Social Commerce, Defined
- Stuart Johnson
- Dec 22
- 11 min read
What it is, what it isn’t and what it means for direct selling’s future.
Over the last few years, a new phrase has quietly moved from conference stages and investor decks into everyday conversations: social commerce.
Retail analysts use it. Tech companies tout it. Social platforms are racing to build tools and features around it. And increasingly, consultants, thought leaders and executives throughout the channel are all asking the same question:
What does social commerce mean for direct selling?
Is it just a trendy label for what this channel has always done—people selling to people through relationships and referrals? Or is it something new—a structural shift in how customers discover, evaluate and purchase products in a digital-first world?
The answer is: both.
Social commerce is a new term for a new era. But it is also a powerful signal to the outside world that the way people shop has permanently changed, and direct selling is uniquely positioned to lead—not follow—in this transformation.
What Social Commerce Is—and Isn’t
Let’s start with clarity. Social commerce is more than “selling on social media.” It’s not simply posting product pictures on Instagram or sharing a link on Facebook. Those are tactics. Social commerce is about where the entire customer journey happens.
In a social commerce environment, the flow looks like this:
Discovery happens in the feed—through a creator, a friend or branded content.
Evaluation happens in the comments, reviews, live chats, DMs and shared videos.
Purchase happens without leaving the platform—through shoppable posts, in-app checkout or integrated links that remember payment details and shipping preferences.
Social commerce turns the social platform itself into the storefront, the sales conversation and the checkout counter. That’s very different from traditional ecommerce where social media drives traffic to a separate website and creates an inherent barrier to purchase. In social commerce, social becomes the website.
For the broader retail world, that’s a radical shift. But for direct selling, it should feel familiar. This channel has always thrived where community and commerce intersect. Social commerce simply moves that intersection from the kitchen table to the digital feed.
Powered by AI
Going forward, social commerce will increasingly be defined by the power of AI—how well a company turns data, content and conversation into real-time, personalized experiences. Intelligent commerce stitches together product discovery, creator content, customer chat, payments and follow-up into a single, learning system. In short, AI makes social commerce feel one-to-one at scale.
As these systems learn, the impact compounds. Each interaction teaches the engine a little more about who the customer is, what the field needs and which messages actually move the needle. Over time, that intelligence will sit quietly underneath our social commerce efforts—helping the right product and message show up at the right moment, without adding complexity for the field or the customer.
Why It’s Exploding
Three forces are driving the rise of social commerce: proximity, trust and friction.
Proximity
Consumers—especially younger generations—are not starting their shopping trips on a search engine or a corporate home page. They are starting inside social apps. They are already there, engaged, scrolling. Social commerce brings the buying experience into the space where they are already spending their time.
Trust
Direct selling has always been built on relationship and referral. Social commerce amplifies that dynamic in a digital context. Instead of one person telling you about a product in a living room, you see thousands of people reacting to it in real time. A creator you follow shows you how it works on live video. A comment section becomes a running testimonial thread. The result is the same relationship commerce principles the channel has relied on for decades—people buying from people they trust—but now powered by a visible, always-on conversation.
Friction
Every additional click in a traditional funnel—social ad to brand site to product page to cart to checkout—is a chance for distraction and drop-off. Social commerce compresses that journey. The moment of inspiration (“I like that”) and the moment of transaction (“I bought it”) happen in the same environment, often in a single flow.
Direct selling has always gone where the customer is—homes, offices, kitchens, coffee shops, community gatherings. Social commerce is simply the next neighborhood.
And the concept of live shopping via media is certainly not new. The QVCs and HSNs of the world have been doing it for decades—but now those conversations are shifting to the biggest, most relevant community of all.
We must be where the conversations occur. We must make it simple, fast and convenient to shop. Removing as many barriers to purchase as possible not only creates a better user experience for the customer, it sets up the company and the field for success.
The New Storefronts: Platforms as Marketplaces
When you take note of how the major platforms are evolving, the pattern becomes clear. TikTok Shop and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, are perhaps the purest expression of social commerce at scale.
Short-form videos, creator storefronts, live shopping events and in-app checkout collapse marketing, storytelling and transaction into one entity. The video is the ad, the presentation and the order form all at once. For categories like beauty, wellness and fashion—the backbone of direct selling—that is a powerful combination.
Meta has layered shopping tools into Facebook and Instagram. Shops, shoppable posts and in-app checkout have turned profiles and pages into destination storefronts. For many direct selling companies, this is where the first experiments began: Facebook Lives functioning as digital parties; private groups acting as always-open showrooms; Instagram posts and Reels offering distributors opportunities to tag products and link to social shops.
