Facebook is a great place to engage with existing customers and offer sales and promotions. With a billion people using Facebook worldwide the potential of this advertising is huge if it’s done right, especially for online retailers. Targeted advertising allows you to direct traffic to either the brand’s Facebook page or to its actual website. No matter how niche your audience may be, you can probably find it on Facebook, the marketing potential here is huge!

Twitter is a valuable customer service tool in gaining customer insights about your brand, certain products and customers’ sentiment about products they have already purchased. Brands can also post images and videos on Twitter to add visual appeal for fans. Twitter Advanced Search is a useful function retailers can use to see what people are saying about their brand.

Pinterest is the perfect place for retailers to display their product range, engage viewers through high quality images and give them free reign to browse and examine potential purchases. As one of the largest social media networks in the world it is also a great source of referral traffic with each picture posted featuring direct links to it’s webpage.

Instagram is a mobile photo and video sharing site where content can be edited with the use of filters and other tools unique to Instagram. Instagram is a powerful form of social media in that the use of solely photos/videos creates an emotional connection with customers in a way that text cannot and is both fun and engaging for followers. It’s a great option for brands that rely heavily on images, such as clothing companies and retailers.

LinkedIn is a fantastic tool for business as a whole but much less popular for retailers as a brand promoter.  This site focuses on the business-to-business community in promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers, rather than connecting with potential customers.

Measurement is also a crucial part of social media activity in helping demonstrate the effectiveness of social media strategies and campaigns.  This indicates which content is working best and which is not working at all. Google Analytics is a useful tool to help demonstrate where traffic came from, whether it’s from a link on Twitter, a post from Facebook or an image on Pinterest or Instagram.