Ecommerce in simple definition, is the process of buying from an online store, make payment through electronic fund transfer and the item is then shipped to the destination of  the buyer. The keywords here are online, store, fund transfer and shipping. What links these three important elements together is sales promotions through digital marketing, and that is where social media comes in – being the most effective digital marketing channel and the most used by digital marketers.

Social media has contributed immensely to the growth of ecommerce. The very foundation of digital marketing rest on social media. It accounts for over 3 billion users on the Internet, providing leads that have generated conversions on many ecommerce websites.41 Social media and ecommerce have become vastly inter-connected and tremendously inter-dependent.

The social share tool has become one of the most powerful and effective means for the distribution of merchant products and affiliate links. Most digital marketing campaigns often target social media sites because of the large audience available on these platforms, especially on mobile. There are 3.8 billion unique mobile phone users and 3.1 billion active social media users globally, but out of these, mobile social make up about 2 billion users.42

Clearly, this has shown how relevant social media has become, both for ecommerce and digital marketing. Out of all the digital marketing channels, which include affiliate marketing, email marketing, SEO marketing, Content marketing, blogs, mobile marketing, video streaming and others; Social media marketing is the most effective and favourite channel for digital marketers.

Social share tools have become a critical element of all ecommerce sites, providing an easy way to distribute products links and content to friends and connection on various platforms that they belong, thereby helping to attract traffic to these websites.

It is a fact that while recognizing the importance of social media in the growth of ecommerce, it must also be emphasized that selling products directly on social media sites is far less effective than ecommerce sites; also the social media marketplace is mostly used by businesses looking to take advantage of the platform to direct sales of their products and services to their ecommerce pages.

Digital marketers and content owners have continually targeted their marketing campaigns at the leading social media channels, such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, because of large number of users and popularity of these sites. Facebook alone has over 2 billion subscribers, making the company the social media industry giant.