9 Ways to Promote Your Merch on Social Media

So you want to sell merch. Welcome to the world of e-commerce! Now, how do you sell it? To push sales, you’ll need to promote your merch–and the best place to do it is on social media. Luckily, there are lots of ways to approach promotion on socials. Check out our top 9 ways to promote your merch on social media below! 

1. Use Spring Social Integrations. 

Integrating your digital store with your social media page is now a must. In the old days, it was, “The early bird gets the worm.” Now it’s, “Social integration wins the sale.” No other tip on this list will be as important. You want to make it simple for your fans to bounce back and forth between your site and social platforms. And Spring makes it simple for you. 

Spring integrates with OnlyFans, PopUpShop, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Linktree, Stream alerts, and Discord. Need a basic refresher on how? Click Here.

2. Build Awareness & Community Around Your Brand

Social media is as good as it gets when it comes to generating buzz and marketing. It’s also the perfect place to engage natively with your target audience. This is free promotion! Get people talking about what you do online! This means having conversations, reposting hot topics, and using relevant hashtags. Audiences respond to creators who are actively interacting with others online.

Building this interaction takes time. Here are some quick tips:

• Showcase who you are and what you stand for. Authenticity is what fans respond to. Be yourself and put your passion out there, whether it be through humor or making people remember you by being….you guessed it…yourself. Don’t hold back but also still be respectful. 
• Don’t stray from your messaging. You know what you’re about, what you want to say, and how you want to say it—that’s your brand. Keep your brand consistent in all of your posts and in your comments. This consistency is what will help fans feel like they know you. 
• Engage with the right audience. Do your homework. Who regularly comments on your site? Who hits like? Who’s reposting your content? Know who is responding to your brand so you can further engage with them and others like them. 
• When you receive feedback, respond. This is key to building your community, your brand, and in turn the awareness of it. Your audience will share your work and spread the word!

3. Advertise

While not free, there is no larger reach for your advertising than social media. Socials have a global audience that is rapidly growing. These audiences are so huge, in fact, you need tools for targeting and segmenting. Each social channel where you place an ad has tools to help you do this. Use these tools to make sure you:

• Identify your audience and target market
• Zero in on that audience by layering your targeting parameters
• Set specific goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) for each channel
• Pick ad types that align with those goals
• Study how effective your conversion metrics are 

Your ad types, KPIs, conversion metrics, and the platforms you invest in will be determined by your goals for social media advertising. For instance, are you trying to drive awareness or just sales?

4. Provide Customer Support

Selling merch to fans brings you money, sure, but it also creates responsibility. When people spend their money, they become a customer, and customers expect customer service. To keep your base happy, you’ll need to provide it. So how does customer support help you promote? When it comes to social media, customer service usually happens in the comments for all to see. Customers will usually come to you to:

• Search for more info
• Inquire on products
• Offer feedback
• Engage with you or your content
• Offer perspective on what they want

How you respond creates social proof and that’s what helps further promote you and your brand. When others see these interactions, sales go up. It shows the public how you handle complaints and builds confidence that there’s integrity behind your product.  

5. Social Listening

Wouldn’t you find it invaluable if you knew who was talking about you and your brand outside of your comments? That’s what social listening is. All the data in the world is available to you on social media. Social listening offers valuable insights, including:

• Which products customers love most
• Problems or issues that keep occurring 
• The overall sentiment about your brand 

Armed with this info, you can jump on opportunities, hone your message to meet the demands of the market, and address any issues. There are many free social listening tools out there—here’s a list of some free ones.

6. Collaborate With Others

A few of the most popular social e-commerce marketing tactics are winning new followers, social proofing products, and expanding your reach. Collaboration has now become equally important. 

Social media is about community: those you follow and those who follow you. Partnering with brands who have similar audiences and engaging with influencers are just a couple of ways to expand your community while also profiting off of the collaboration. 

When you partner, create high-value giveaways or promos to your respective followers, which will multiply sales and validate your products & services to a much larger social media audience. 

7. Use Video!

Video is the landscape now. It just is. It’s the most influential. It’s the most popular. Put plainly, the most effective. It’s the reason many customers decide what to buy. It’s not an accident Instagram and TikTok are two of the biggest players in the social media game. It’s because paid and organic video content is the best way to engage users and those two platforms offer the best opportunity for that. 

Your video doesn’t need to be pricey. Don’t go for that Hollywood production value or special effects. All you need to do is speak to your audience, and show your personality as well as the value of your merch. 

8. Post User-Generated Content

One easy way to promote your merch on social media is to repost user-generated content. Examples include users (or fans) discussing the items they purchased, unboxing your products, and user reviews. 

This is why having other influencers purchase your merch is such a great asset because they help provide the social proof and positive reviews you need. 

Give your fans every opportunity to share your merch videos and pictures on social media. Encourage it. Cultivate it. Request them to tag you. Then reshare their post to your own profile. Now your content has been social-proofed! This will also make your customers feel more connected with your brand and show them you value and hear them. 

9. Post Often & Be Strategic About When

Post, post, post. Promoting on social media is all about being prolific. It helps you test what works, build that following, and gain the traction you’re going for. Have a consistent posting schedule (Hint: early morning weekdays are usually the best). Keep in mind it matters when. The best times for each platform are as follows:

• Facebook: 8:00 am to 12:00 pm on Tuesday and Thursday
• Instagram: 11:00 am on Wednesday
• Twitter: 8:00 am on Monday and Thursday.
• LinkedIn: 9:00 am on Tuesday and Wednesday
• TikTok: 7:00 pm on Thursday

This schedule will help you stay consistent, and in turn, help you build your community. Now it’s time to get out there and promote your merch on social media!