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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Are your customers fangirling over your brand? Are they creating tons of user-generated content that shows just how much they love you? Do they give you shoutouts on social media, just because? If so, you don’t just have a brand — you have a branded community.

Some brands have done such a great job promoting their images and values that their fans want to participate beyond the purchase. Building a sense of community gives fans a place to share and engage, which can help to spread the love for your brand even further.

Let’s explore what makes a great brand community tick and several examples of brands that get community right.

How Do Brand Community Practices Create Value

9 Best Brand Communities to Join and Learn From

How to Create Your Own Brand Community with Meltwater

What is a branded community? A group of customers invested in a brand beyond its products and services. Customers typically engage with the brand’s content, connect with fellow fans, and create content on behalf of the brand.

The definition of brand community can be summed up into two words: brand fandom. It can be official (sponsored by the brand) or unofficial (created by third parties). Either way, it’s about bringing people together through a shared interest, which is your brand. 

Brand communities thrive when they give their members a reason to engage. This might be an intense love for your products or services, incentives for creating or sharing content, or access to other fans who can answer questions or provide inspiration.

Reasons why community building needs to be on your radar:

Community-led growth has become a core focus for businesses and organizations, with many calling themselves "community-centric organizations" in 2022.

In 2023, more companies are expected to dedicate resources towards building year-round communities for multiple stakeholders, recognizing that communities are valuable business assets.

The 2022 State of Community Management report showed that 88% of C-level executives had positive views towards community programs, up from 56% in 2017.

Community-based marketing (CBM) has gained momentum in 2022, with investment in community for building awareness, generating data and insights, and creating valuable relationships with prospects, customers, and stakeholders.

McKinsey named community as the "big idea" in marketing for this decade, underpinning marketing strategies with community.

Community aligns closely with influencer marketing and employee advocacy, with CEOs becoming celebrities online, and influencer partnerships and campaigns showing impressive business outcomes.

Events and community are becoming more integrated, with renewed interest from events organizers in providing a pre, during, and post-event community and networking experience.

How Do Brand Community Practices Create Value?

Community means a lot to your brand. While its purpose is geared toward your customer, all that community building helps you create customers for life.

Those loyal customers create hype for your brand on your behalf. They’re sharing ideas with current and future customers, providing helpful information, and talking about your products and services. All this buzz can help your customers feel closer to your brand and discover more of what you offer.

Your community can be a powerful marketing tool that highlights your best features. It’s easy for customers to see why you’re a great choice and loved so much by others. When customers are doing some of your marketing for you, you don’t have to try so hard to win them over.

Authenticity is Key - Consumers are looking for genuine connections and experiences, and brands that focus on building authentic communities around shared values and interests are more likely to succeed in engaging and retaining customers.

Personalization is Critical - Personalization is essential for creating a sense of belonging and loyalty among community members. Brands that tailor their messaging, offers, and experiences to individual members' preferences and interests are more likely to drive engagement and retention.

Technology is an Enabler - Technology has made it easier for brands to build and manage communities, with tools like social media, chatbots, and community platforms. Brands that leverage technology to create seamless and personalized experiences for community members are more likely to succeed in driving engagement and loyalty.

To get an idea of what a great brand community looks like, we’ve rounded up nine companies that get it right. We hope these examples of brand community will inspire you to build your own.

Meltwater’s community, mCommunity, is a platform where Meltwater users can share, connect, and learn from each other. The sea of social media, PR, brand management, and branding is quite large with lots of moving parts. For comms professionals, it’s helpful to learn from other industry players to become more effective in their roles as well as to get the most out of the Meltwater Platform.

mCommunity also includes a searchable database so users can see what’s already been posted on a specific topic. It’s easy to use and driven by fellow Meltwater users.

Gymshark is one of the fastest-growing fitness brands, and its success is in large part due to its branded community. One popular feature of its community is the Gymshark Central blog, which is packed with health and fitness tips, workouts, and how-to’s that also feature Gymshark customers wearing the brand’s apparel. 

Gymshark also leans heavily on influencer marketing. Every customer is technically an influencer, as they take photos of themselves in their Gymshark gear and tag the brand on Instagram. Gymshark will also handpick its influencers to represent the brand, helping them to get in front of even more potential customers. The company also hosts a number of in-person pop-up shops and live classes to interact directly with its community.

