Social Commerce: How to Sell on Social Media in 2026
Come across social commerce and its sales-driven approaches.
The importance of social media in our everyday life cannot be overstated, and the same goes for selling via these platforms for companies. Even if you’re not an avid follower of Instagram stars or a TikTok creator yourself, there are so many things happening on social media, directly or indirectly related to our friends, job, and society, that we have to regularly interact with these platforms.
Social commerce has become the standard shopping experience for modern consumers. Its digital market size is forecasted to reach $27.5 billion by 2034.
Successful examples of Kylie Cosmetics, which allows followers to shop products directly from its TikTok videos, Dollar Shave Club, which leverages social proof via posting customers’ feedback on Pinterest, and Havaianas, which creates beautiful and shoppable Instagram feeds clearly demonstrate the power of social commerce in today’s retail landscape.
For brands, it is important to gain a comprehensive understanding of their target audience’s shopping preferences and use these insights to develop and fine-tune social commerce tactics for reaching out to new customers and maintaining strong relations with existing ones. Let’s take a look at trends, platforms, and strategies that shape social media selling today.
Table of contents:
What is social commerce or selling?
Social commerce is the practice of marketing and selling products and services via social media platforms. With it, businesses provide ways for customers to make purchases directly in social media apps that they use to connect with friends and discover various content.Social selling via Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms uses them as virtual shops for brands and their offerings. It eliminates the need for followers to switch from a social media app to the brand’s website, making the customer journey from discovery to purchase more streamlined, convenient, and optimized.
Social commerce provides brands with new opportunities to engage with customers, extend their audiences, and, consequently, improve sales. Meanwhile, it also benefits shoppers who can easily discover brand offerings, shop products in a familiar environment of a social media app, as well as connect with customer support to discuss issues or receive shopping guidance.
Social commerce vs. e-commerce: the difference
Generally speaking, social commerce can be regarded as a part of e-commerce, which covers all activities of selling products online. E-commerce comes in four main types: business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-business (C2B), and consumer-to-consumer (C2C).
The main difference between traditional e-commerce, where buyers make purchases on sellers' websites, and social commerce is that with the latter, everything happens within social media and messengers where shoppers initially discover the products. Here, five main types of tech solutions for social selling can be identified: native shopping solutions, P2P marketplaces, shoppable AR filters and masks, live shopping events, and curated shopping lists.
Benefits of social commerce for business
Selling through social media provides numerous advantages for businesses. Among them:
- Better reach of target audience. Social commerce is one of the best tools for businesses to extend their reach and help more people to discover the brand and its offerings. Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms are universally used and popular all over the globe. This allows companies to extend their reach to distant markets and find loyal customers all over the world.
- Increased brand awareness. Social media is hardly imaginable without standout personalities and celebrities. Opinions of these people, also called influencers, can take a brand’s popularity to a new level or, on the contrary, make customers turn away. Partnering with influencers relevant to the target audience can immensely help a brand in improving customer awareness.
- Convenience for shoppers. Shopping through a familiar interface of a social media platform that you use every day. What can be better? The convenience provided by social commerce directly drives the number and frequency of purchases since the customer journey gets shorter and more straightforward.
- Social proof. User-generated content, such as reviews, feedback, stories with brand mentions, or posts with a photo of a product on social media — all of this works toward establishing trust among customers. Since people today are more skeptical of advertising than several decades ago, such unbiased promotion feels much more natural and trustworthy than paid commercials of any format.
Top platforms for social selling in 2026
Let’s take a close look at some of the most popular and prospective platforms for companies to direct their social selling efforts at.
Social commerce on Instagram
Undoubtedly, Instagram is one of the top social commerce platforms on the market. Its key advantage is presenting products and services in an appealing way via eye-catching photos and videos in posts, stories, and reels. By setting up Instagram Shopping, brands can take customers straight from product discovery to purchase seamlessly. The shop feature in the Instagram account allows brands to tag items in posts, stories, and even live broadcasts, and followers to view and buy items in a way similar to an e-store. Customers can make purchases via Instagram Direct Messages, where they can also ask questions and track their orders.
Social commerce on Facebook
Facebook, which has over 3 billion active users worldwide, is one of the key social commerce platforms. Facebook Shops, the platform’s commerce service, has an extremely low barrier to entry. A company with a business account can have an unlimited number of Facebook Shops that are fully customizable online storefronts with product catalogs. Brands can also use integration with Shopify to automatically sync products with Facebook Shop and create shoppable posts and ads. Instagram Shopping is also directly linked to Facebook Shops, providing a seamless experience for shoppers. They can do an in-app checkout or open a Messenger conversation to make a purchase.
