The Role of Social Media in Ecommerce

Social media has contributed enormously to the growth of ecommerce, and the very foundation of digital marketing rest on social media. Research has shown that social media alone is responsible for providing over 50% of the entire Internet traffic, which has contributed significantly to lead generation and conversion in most ecommerce websites. Social media and ecommerce have become vastly inter-connected and largely inter-dependent. 

The social share tool has become one of the most powerful and effective means for the distribution of products and content links. Most digital marketing campaigns are also targeting social media sites because of the large audience available on these sites, especially on social mobile. Presently, the total number of Internet users worldwide is 4.39 billion, and according to a report by WeAreSocial title, "Digital 2019: Global Internet Use Accelerates", there are 3.48 billion social media users worldwide. 

Clearly, this show that most people access the Internet on social media. Inadvertently, ecommerce websites also benefits from this large social media presence. Out of all the digital marketing channels that are available, which include affiliate marketing, email marketing, SEO marketing, Content marketing, blogs, mobile marketing, video steaming and others; Social media marketing is the most effective and widely used by digital marketers.

The social media share tool have become a powerful feature on the Internet used by websites including  ecommerce sites, which provides an easy way of distributing products links and content to friends and connection on various social media platforms to which they have subscribed. This has led to a large extent to increase traffic to these websites.

While recognizing the importance of social media in the growth of ecommerce, it must also be made clear that selling products directly on social media sites is far less effective that ecommerce sites, and that the social media marketplace is for startups looking to take advantage of the Internet and display their products and services on their ecommerce pages.

Digital marketers and content owners have continually promoted their marketing campaigns on leading social media channels, such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, because of the large number of users and popularity of these sites. Facebook alone has 2.6 billion subscribers worldwide, as at March 2020, whereas in Nigeria there were 20,530,000 Facebook users in the same period in 2019. Facebook continues to dominate social media, and the most used social media channel by digital marketers.