Reading Tips: Look at the top South African fitness influencers and the top sports & fitness influencers on a global scale to inspire your brand.

A brand that needs no formal introduction, Starbucks remains one of the most talked about coffee companies in existence. That’s partly because of its tasty drinks and partly because of its commitment to building a successful brand community. 

For starters, Starbucks makes you feel like part of the family by branding your cup with your name. They’re also heavily involved in social initiatives and making sure their customers feel seen and welcomed. One example is the volunteer matchmaking that connects Starbucks partners with community members. 

User-generated campaigns like the #RedCupContest and the affinity for the famous pumpkin-spice latte help thousands of customers connect with the brand. The reward program also gives customers a reason to maintain community engagement. They can earn points through purchases, games, and other interactions, all in the name of future free drinks.

Tip: Check out more user-generated content examples for inspiration

Another strong community in fitness, Lululemon has created a whole lifestyle around its fitness wear. The brand has become synonymous with luxury and encourages its customers to lead healthier lifestyles while feeling comfortable and confident. 

One way it accomplishes this mission is by offering varied experiences to its community. For instance, you might attend a free yoga class or participate in a local event or festival. Its experiential store in Chicago is a hub of fitness activities, including classes and a juice bar. 

It has also introduced a brand ambassador program as well as an affiliates and creators program to help spread the word about the brand and showcase its products. Its ambassadors embody the brand’s core values of living healthy lives and making fitness a priority.

Great branded communities aren’t just for B2C customers or product-based businesses. As Meltwater and HubSpot prove, SaaS companies can also benefit from building a brand community.

Dubbed HubSpot User Groups (or HUGs), these groups cater to local audiences to help them get the most out of HubSpot. Regularly meet up with users who share common interests or are using HubSpot for similar use cases. This is a great chance to connect with a HubSpot Knowledge Expert and learn from them.

These groups host quarterly meetups, plus they have ongoing online discussion threads, Ask Me Anythings, and other events to stay engaged year-round.

Freelancing platform Fiverr offers communities to navigate the expansive freelancing landscape. Fiverr engages some of its top-rated sellers to host webinars and in-person events on behalf of the platform while sharing valuable tips with fellow sellers. 

Mentorship programs also allow Fiverr sellers to connect with others who are interested in learning new skills and building a successful career.

There’s also a user-driven forum where sellers can post questions and share best practices with each other. Sellers can also join clubs based on interests and geographic location. The self-service learning center keeps growing because of its highly active community base.

Beauty retailer Sephora thrives on its community of like-minded fans, which now encompasses millions of customers. Users can share product reviews, before and after photos, tips and tutorials, and other content that gives Sephora more street cred. It’s also a great place for beauty mavens to ask questions about products or techniques.

The community features multiple Groups based on interests, where users can dial deeper into specific topics. Users can also earn community badges based on engagement. Members can add these badges to their profiles and show off their status.

Tip: Take a look at the top beauty influencers to inspire your brand.

Of all the pressure cookers out there, none have become a household name quite like Instant Pot. This brand has taken to Facebook to create a loyal member community group, called the Instant Pot Facebook Group.

With more than 3 million members, it’s a place where users can swap recipes, ask questions about cooking times and methods, and enjoy this do-it-all appliance.

This Facebook group is a great example of a low-lift online brand community. It relies 100% on user-generated content, making it easy for the brand to spread awareness via other users.

Rustoleum is a leading producer of spray paints and coatings, making it easy to DIY home projects. The brand is also in the know about the benefits of an online brand community.

The community serves as a source of inspiration to Rustoleum customers. Users can share photos of their latest projects and specify which Rustoleum products and colors they used. Dubbed Creator’s Studio, the online community has also become a place where customers can ask others for advice when a project doesn’t go their way. 

The brand also conducts member interviews and publishes user-generated content to show how much it values its customers. This is a great way to instill loyalty in customers who are already buying and sharing the product.

Once you have implemented your community building strategies and utilized various tools and resources, it is important to measure the success of your efforts. This will help you identify what is working and what is not, and make necessary adjustments to improve your community engagement.

There are several key metrics to track when measuring the success of your community building efforts. These include:

Community Growth: Keep track of the number of new members joining your community, as well as the number of active members. This will help you understand if your efforts are attracting new members and keeping them engaged.

Engagement Levels: Measure the level of engagement among your community members. This can include metrics such as the number of posts, comments, likes, and shares on your community page or platform. You can also measure engagement through surveys or polls to gauge members' opinions and level of involvement.