Social commerce on WhatsApp
The most popular messaging platform is emerging as a significant tool for driving sales, marketing, and customer support for enterprises. There are two types of WhatsApp Business accounts: an Official Business Account, which has a green checkmark badge and is allowed for well-known and trustworthy brands, and a Business Account, which can be created by any person who needs a business account on the platform.
WhatsApp Business allows a brand to add items to the catalog and display them in a chat with price, description, and product code. Since WhatsApp is a powerful tool for communication that combines automation capabilities with integration support for CRM systems, creating a WhatsApp shop is a great way for businesses to expand their reach and allow customers to shop right through a chat window where they get shopping assistance.
Social commerce on TikTok
With an active user base of over 1.5 billion people, TikTok has a strong position among the top platforms for social selling. Its sophisticated shopping ecosystem includes TikTok Shop, live shopping events, and seamless in-app checkout. Also, TikTok Search Ads allow advertisers to show sponsored video content on the search results page, alongside organic search results for relevant keywords. All of these make TikTok a powerful engine for social commerce, enabling brands to showcase products and drive purchases without users ever leaving the app. A consistent posting of high-quality unique content aligned with TikTok trends can build customer trust and provide insights into Gen Z and Gen Alpha preferences.
Social commerce on Discord
Discord, a text chat app widely used by students and gamers, not only serves as a platform for social interaction but also offers unique marketing opportunities for businesses. It enables the creation of communities and facilitates real-time customer communication through dedicated channels. The app's real-time event hosting capabilities and analytics provide valuable insights for businesses. Moreover, Discord can be leveraged as a customer reward system, granting access to branded Discord servers.
These features enhance marketing strategies and social selling efforts. Additionally, Discord is introducing commerce options for game developers, allowing them to sell games directly within their servers. Verified servers provide official game channels that enhance player engagement, while news channels enable developers to send updates and control messaging. This empowers developers to own the commerce process throughout their games' lifecycle, including pre-launch and in-app purchases. Discord also covers various stages of game development and offers monetization opportunities. Developers can participate by undergoing the verification process.
Social commerce on Telegram
Having transformed into something far bigger than simply a secure messaging app, Telegram allows brands to set up shops as well, making it easy for customers to create orders in-between conversations with friends and video chats with colleagues. In order to set up a shop, a company must create a chatbot, import product listings, and link a payment service.
Among the most successful Telegram shops are food delivery companies, but there are many business niches that can effectively increase their sales through social commerce on Telegram. The app is continuously updated, and its popularity grows, while such tools as customizable stickers provide great opportunities to increase brand awareness through original and fun content.
Social commerce on Pinterest
Pinterest is a go-to platform for inspiration and brand discovery for consumers. Product Pins pull real-time pricing and availability directly from a brand's catalog, while features like AR Try-On for beauty and home decor, and visual search (Pinterest Lens), allow users to move from inspiration to purchase seamlessly. The platform has historically been dominated by millennials (aged 25-34), and Gen Z is currently the fastest-growing demographic on the app.
Social commerce on YouTube
YouTube Shorts is an emerging social commerce platform that integrates into the largest global video-hosting service. Through YouTube Shopping and Google Merchant Center integration, brands can tag products in real-time, enabling viewers to see prices and complete purchases without leaving the app. Success on YouTube requires consistent, visually engaging content that features strong hooks and clear calls to action. By monitoring detailed analytics such as click-through rates on product tags and audience demographics, brands can refine their strategies and turn high-engagement short-form videos into a reliable, scalable sales channel.
AI in social selling
Automation is everywhere in modern business, and social commerce is no exception. Today, AI Agents powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) help customers solve complex issues, curate outfits, and process orders autonomously. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram provide an extensive set of tools for these AI interactions, optimizing customer service to keep response times low. Leveraging artificial intelligence for a hyper-personalized shopping experience is the major focus for brands, as they prioritize customized interactions based on users' real-time behaviors and history.
Lil Miquela — a CGI-generated influencer
For instance, Lil Miquela, a CGI-generated virtual influencer with millions of followers, collaborates with fashion brands to sell real products. On the utility side, Pinterest uses advanced computer vision AI to scan images and automatically identify specific items like furniture or clothing, providing instant "Shop the Look" links.
Emerging social commerce tools and trends in 2026
E-commerce, and social commerce, in particular, is a fast-evolving industry, which is directly related to emerging technologies and trends in the digital sphere. Let’s take a look at the most notable of them and what we expect to dominate in 2026.
Voice shopping
Voice-enabled shopping experience is revolutionizing the world of e-commerce for several reasons. The solution, powered by voice recognition and AI, offers convenience, speed, and accessibility, and amounts to about $20 billion with an overwhelming growth potential. Voice shopping simplifies the purchasing process, enhances the customer experience through personalized recommendations, and ensures data security. As more consumers embrace voice shopping and m-commerce, it becomes an integral component of the future e-commerce landscape.
