What drama. If you are hearing about this for the first time, Mullenweg, who created the web content management system WordPress, has been relentless with his attacks on WP Engine for what he claims are trademark violations. It came to a head at WordCamp in Portland earlier in September when Mullenweg called WP Engine “a cancer” on the community.
On Sept. 23, attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine on behalf of Mullenweg’s holding company Automattic and WooCommerce. Among its demands: that WP Engine stop all unauthorized use of WordPress’s trademarks and “provide an accounting of all profits from the service offerings that have made unauthorized use of our Client’s intellectual property.”
The letter suggested that “even a mere 8% royalty on WP Engine’s $400+ million in annual revenue equates to more than $32 million in annual lost licensing revenue for our Client.”
On Sept. 25, in lieu of action by WP Engine, Mullenweg blocked WP Engine’s access to the WordPress servers. He then gave a reprieve on Sept. 27 after users contacted him. Mullenweg said users thought they were paying WordPress, not WP Engine.
“They thought they were paying me, to be honest, that’s why they were pissed off,” Mullenweg said. “And so I was like, ‘Oops, OK, we’ll turn it back on.’“
WordPress blocked WP Engine’s access to its servers Tuesday at UTC 00:00.
The odd thing: no sign of trouble so far from WP Engine users; a WP Engine spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by TNS about whether the company had heard from customers having problems. WP Engine must have set up the mirrors and all to WordPress.org. How that affects performance and the rest is still not understood.
In our interview, Mullenweg said users now hopefully understand that they are paying WP Engine, which does not pay WordPress for auto updates and everything else WordPress provides. Users, he argued, should be mad at WP Engine, not him and his team, who run the servers. Again, Mullenweg expresses that he and his team are the victims.
WP Engine is simply not responding, Mullenweg said, except through a cease-and-desist letter its attorneys sent Automattic on Sept. 23 after his repeated attacks.
The letter sent on WP Engine’s behalf reads in part, “Mr. Mullenweg’s covert demand that WP Engine hand over tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic, while publicly masquerading as an altruistic protector of the WordPress community, is disgraceful. WP Engine will not accede to these unconscionable demands, which not only harm WP Engine and its employees but also threaten the entire WordPress community.”
WP Engine did not answer The New Stack’s question about forking WordPress, but a company spokesperson did have choice words about Automattic’s licensing demands.
“We, like the rest of the WordPress community, use the WordPress mark to describe our business. Automattic’s suggestion that WP Engine needs a license to do that is simply wrong, and reflects a misunderstanding of trademark law. To moot its claimed concerns, we have eliminated the few examples Automattic gave in its Sept. 23 letter to us.”
For example, WP Engine has made some minor changes, namely changing WordPress to WordPress1 and WooCommerce1 on the site’s front page.
Overall, users had almost no warning that their sites would be disrupted. This is an odd way to treat users, especially when they are such huge fans of your platform.
Here’s where open source becomes a problem for users. Most people do not know how they get the updates to their CMS. But once their site stopped working, they became entangled in a battle between Mullenweg and WP Engine.
Meanwhile, most users are just trying to keep their sites working.
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Amidst the controversy, Mullenweg acknowledged he could have done better in reaching out to the community.
“To be fair, I have not been the best at public relations or publishing things,” he told TNS. “That’s why we try to be very clear at UTC 00, Oct. 1 … at this exact time, their network, WP Engine servers will no longer be able to access our networks.”
But a fork? The cost to set up the servers, the network, the load balancers, on and on, would cost millions and could take years. At its peak, WordPress serves 30,000 requests per second and 40% of the entire Web, according to Mullenweg.
Users have an option, he said. They can move to a different hosting provider. He mentioned Bluehost and his own company, WordPress.com, as two options.
There has been confusion about open source AI and server-side public licenses. Now, we’ve got the WordPress debacle. Oh, and there’s talk about Oracle owning the JavaScript trademark. The fun never ends.
But people are working on the problem, particularly the single point of failure issue that has become more apparent since WP Engine’s servers were cut off.
Here’s a thread worth reading from Reddit, about how to solve the problem of a single point of truth. The problem is a severe one, but maybe a fork is not the answer. Instead, perhaps it’s a way to solve matters that can easily happen if sites aren’t updated:
The vulnerability should be apparent: if WordPress.org goes down for any reason, millions of sites stop updating. A coordinated attack (zero-day implementation coupled with a DDoS attack that prevents updates from going out from zero-day) could be a disaster the world over. And, if the Foundation ever decided to get out of the update business, or ran into financial difficulty, or Matt decides to retire to Aruba and quit WordPress entirely — whatever the case may be — there’s no Plan B.
So, the community needs a plan B — and maybe that’s most important. Stop the bickering. Instead, look for ways to modernize the WordPress infrastructure so users don’t get entangled in corporate wars that use open source as a proxy to fight battles that leave casualties scattered across the web.
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“WPE’s nominative uses of those marks to refer to the open-source software platform and plugin used for its clients’ websites are fair uses under settled trademark law, and they are consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines and the practices of nearly all businesses in this space,” the lawsuit said.
Mullenweg told Ars that “we had numerous meetings with WPE over the past 20 months, including a previous term sheet that was delivered in July. The term sheet was meant to be simple, and if they had agreed to negotiate it we could have, but they refused to even take a call with me, so we called their bluff.” Automattic also published a timeline of meetings and calls between the two companies going back to 2023.
Mullenweg also said, “Automattic had the commercial rights to the WordPress trademark and could sub-license, hence why the payment should go to Automattic for commercial use of the trademark. Also the term sheet covered the WooCommerce trademark, which they also abuse, and is 100 percent owned by Automattic.”
Exhibit A in the lawsuit includes a letter to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner from a trademark lawyer representing Automattic and a subsidiary, WooCommerce, which makes a plugin for WordPress.
“As you know, our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights,” the letter said.
The letter alleged that “your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client.” It also alleged that “WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using our Client’s trademarks… to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic.”
Web hosting provider WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against Automattic, and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, accusing them of extortion and abuse of power. The lawsuit comes after nearly two weeks of tussling between Mullenweg, who is also CEO of Automattic, and WP Engine over trademark infringement and contributions to the open-source WordPress project.
WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of not keeping their promises to run WordPress open-source projects without any constraints and giving developers the freedom to build, run, modify and redistribute the software.
“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the last ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its people, agency partners, customers, and the broader WordPress community,” the company said.
The case document, filed in a court in California, also accused Mullenweg of having a “long history of
obfuscating the true facts” about his control of WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org
Mullenweg had criticized WP Engine for infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. He called them the “Cancer of WordPress” and also called out WP Engine’s private equity partner, Silver Lake, for not caring about the open-source community.
Later, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter, asking Mullenweg and Automattic to withdraw these comments. Automattic then sent its own cease-and-desist, accusing WP Engine of infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Notably, Mullenweg banned WP Engine on September 25 from accessing WordPress.org resources, including plug-ins and themes, and preventing WP Engine customers from updating them. Two days later, Mullenweg provided a temporary reprieve and unblocked WP Engine until October 1.
On Wednesday, Automattic published a proposed seven-year term sheet that it had sent to WP Engine on September 20, asking the hosting company to pay 8% of its gross revenues per month as a royalty fee for using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Alternatively, WP Engine was given the option to commit 8% by deploying employees to contribute to WordPress’s core features and functionalities, or a combination of both people hours and money.
WP Engine didn’t accept these terms, which included a probation on forking plugins and extensions from Automattic and WooCommerce.
You can contact this reporter at [email protected] or on Signal: @ivan.42
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