Return on Investment (ROI): Measuring the ROI of your community building efforts is crucial to understanding the impact of your efforts. This can include metrics such as the cost per acquisition (CPA) of new members, the lifetime value (LTV) of a member, and the revenue generated from your community.

Customer Satisfaction: Community building efforts should ultimately aim to improve customer satisfaction. Measuring customer satisfaction through surveys, feedback forms, or NPS (Net Promoter Score) can provide insights into how well your community is meeting the needs of your customers and improving their overall experience.

The 9 Best Branded Communities for You To Join

Measuring your social media campaigns is the final phase before you start the process over. Here’s how to measure social media campaign success.

Creating campaigns is just one of many steps in social media marketing. Once you’ve developed the content, set your ad budget, and shared your ideas with the world, your work still isn’t done. You also need to track your campaign’s performance through campaign measurement to see how your efforts are paying off. Without a way to measure social media campaign success, you’ll be in the dark when it comes to knowing if you’re on the right track.

Social media campaign measurement gives you a clearer idea of what’s working and what’s not. Your content deserves to be recognized, and tracking its success can help you decide how to capture your audience’s attention. 

While analyzing your content might sound as exciting as a root canal, fear not! There are ways to make this process one of the easiest things you’ll do all day. Here’s how to measure social media campaigns like you know what you’re doing.

How To Measure a Successful Social Media Campaign in 5 Steps

How To Measure Social Media Campaign Success With Meltwater

Tip: Learn more about campaign measurement in general, how to measure influencer marketing campaigns, how to measure ad campaign effectiveness, how to measure brand awareness, how to measure customer experience, how to measure digital marketing campaigns, and how to measure email marketing campaigns.

Social media is constantly evolving. To keep up with your competition and make sure your campaigns are on point, you need to measure their success. 

Ongoing measurement ensures your campaigns are effective. The whole point of a campaign is to achieve a certain goal, whether it’s increasing brand awareness or generating leads. By measuring your campaigns, you can see which ones are performing well and which ones need to be improved.

You'll also need to break down your campaign measurements by platform. For example, measuring the success of a Facebook campaign will vary from your Instagram or LinkedIn campaigns. They each cater to different audiences and will therefore require campaign-specific content, a different strategy, and different social media analytics.

Campaign metrics also allow you to track your progress over time. By tracking your social media KPIs, you can see how far you’ve come and what areas still need work. You can adjust your strategies accordingly and keep moving in the right direction.

Digital marketers need to be many things: creative, resourceful, big-picture thinkers, and technologically savvy, for example. They also need to be good with numbers so they can make sense of their social media data and analytics.

With a good process, the numbers are the easy part. Here’s how to measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign in five simple steps:

Setting goals is always the first step in any type of marketing. Without a goal, you can’t decide what success looks like, nor will you be able to measure your success or know if your strategy is on track.

There are a few different ways to approach setting social media goals. One way is to choose objectives that align with your business goals. For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, you might set a goal to get more followers on social media platforms.

Another way to set social media goals is by considering what you want your audience to do as a result of seeing your content. For instance, if you want them to purchase a product, click on a link, or sign up for a newsletter, make sure those desired actions are reflected in your goals.

Have clear ideas about what you want to get out of your campaigns. Put those goals on paper and get consensus among your marketing team. With everyone working toward the same goals, you can create campaigns that will best achieve those outcomes.

Step 2: Choose the Right KPIs To Track and Measure

Social media KPIs give you the hard data you need to see that your campaigns are working. Example social media metrics include, but are not limited to:

Audience/follower count before and after the campaign

Conversion rate (e.g., signups, purchases, etc.)

Applause rate (total positive actions divided by total followers, multiplied by 100 to calculate the percentage)

Amplification rate (how many people in your audience share your content with their audience)

With so many different metrics to choose from, how do you know which ones are the most important? Here are a few factors to consider:

Align your KPIs with your original goals. Whether you want to increase brand awareness or engagement or drive more traffic to your website, choose KPIs that relate to your goal.

Consider your target audience. Different demographics will respond differently to various types of content, so it’s important to know who you’re trying to reach before you select your KPIs.

Differentiate for the platforms you’re using. Different social media platforms track different metrics. For example, learning how to measure Facebook campaign success will be different than measuring success on Twitter. See what’s available in your analytics dashboards.