Beyond the giants, smaller platforms and creator networks are building their own ecosystems. Affiliate-style platforms and link-in-bio tools tie content to commerce in smoother ways. The common thread is simple: the creator—not the corporate site—becomes the primary storefront.
Again, the DNA feels familiar. Direct selling has always put a person at the center of the story. But in this new environment, that “person” might be a top distributor, a niche creator, a micro-influencer or even the brand’s own social channel—and the gatekeeper is increasingly the platform’s algorithm.
Shared DNA
So, is social commerce just a new label for what direct selling has always been? The answer is yes and no.
Yes, the philosophy is aligned. Direct selling and social commerce are both built on trust, recommendation and community-led growth. Both live outside traditional retail and use relationship as the bridge to purchase. But underneath that shared philosophy, the structure is changing.
Traditional direct selling is organized around independent distributors who affiliate with a company, use its replicated tools and operate within the confines of its compensation plan. Whether that has been through selling products at in-home parties or hosting packed hotel ballrooms for opportunity presentations, corporate ran the show, owning the infrastructure—systems, warehouses, websites, data—and designing the economics.
Social commerce, by contrast, is organized around platforms. The infrastructure lives inside TikTok, Meta or another social environment. The algorithms decide who sees what. Creator tools determine whose voice carries. In many cases, the platform—not the company—controls the customer relationship and transaction data.
That shift has real implications. In classic direct selling, if you own the comp plan and the back office—you own the model. In social commerce, you may be one app update away from a very different playing field.
But that doesn’t make social commerce the enemy of the channel. It simply means we cannot treat it as a bolt-on tactic. It is a new operating environment that demands new design choices.
Social Selling vs. Social Commerce: Why Language Matters
Inside the industry, we talk far more about “social selling” than “social commerce.” That isn’t wrong, but it is narrow.
Social selling is a people-first term. It rightly focuses on the behavior of distributors—how they use social tools to connect, tell stories and invite customers to buy. It describes tactics and training.
Social commerce is a market-first term. It describes a broader ecosystem that includes brand shops, platform marketplaces, creator storefronts, affiliate models and classic distributor activity. It forces us to think bigger than a single field strategy.
A distributor hosting a Facebook Live “party” with shoppable links is doing social selling and participating in social commerce. A beauty creator on TikTok who has never heard of direct selling, but sells out her inventory in one live session, is absolutely part of social commerce, even if she never attends a company convention.
For channel executives, using the broader term in strategic conversations is helpful because it raises more fundamental questions. Where do we want to sit in this ecosystem? Do we want our brand presence to be centered in corporate channels, the field, platforms, influencers, affiliates —or in some combination of those? How do we support our distributors to act more like creators without losing the compliance, culture and community that make this channel unique?
The words we use shape the decisions we make. Narrow language tends to lead to incremental change. Broader language opens the door to reinvention.
How Direct Selling Is Already Participating
The good news is that most direct selling companies are already in the social commerce arena—whether they use that label or not.
Legacy names like Avon, Mary Kay, Herbalife, Pampered Chef and Tupperware are nudging the sales conversation out of the living room and into the feed. Their fields are using Facebook Live events that feel like digital parties; short-form demos on Instagram Reels and TikTok; and social shops where customers can tap a tagged product and buy on the spot.
Others, like MONAT, Beauty Society and Arbonne, are leaning into a more influencer-style approach. Their distributors look and act a lot like creators—curating “get ready with me” routines, posting before-and-after transformations and building audiences that extend well beyond their immediate friends and family.
Meanwhile, companies such as Scentsy, Color Street, Norwex and Lemongrass Spa are turning Facebook groups and recurring live “parties” into 24/7 social commerce environments.
Corporate teams are creating improved social assets, link-in-bio tools, simplified mobile enrollment and starter kits designed to be “Instagram ready.” MONAT has even gone a step further, creating an official TikTok shop. All of that is a step in the right direction. And the through line is clear: leading companies are designing from the reality of social commerce, not merely trying to adapt to it.
They start with a clear understanding of where and how the customer experiences the brand—most often in a feed, a live, a short video or a community—and then work backward to ensure that content, community and checkout are as seamless as possible.
Strategic Questions Every Company Must Answer
As social commerce moves from experiment to expectation, a few strategic questions become unavoidable.
