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Amazon Posts: The Next Big Social Media Platform for Sellers?

 In eCommerce, PPC, Social Media
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This week, the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, shared a video on his Instagram and Twitter accounts about the upcoming changes on Instagram. The new focus, according to him, will be on four key areas: Creators, Video, Shopping, and Messaging. Mosseri did not hide the concern and the reasons behind this huge change: the big competition they face with TikTok and YouTube when video consumption is at an all-time high. While platforms are battling for the video space, a retail giant is sticking to images and looking to gain the social media shopping market. And they have the upper hand on that.

What Is Amazon Posts

‘Posts’ is Amazon’s shoppable social media: a new way to help establish a brand on Amazon and drive product discovery. Posts are still in beta and available for professional sellers or vendors. Your brand must be U.S. based and enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry to be eligible. It is currently free to join (with emphasis on ‘currently’ since they are giving signs that this will be a temporary measure).

The first and basic idea is to share the same content you publish on other social media platforms, but with shoppers on Amazon, encouraging shoppers to engage with your brand. And, the best news for sellers is that every single post is shoppable.

Why You Should Use Amazon Posts to Promote Your Brand (And Products)

Amazon numbers are unquestionably impressive; the world’s biggest online marketplace pulls in over five billion visits per month. So it’s no surprise that in the first quarter of 2020, Amazon posts were served to 77M unique Amazon shoppers, had 3.4B viewable impressions, and 95M posts engagements.

Posts is a compelling opportunity to share your brand content on Amazon for this huge audience at no cost (at least for now). Posts come up on Amazon in your brand’s feed, on detail pages, in feeds for related products, and in category-based feeds. It is also a great way to deliver your brand story to relevant shoppers as they browse your categories.

Top Tips and Best Practices We’ve Learned So Far

As with any other social media channel, an algorithm determines a score for your posts, so one of our main concerns was to figure out the golden rules behind a good feed performance.

  1. Post regularly.

Follow the same rule you do on social media. The posts’ placements are determined based on freshness, relevance, and shopper engagement. Posting high-quality content regularly increases the chance that your post will be discovered on your detail page carousels, related feeds, and category feeds. Amazon offers the option to schedule your content so you can plan out your Marketing calendar easily.

  1. Posts appear in chronological order (take that, Instagram!)

Since 2016, Instagram has changed its news feed, letting the algorithms take over instead of showing posts in chronological order, which has caused huge controversy. So we suspect people will be happy to see that Amazon will follow the sequential dates.

  1. Strict review process. 

Amazon’s Posts content guidelines are pretty strict and, differently than other platforms, must be approved before publishing. The review process usually takes 4 hours, but it might take longer. A pro-tip: post captions must not contain customers reviews, promotions, contact details, or requests to like, comment, or share.

  1. Let the image speak for itself.

Avoid a plain background, text, and infographics. Amazon’s listings have lots of rules in terms of imagery. The main photo must be in a white background, and you can upload only up to nine images to display as part of each product listing. So this is your chance to tell a bigger story. Use it to explore lifestyle imagery and educate shoppers on different ways to use your products.

  1. If products are out of stock, the related posts won’t show on your feed.

A simple rule that can avoid headaches if you know it in advance.

  1. Track and evaluate engagement metrics.

Algorithms and social media rules are constantly changing, especially at the initial stage. So is the beta phase of Amazon posts. There’s still little knowledge on how the platform will adapt to users’ behaviors. That’s why it’s so important to test and experiment with how to reach your target audience on more than one platform and learn what works best for your brand.

If you are overwhelmed with this new challenge and need any help to increase Amazon Sales, the OpenMoves team will help your brand drive profitable growth in the world’s largest marketplace. Our We-do™ full service provides you with a dedicated team to help you with your Amazon creative strategy, content development, optimization, and deployment. You can expect positive results with a breadth of talent, transparent work style, and 20 years of experience.

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