You might have a mixture of insights and metrics, from engagement to conversions to brand awareness. That’s fine! The goal is to choose KPIs that reflect whether your social media marketing strategy is paying off.

Once you launch your campaign, it’s time to measure and optimize social media marketing campaigns. You don’t have to wait until your campaign is over. Depending on the analytics platform you’re using, you may be able to track movement in real time. 

Speaking of which, you’ll also need to choose the right tools to measure social marketing campaign success. For example, if your goals are to increase brand awareness, a platform like Meltwater can help to track brand mentions across social media and other channels.

Google Analytics is another helpful campaign-focused tool for tracking website traffic and engagement. You can see what content your audience is engaging with, how long they’re staying on a landing page, bounce rate, and other metrics.

If you’re not sure which tools you should be using, go back to step one. Everything you do to measure campaign performance should align with your goals. With those goals in mind, you can choose tools that capture the right data and make it easy to analyze your results.

With real-time platforms like Meltwater, you can monitor performance over time, not just when your campaign starts and ends. You can track your progress over weeks, months, and even years to see how your brand is growing in the market.

With this data, you can see how cost-effective your social media marketing campaigns are. Cost effectiveness can help you justify spending more on future campaigns or allocate more funds to one platform versus another.

At this phase, you can also analyze whether a portion of your results is coming from a specific influencer. If your content resonates with an influential person and they share it with their audience, it might be worthwhile to form a partnership with that influencer to build on your wins. They can promote you in other ways to their followers to help you gain even more traction.

These points illustrate why choosing the right social media measurement tools matters. You can easily create custom reports from your data to provide to leaders and C-suite executives that demonstrate how you’re making a difference. The less time you have to spend on reports, the more time you can dedicate to optimizing your campaigns.

Tip: Learn more about Influencer Marketing Reporting & Analytics

Now that you have a clearer idea of how your social media campaigns are performing, now is the time to go back and make them even better. 

For example, if you’re not getting many clicks or conversions, you could A/B test a different call to action. If you’re getting lots of click-throughs to your website but no sales, then you might need to tweak your landing page. Or it could be that your ad content has failed to engage your audience.

There’s a lot of information to look at during this phase. But when you’ve set goals and selected KPIs that best reflect those goals, your range of focus becomes narrower. You can more easily prioritize the right things when you’re not trying to measure, review, and refine everything.

Measuring the impact of social media marketing campaigns makes all the difference. It’s the only way to know for sure your message is being received by the right people. It also gives you clear ways to improve your content and approach so you can maximize your social media ROI.

Meltwater helps you run better social media campaigns with real-time data across multiple channels. We deliver insights from classic platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as up-and-coming Chinese social media platforms, and more.

What’s more, we transform your data into insights using a combination of AI and human analysts. Take your data to the next level by seeing what’s working and what’s not, and what you can do next.

Simply fill out the form below to request a demo of the Meltwater solutions.

How To Measure Social Media Campaign Success - 5 Steps

In 2022 we, along with many others, predicted that live shopping would be a major marketing trend. While livestream shopping didn’t take off the way a lot of people thought it would, it’s not something to discount as a marketing channel just yet — not by a long shot. In fact, it’s just getting started.

In 2022, Statista reported that live commerce sales reached an estimated 17 billion. That may sound modest, but remember, 2022 was basically the starter year for live shopping reaching a wider audience. Statista predicts that by the year 2026, sales will skyrocket to 55 billion. A 223% increase!

But what exactly is live shopping and why should brands care? We’ll cover everything you need to know in today’s blog!

What Social Media Platforms Offer Live Streaming Shopping?

Live shopping, or social live shopping, is a form of social commerce where creators or companies host livestreams on social media to promote products. Viewers of these livestreams can purchase in real time, while having their questions answered and seeing the product in use before making that final credit card entry. It’s essentially a new, and far less hokey, form of QVC and other at-home shopping programs.

Although it hasn’t been as explosive an adoption from consumers as marketers may have expected, there are plenty of reasons to jump on the livestream shopping bandwagon. 

Here are some key reasons that marketers should consider it:

How livestream shopping could become the future of retail | GMA

Live streaming is immersive and immediate — you can provide your audience with a 360 degree kind of experience. Demonstrating products, providing behind-the-scenes glimpses of a workspace or how things come together, inspiring interest in consumers. They can, in turn, ask questions or leave comments, generating conversation around the products.