Spatial commerce & AR
With an expected market size of $1.05 trillion by 2033, augmented reality is hot these days. The rise of spatial commerce opens immense possibilities to provide customers with an immersive experience and try on 3D models of products. By allowing users to virtually try on products and visualize items in real-world settings, the technology is likely to bring dramatic changes to how customers interact with products on social media. It is now standard in real estate to substitute a physical visit to a property or when buying furniture to see how a table fits in the interior. Here, Snapchat and TikTok are driving high engagement rates with their AR shopping lenses.
Niche influencers
By creating authentic, engaging content, collaborations between brands and influencers will continue to wield substantial influence in steering purchasing decisions among their followers.
Today, people crave authentic experiences and trust "Creator-Sellers" who not only recommend products but often co-create them. A company that decides to dip its toes in social commerce must thoroughly explore the social media landscape to identify influencers that are most relevant to its target audience and establish relationships with them.
User-generated content
In a way, this is a continuation of the previous point: UGC plays a paramount role in social media selling. Today, everyone can become a micro-influencer among their friends or social circle and sway their opinion regarding a product in both ways. Strong online presence, beautiful packaging, and rewarding brand advocates — all of these increase the chances for a brand to get promoted in social media by its clients. For free.
Livestream shopping
Having matured significantly since its explosion in China, livestream shopping is now a staple in Western markets as well. “Shoppertainment” can be seen on major platforms, with seamless checkout integrations becoming standard for TikTok Shop, YouTube, and others. As the worlds of entertainment and e-commerce merge, livestream shopping is poised to redefine the shopping experience.
Sustainability
Uncertain economic times always force people to buy less and research more. Social commerce provides numerous opportunities for brands to demonstrate the benefits of their products in unconventional ways. Sustainable packaging and manufacturing process, support of personalization, great value for money, all of this can and should be highlighted on brand’s social media. While “re-commerce" (reselling used goods via social channels) is also gaining more traction.
Social commerce examples to learn from
Success stories are not only inspiring but also provide valuable insights on how to leverage the capabilities of social media selling in the best way possible.
Stanley 1913
nce a utilitarian brand for workmen, Stanley transformed into a global phenomenon entirely through social commerce. By embracing the "WaterTok" trend on TikTok and leveraging authentic user-generated content (UGC), the brand shifted from selling just cups to selling a lifestyle idea. Their strategy relies on releasing limited-edition colors announced solely on social media, which creates instant scarcity and drives massive traffic the second a new collection drops.
David Yurman
A high-end NYC-based jewelry designer, David Yurman is popular among celebrities, while still doing its best to reach a wider audience through social media. The brand’s full-fledged approach to e-commerce on Instagram can serve as a bright social commerce example. Along with stunning imagery and reels showcasing products, models, and scenic places, David Yurman has a structured Instagram shop that allows shopping by multiple categories, as well as enjoyable guides that provide knowledge and inspiration for those who are in the market for its jewelry.
Sephora
Sephora is a brilliant example of bridging the gap between social scrolling and physical buying. The brand’s Virtual Artist allows users to virtually try on makeup across multiple platforms, leading to higher conversion rates and fewer product returns due to more accurate shade matching. Simultaneously, AI-powered chatbots handle routine inquiries and provide personalized beauty advice, reducing call center workloads while boosting sales through interactive purchase support.
Domino’s Pizza
With a global presence in over 90 countries, Domino’s Pizza strives for the same dominating position when it comes to different channels for customer interactions. The company knows that pizza is often ordered on a whim, and what is a better place to buy something on a whim than a messenger that people open 20 times a day? The company employs chatbots to allow customers to make orders through messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. For a returning customer, ordering via Domino’s chatbot gets astoundingly easy: their use of AI agents to remember complex order histories and predict what a user wants based on the time of day sets the standard for conversational commerce. All it takes to make an order is sending a dedicated emoji to the bot. Mind-reading is likely to be the only easier ordering option in the future, but that’s a whole other story!
Social commerce tips & best practices
Social commerce is a multifaceted activity and successful campaigns often include engaging with customers through multiple social media channels and employing several approaches. Every brand and its digital marketing strategy differ, nonetheless, here are some of the universal tips for mastering social media selling.
- Learn about your audience. For maximum engagement, align your social commerce strategy with your target audience. Choose products and messaging based on the data gathered across social media channels and create content that resonates with the audience of a particular platform.
- Schedule your content. Align your social media activity with festivities and relevant events to maximize engagement. Also, schedule some promotional posts, such as unboxing videos or close-up shots, after you’ve shared a listing to generate interest and drive traffic to the new social storefront.
