BUILDING AN ONLINE COMMUNITY JUST GOT EASIER

Apr 29

Over the years, building a loyal community online has become increasingly more difficult. With changing algorithms, multiple social platforms to juggle and engagement decreasing across the board - those are just some of the challenges that  are impacting how we create a sense of community. We have found a solution for small businesses to garner a strong community through working with like-minded individuals to share their products.

MEET SHOPIFY COLLABS

Shopify Collabs is a community-based platform that connects businesses with creators to share their brand stories and promote brand awareness. It allows brands to create a recruitment page for their website (like this one), source influencers via the Discover tab and even create affiliate codes without leaving the platform. Shopify Collabs came on the influencer marketing scene in 2016 as a standalone influencer tool and was just recently was acquired by Shopify and is free for all Shopify merchants! That means if you sell your products via Shopify, you can easily set up an account to recruit influencers/creators and have them share about your brand.

When you’re ready to start scaling working with creators/influencers Shopify Collabs is a great option.

THE FEATURES WE LOVE

Recruitment page

Having a page where people can apply to work with you is a great way to find people who genuinely love your brand. You can set up a free recruitment page and ask questions to find out if they're going to be a good fit to promote your products. You can share this recruitment page on your website and in your social media bio links! Here is that example again.

Discover Tab

The Discover tab is a HUGE time saver. It allows you to search for creators by account (IG, FB, TikTok, or YT), username, keyword, location or hashtag. Shopify Collabs then filters from millions of social profiles to provide you with a list to click through and check out their metrics (following size, engagement rate, average likes & comments). You can also see their content and  their contact info (if they have their email in their Instagram bio). From there you can easily add influencers to customizable lists to start outreach!

LISTS

We’re big list people over here. The list functionality allows you to add creators to different lists. We like to create lists of influencers for different campaigns, locations or even types of creators. Once you've created a list it's easy to keep track of different influencer groups should you choose to start reaching out and working together.

COMMUNITY Tab

This is where you can keep track of who has applied to your program via your recruitment page. You can also see how many people have visited your page, members, gifting, affiliate sales (another functionality we love), and pending payments for creators. It keeps everything in one place to manage your community seamlessly.

Affiliates

Creating an affiliate program can be time consuming and difficult to manage, but Shopify Collab's affiliate tab makes it easy to add your community members, create codes and track them all within the app. It automatically creates discount codes / affiliate links in the platform that connect directly to Shopify so you don't need to create codes in multiple places. It also keeps track of the codes for you and when they've been used. It's a great option for dipping your toes into affiliate marketing without having to add another platform to your list.