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Social Commerce For Boutique Owners

The 3 A’s of Dominating Social Commerce. Why are some boutiques dominating commerce on social media? Well, think of it like this…

You’re out with your friends for a night on the town. You’re talking and laughing about old times, the funny things happening in your life today, and consoling each other about the rough stuff. Social Commerce For Boutique Owners

One of your friends casually drops into the conversation that she has some really cute new boots for sale. You see them on her – and they are GORGEOUS…. She says – I just need your email and you can pay tomorrow. Ok, awesome right? It was so easy and now you have a new pair of boots without leaving your seat or your conversation.

Social commerce is booming just for this reason. It’s simple, quick, and shoppers have come to like, trust, and declare loyalty to brands that resonate with them on a personal level.

Brands are able to jump into your conversations with ease and sell you things you need (or don’t need), as long as you feel like you know and trust them.

How is it that some brands and boutiques get it and others don’t? The ones that have the strongest following all have three A’s in common when it comes to their voice of social media. Authorship, Authenticity, and Awesomeness.

AUTHORSHIP

Besides boutiques, social media marketers use the strategy of Authorship. We do this at The Boutique Hub in our blog posts and some of our social media content. If you’ve noticed, Beth, our fabulous Boutique Specialist, takes care of our Instagram account. She’s always got a clever comment or a sincere compliment from a real human at our brand. I like to sign off personally on many of our emails, blog posts, or Facebook posts for the same reason. We want people to relate to our brand whether it’s a shopper looking for a great boutique or a boutique owner interested in marketing ideas.

Authorship isn’t just signing your name to the end of content, think of it as creating the voice of your brand. You could create an alias, feature your friends, highlight your staff, or show a random mascot mannequin named Bertha…

If you’re on Twitter, an iconic example of this is the brand DKNY. Their tweets come under the alias DKNY PR Girl – “Your well-placed fashion source bringing you the behind-the-scenes scoop inside Donna Karen New York and life as a fashion gal living in New York.”

AUTHENTICITY

Authenticity is how your brand becomes human and builds trust. Some boutiques build trust by teaching their followers something – not just in a how-to blog post, but daily in their social media content. They talk about fit, how to style an outfit with a particular piece of clothing, or by showcasing how an item looks on different body types (we all aren’t a size 0!).

One of my favorite examples of this is a boutique in Minot, North Dakota that showcases weekly videos with their owner trying on outfits, talking about fit and being real about style. She builds trust, creates a personality for her brand and creates a need in the shoppers mind for the products she is sharing.

Over time, great brands use content to gain your trust, but do so without personal TMI!

AWESOMENESS

Now being Awesome may be the most difficult of the 3 A’s…Awesome brands have gone a step further to invoke emotion with their customers. They’ve gotten you to laugh, cry, feel excitement, or gratitude.

The more you get to know Awesome brands, the more you want to be like them, hear from them and in turn, do business with them. They effectively combine authorship, authenticity and can create emotion with shoppers that leads them to being awesome!

The point is this.