Ownership
Who owns the customer relationship? When a sale happens inside a social platform, how much data does the company actually receive? How will we continue the conversation after the first purchase if we do not have reliable access to that customer?
Direct selling has always prized lifetime value and long-term consumption; that requires a plan to bring customers into assets we own—communities, apps, email lists—even as we meet them on the platforms they prefer.
Identity
Are our top field leaders primarily distributors or are they increasingly creators? If they function like creators, do our tools, policies and compensation reflect that reality? Do we help them build personal brands that can live across platforms, or do we confine them to duplicating corporate content? And are we prepared for a reality where someone with creator-level reach may expect creator-level economics?
Risk
Platform risk is now business risk. A change in algorithm, an update that deprioritizes external links, a new fee structure for in-app checkout—these are not small adjustments. They can materially affect volume patterns. Companies that over-concentrate their activity on a single platform may find themselves vulnerable overnight. Diversification—along with thoughtful investment in owned digital infrastructure—is now a strategic necessity, not a luxury.
Culture
Our channel has always been about community, mentorship and personal growth. As the environment speeds up and the medium shifts from in-person to digital, how do we preserve that DNA? The most successful companies are using technology to deepen community—not replace it—by creating spaces for coaching, recognition and collaboration that are as intentional online as they once were in hotel ballrooms.
The Road Ahead
Social commerce is not a trend on the horizon. It is the environment our field is already operating in today. The question is not whether direct selling will participate. It already does. The real question is whether we will participate by default or by design.
In a world where the “party” is now a live stream; the “guest list” is now an algorithmic feed; and the “host” may be a distributor, a creator or the brand itself—we have a choice to make. We can treat social commerce as a set of new tools tacked onto an old model. Or we can recognize it for what it truly is: a fundamental shift in how people discover, evaluate and purchase—and then intentionally engineer our companies to feel native in that world.
Direct selling has never grown by playing defense. It has grown when leaders had the courage to rethink the model, not just update the language.
Social commerce, properly understood, is not a threat to direct selling’s future. It is the proving ground for it. The same principles that built this channel—trust, relationship, storytelling, community—sit at the very center of this new landscape.
The companies best positioned for future growth will be the ones that stop asking, “How do we add social commerce to what we already do?” and ask instead, “How do we redesign what we do so that it belongs in social commerce?”
That is the conversation worth having. And the time to have it is now.
5 Questions Every CEO Should Ask about Social Commerce
If a new customer discovers us today on social, how many clicks stand between curiosity and checkout?
Where does our brand look and feel most alive online—and who is responsible for that presence: corporate or field?
What percentage of our orders could realistically move to a social-commerce or app-based flow in the next 24 months?
Do we have a clear stance on who owns the customer relationship in a platform-dominated world—and is that reflected in our systems and compensation?
If we erased our website tomorrow, could a new customer still understand, experience and purchase our core offering entirely through social platforms and messaging apps?
If the answer to most of these questions is “I’m not sure” or “probably not,” you’ve just identified your strategic roadmap for the next three years.
The Personalization of Personal Development
One of the greatest strengths of direct selling has always been its commitment to personal development. But what’s changing now is the personalization of that journey. Instead of one-size-fits-all training, today’s field leaders are tapping into platforms that tailor learning to their individual strengths, communication styles and stages of growth. Social platforms surface what each person needs in real time—storytelling tips, product insights, content ideas, confidence-building tools—based on their behavior and their audience’s response.
That personalization is powerful because direct selling has always grown through people, not processes. When individuals evolve, their influence expands. And as social commerce becomes the environment where that influence lives, the impact compounds. A representative’s personal growth translates directly into more authentic content, deeper community connection and higher credibility in the feed.
The more someone grows, the more their voice resonates—and the more naturally customers gravitate toward them.
In this new era, personal development isn’t just a benefit of the business; it is a strategic advantage. Social commerce amplifies the human journey. It takes individual growth and broadcasts it—through lives, stories, reels, communities and conversations—where customers can see, feel and respond to it instantly.
Nothing drives sales like a person who is becoming a better, stronger, clearer, more confident version of themselves in front of an audience that is rooting for them.
STUART JOHNSON, Founder & CEO of Direct Selling News, has served the direct selling industry for nearly 40 years. His passion for the channel encompasses a broader commitment to build and connect the direct selling community through exclusive industry events such as Direct Selling University and the DSN Global Celebration. Stuart is arguably the most connected person in direct selling. He has built an impressive and growing network of executives. His advice and counsel are sought after by leaders throughout the channel.
An Online Exclusive from Direct Selling News magazine.
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