- Use analytics to understand what works. Devising a social commerce strategy based on assumptions only is not worth the risk. Precise figures, including customer demographics, the conversion rate for various campaigns, and engagement rates for different types of content, should helm the direction of your social selling efforts, determining the best social media channels and approaches.
- Personalize communication. The majority of customers expect brands to know their preferences and respond much better to personalized offers. Social media and messenger selling is a great opportunity for brands to engage in direct two-way communication with customers, make personalized offers, and improve long-term relations with them.
- Leverage user-generated content. Communities play an important role in social media e-commerce. The effectiveness of advertising campaigns and partnering with celebrity influencers often pales in comparison to what accidentally viral content can do to sales. For brands, it is important to monitor social media for mentions of it and promote brand advocates through reposts, personal discounts, or even complimentary products.
- Use an omnichannel approach. To extend its reach, a company should aim at being equally present across several most important social media and messenger platforms. The growing number of such platforms makes it difficult to communicate across them all in a timely and personalized manner.
5 reasons why you should try social selling
As you can see from the above, social commerce is already used by many companies and brings noticeable results to many of them. If your company hasn’t started social selling yet, here are five main reasons why it should.
Audience growth
Social media and messengers are where billions of people communicate with each other every day. These channels provide brands with numerous opportunities to market and sell their products and services in a new way — by participating in a conversation with customers. Engaging content created by both companies and individual users transforms into a blend that overpowers traditional marketing and advertising.
Shorter customer journey
Social shopping can attract even those customers who are generally reluctant to register on new websites or have no time to go through onboarding processes in e-stores. Optimized and streamlined shopping via social apps is likely to bring new loyal customers to a company and produce a long-term sales increase.
Valuable insights
Platforms that provide social shopping features also come with convenient dashboards to track every interaction and sale. This provides valuable and easy-to-use data to analyze customer preferences, demographics, and interests. All of this can be used to optimize marketing strategy, brand positioning, and activity on every social media channel.
Higher engagement
People enjoy using social media and many of them are happy to discover that their favorite brand has an active Instagram account where they can actually shop for products they love. Social selling lays the groundwork for new potential forms of engagement between brand and customers, from a photo of a recent purchase tagging a company to some viral tweet that hits the news feed.
Increased customer satisfaction
Social commerce doesn’t end when a buyer hits the ‘Checkout’ button. On the contrary, both messengers and social media are great communication tools to stay in touch with customers. For example, what can be more convenient for a buyer than to contact support via the same channel they made a purchase in and receive a prompt personalized response? This way, social selling through the above-mentioned channels can also improve customer satisfaction, which is a key performance indicator for virtually any business.
Frequently asked questions
Let’s talk about the most common questions regarding social selling.
Which platforms are essential for a social commerce strategy in 2026?
A multi-platform approach is best for effective social commerce. Instagram Shopping and Facebook Shops are standard for visual storefronts and seamless checkout. Meanwhile, TikTok commerce and Pinterest are popular among Gen Z through live and AR shopping capabilities. Also, WhatsApp Business is essential for direct customer communication and sales support.
How does technology like AI and AR improve social shopping?
AI and AR make social shopping more interactive and seamless. AI chatbots work inside messaging apps and social platforms to answer questions instantly, provide personalized product recommendations, and help comple purchases at any time of day. At the same time, AR lets shoppers virtually try on items like makeup, clothes, glasses, or even preview furniture in their own space, helping them feel confident before clicking “buy.”
Is Amazon a social commerce?
Although Amazon integrates some of the social features, it functions primarily as an e-commerce marketplace rather than a pure social commerce platform. Unlike Instagram Shopping or TikTok commerce, where discovery, interaction, and checkout occur seamlessly within a social environment, Amazon’s ecosystem prioritizes the transaction over the social connection.
Do I need to be on every social platform to sell on social media effectively?
Not necessarily, but being active on more than one platform significantly expands your reach. Identify where your target audience spends time and focus your efforts there. Here, omnichannel messaging platforms can help by unifying conversations from Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and other channels into a single interface, so you can manage social selling without overwhelming your team.
Conclusion
Social media and instant messengers hold significant potential value that is still being discovered by brands of all sizes and industries. The growth in popularity of social selling is likely to remain strong as social media platforms expand their functionality and such cutting-edge technologies as AR and AI-bots become more widespread.
In the near future, social commerce is likely to become a staple in sales and marketing, and brands that realize it earlier have all the chances of winning a larger and more loyal audience than their competitors.One thing that is intrinsically woven into social commerce is its multi-channel character. Customers expect that a brand shoppable on Instagram can also be easily reached via Facebook, and so on. Here, omnichannel messaging platforms, such as Umnico, can help tremendously to streamline and optimize customer communication. For those who are still unsure about the benefits of social selling across multiple channels via a single easy-to-use interface, a free trial period allows them to try all Umnico’s features for free.
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