And the cherry on top of this brand equity you’re building is that it’s not the bottom line. Instead of having to depend on viewers to jot down what they like for purchasing later, you can tap into their immediate enthusiasm and encourage purchases in the moment.

It may seem like a negative, but you can use the fact that live shopping hasn’t taken off to establish a cohort of super fans.

You might even get to know the screen-names of people who show up regularly in your lives. When you recognize them you can give them a special shoutout. This recognition may in turn encourage others to tune in more often — and share how much they love your brand with their friends and family.

A live shopping event can help you attract new customers, who might not be familiar with your brand if you typically only sell through a website, or in-store. This is especially key for more established businesses who are perhaps trying to break into younger markets.

Shopping live on social media could be the future of e-commerce and should therefore be a part of your social media marketing efforts. Almost every major social media platform offers some form of live shopping, and we’re sure to see them continue to hone these features in the coming months, let alone years.

Live shopping has been available on Instagram since 2022.

How to Sell More With Instagram Live: A Step-by-Step Guide

Influencers and brands can host a livestream on Instagram Live that includes direct purchase links. These live shopping streams are often used to demonstrate products or make announcements such as ticket pre-sale. To encourage Instagram live shopping, promoters may offer a discount code or early access — rewarding those who tune in.

Multiple hosts can run a live shopping stream on Instagram, making this an ideal avenue for influencer partnerships.

Instagram live shopping allows hosts to intercut the video with still photos and pre-shot video, which can be a great way to keep people engaged instead of dropping off. Like posting to your Instagram Stories, you can also save lives to your Highlights row.

Tip: These resources will help you become successful on Instagram: The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Marketing (Download), How To Be Successful With Instagram Marketing, How to Use Instagram Ads — A Guide for Marketers, How to Get Verified on Instagram, Guide to Instagram Profile Pictures, Current Instagram Trends to Watch, How To Get More Instagram Followers, How to Use Instagram for Business

Pinterest approaches live shopping a bit differently.

In 2021 they launched “Pinterest TV”, which showcases a wide range of brands and influencers, one at a time — essentially giving them each their own TV spot.

There is a schedule posted for when each spot will air and viewers can tune in for deals, new releases, and of course demonstrations of certain products. 

Viewers who miss the lives have the opportunity to watch episodes after they’ve aired, and can still purchase the products featured.

The format for Pinterest TV is great for influencers who are looking to expand their networks, given that they can advertise their appearances in advance, encouraging people to tune in.

Pinterest TV – The Gamechanger in Live Stream Shopping

While most livestreaming features have a max time limit, on YouTube you can stream for up to 10 hours.

Institutions and public figures often use this capability to host fundraisers, or allow viewers to send donations — like this Live Otter Cam from the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

Live Sea Otter Cam - Monterey Bay Aquarium

In 2022, YouTube partnered with Shopify to facilitate a smoother experience for viewers when live shopping on YouTube. The integration also expands live shopping functionality to more creators, so keep an eye out for new ‘merch drops from your favorite YouTubers!

Tip: Are you using Shopify for your eCommerce online shop? Consider taking a look at the best Shopify podcasts to listen to. We also have a list of the best eCommerce podcasts in general that could be helpful to you.

Like Pinterest, YouTube is also experimenting with live shopping events in partnership with influencers on the platform. In 2022, they launched their 2nd annual BeautyFest, a live shopping extravaganza where popular beauty influencers provide tutorials and product promotions, in partnership with several top-tier beauty brands. Celebrities like Tracee Ellis Ross, Gwen Stefani, and others also joined in the festivities.

Social Media Marketing

The 9 Best Branded Communities for You To Join

How To Measure Social Media Campaign Success - 5 Steps

Beginners Guide to Live Shopping for Marketers

How to Get Verified on Instagram

Twitter Marketing Guide: Creating a Twitter Marketing Strategy

What is Social Commerce? Definition, Examples, Tips

How To Use TikTok For Business

How to Use Twitter Analytics: Hashtags, Followers, Demographics

A Starter Guide to Advertising on YouTube

How To Get More Instagram Followers

5 Facebook Marketing Tips To Make Your Brand Successful

A Marketer’s Guide to Using Social Media for Lead Generation

Social Media Marketing

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How To Measure Social Media Campaign Success - 5 Steps

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