Whether or not you’re on social media platforms or not, odds are you’re customers are. They’re sharing your URL with their friends on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace.

If you want to engage in social media marketing, you’ll want to be sure to have a social media presence on your e-commerce site.

Social Media Sharing
There are dozens of sites you can visit that will provide embeddable code which can be used to create social networking icons on your site. These icons make it easy for visitors to share what they like about your site with their social media friends and followers.

A couple of sites worth checking out are ShareThis (//sharethis.com). ShareThis is a tool you can install on your site that makes it easier for visitors to share with their network. You’ve probably seen some form of ShareThis on news sites. There are typically several icons spread out in a horizontal line or grouped together under a header of “Share.” Installing this tool lets your visitors easily spread the word via social networking sites about a page or website – yours – they like.

Add This (//www.addthis.com/bookmark.php) is very similar to ShareThis. Both require site registration and a little publisher information, but both are also easy to use and do basically the same thing.

Show off your Social Media presence
If you’re on several social networking sites, it behooves you to display them somewhere on your site. For the consummate online shopper, these links show you’re not just an e-commerce beginner. The more sites you’re a part of, the more web-knowledgeable you look.

You can display your social media links either in self-created sidebar module or by using sites like Lijit (//www.lijit.com). Lijit is similar to ShareThis; however, rather than pushing people out social networking sites, Lijit pulls them into your other sites.