People Don’t Shop where They Socialize

Continuing on with the 36 Rules of Social Media, today, people don’t shop where they socialize.

I agree with the intent of this statement. If you’re trying to sell directly through social media, not only will it not work well in most cases, but many times you’ll also make people mad. Selling on Facebook feels a bit like spam.

But people do buy through social media and it can be done tastefully, especially in the realm of Pinterest. A study by RichRelevance shows that traffic to a retail site which originated from Pinterest  had an average order of $168 per order, compared to $95 for Facebook and $71 for twitter.

Social media users are definitely buying, but if you make it look like spam, they’ll head the other way.

Have you experienced success with sales through social media?