Running an online shop? Yeah, using social media to sell stuff can be a game-changer. But doing it right takes some know-how. Posting a pretty pic or two won’t cut it these days. You need tools. Good thing there are a bunch of handy SaaS platforms that make social selling a breeze.
In this guide, we’ll cover the top 7 pieces of software every social media shopkeeper should have in their toolbox. From making shoppable posts to crunching data, these SaaS apps take your sales up a notch across all the major platforms.
Table of Contents
1. Shopify
At the core of any social retail operation is a solid online store. Shopify has your back here, powering over a million businesses with its all-in-one e-commerce solution.
Their platform makes creating a polished, professional store dead simple. We're talking adding products, customizing themes, managing orders and shipping, running sales—Shopify can do it all.
Best of all, Shopify equips you with key data like traffic sources, conversion rates and top-selling items. Insights that help you turn more social followers into paying customers. Consider this SaaS your online store command center.
2. Hootsuite
Juggling content across multiple social networks is daunting without the right systems. That’s where Hootsuite shines as an indispensable social media management platform.
Hootsuite’s dashboard centralizes your accounts into a single feed for efficient posting. Robust scheduling tools allow lining up content in advance with the ability to reuse posts across networks. Analytics provide insight into your best-performing content. Hootsuite also monitors brand mentions and conversations. Collaboration features let your team coordinate publishing efforts.
3. Gong
Understanding your sales funnel is critical for maximizing revenue. That’s the value proposition behind Gong and its revenue intelligence platform.
Gong captures and analyzes actual sales calls, emails, and meetings. Powerful AI then surfaces hidden insights to illuminate customer engagement patterns, blockers, competitive dynamics, and more. These actionable data points help you optimize processes. Ongoing call monitoring also allows coaching reps and fine-tuning pitches to boost win rates.
4. Confluent
Managing massive volumes of real-time data underpins the social commerce landscape. Confluent provides an intelligent backbone for capturing and reacting to nonstop data streams.
The cloud-based platform consolidates chaotic data flows into orderly Kafka pipelines. You can then filter, transform, and route events to downstream applications for analysis and action. For social sellers, this means harnessing live streams across your channels and touchpoints. Pinpoint viral content, update inventory faster, personalize interactions, and more based on trends.
TikTok offers massive opportunities for brands to engage younger audiences and drive viral interest. But like any platform, achieving organic growth can be challenging. SMM services that provide real, high-quality TikTok followers and likes allow new accounts to quickly gain credibility and authority. More perceived influence means your content starts reaching wider audiences sooner. An initial boost saves months of grind and allows focusing more on your product. Done right, the investment pays off exponentially in long-term, sustainable growth.
5. Slack
Ongoing conversations and community connections with customers are vital in social commerce. Slack provides a home base for fostering engagement.
The popular messaging platform enables the creating of public and private channels around topics, support issues, campaigns, and more. Robust integrations also pull in data from your other platforms. Sellers can get feedback, share exclusives, run contests, and connect more personally compared to social media alone. Customers feel invested in the brand by joining the community.
6. Canva
Visual content is crucial for social selling. Yet designing attractive graphics, ads, and other assets takes time and money. Canva makes visually engaging your brand painless.
The design platform provides professional templates for every use case. Drag-and-drop layouts, fonts, images, and tools simplify creating in minutes. Extensive stock content removes sourcing headaches. For social sellers, Canva has specific templates sized and optimized for each network. Streamline pumping out platform-tailored promotions, product images, Stories, and more.
7. Mailchimp
Email still drives substantial sales, even for social-savvy brands. Mailchimp provides powerful marketing automation for maximizing email’s revenue potential.
Simple drag-and-drop builders help create on-brand sign-up forms, newsletters, promotions, and customer workflows. Automated segmentation and triggers deliver hyper-personalized messaging.
For social sellers, Mailchimp integrates audience and engagement data from your networks. Send targeted campaigns to site visitors from Instagram or Facebook. Welcome new followers with drip sequences.
Conclusion
Effectively competing in today’s social-driven retail landscape requires the right foundation of SaaS tools. E-commerce, marketing, and analytics platforms turn chaotic data and workflows into streamlined, optimized engines for sales growth.
Implementing solutions like Shopify, Canva, and Confluent allows smaller brands to punch above their weight by leveraging technology. The result is staying nimble and adaptable even as business scales rapidly across social channels.
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