how to encourage customers to share a content on social media and convert them to referral advocates

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A store owner seeks strategies to boost social media presence by encouraging customers to share purchased items and tag the store on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. They’re exploring whether customers will organically share content when asked, and considering incentivizing this through referral programs with coupon codes.

Community Responses:

  • User Generated Content (UGC) approach: Building customer relationships and offering incentives like discounts or coupons is recommended as the foundation for encouraging content sharing.

  • Automation tool: A newly launched Shopify app (BrandPay) automates this process by:

    • Instantly rewarding customers when they post Instagram content
    • Providing rewards based on likes received (with customizable limits/approvals)
    • Converting rewards into brand currency redeemable as gift cards
    • Early testing shows millions of UGC impressions generated, with customers returning faster and spending 130% above their earned rewards

The discussion remains open for additional experiences and tool recommendations.

Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello Everyone,

I’m trying to attract a new customers to my store by increasing the social presence on social media platforms (e.g. instagram, facebook, tiktok etc) by encouraging a customers, who purchase in the store, to share a content of the items they’d been purchased and tag or mention the profile store on their content.

What is your experience with that? Customers really share a content and tag or mention the profile store on the content just by asking them to do that?

Additionally, I thought to incentivize that action by recruiting customers who shared a content like I mentioned above to become referral advocates and sending a coupon code to share it on the content. Has anyone had an experience with that? How do you do\did it? Which tools do you use?

If someone here also desires to do that, I would really like to be in contact.

Look forward to hearing your responses, and I really appreciate any assistance.

Kind Regards,

Nir

1 Like
2

So this is often referred to as User Generated Content. The best way to go about this is to build a relationship with your customers and also to incentivise it! Offer discounts or coupons and so on. Once the trust is there for your product and you’re building a relationship, it gets much easier. Hope this helps!

3

We have just launched an app to automate this, after early testing with 100 physical stores, and has just now integrated with Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/brandpay

It allows a brand to reward customers instantly when they post IG content, and rewards per like the customer gains on their content (can set limits and approvals). The customer then earns your brand currency, which can be spent back at your store (converting to a gift card).

Whilst its new for Shopify stores, in physical store testing, it’s generating millions of UGC impressions for brands (much more trusted content), and customers are returning to spend their earnings much faster, and are spending on average 130% above their earnings in cash at the basket checkout.