6 parts to a complete integration
70/20/10 the content-mix rule
5 networks in the minimum setup
Social media and XML feeds for your store

For a new store, social media is two things at once: a source of traffic and the infrastructure for ads and catalogs. And most new stores only deal with the first side — they post photos and hope. The second side, the technical one wired into your store, is often what decides whether your ads work or just burn money.

This article covers both sides:

  1. Setting up and optimising your profiles
  2. Connecting to Shoptet (Meta catalog, XML feeds, comparison sites)
  3. A content plan and the formats that work

If you're reading our pillar guide to starting an online store, this is a deep dive into Phase 7 and part of Phase 8 (XML feeds).

Part 1: Setting up profiles — rules you can't skip

Rule #1: Set up your profiles BEFORE you launch the store, not the day before. The algorithms need time to start distributing you. You need time to find your voice. Ideally 2–4 weeks ahead with active posts.

There's a principle worth knowing behind this: the mere exposure effect, described by Robert Zajonc in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1968). Zajonc repeatedly showed that purely repeated, non-aggressive exposure to a stimulus (a brand, a face, a word) increases how much we like it, without us consciously noticing. When your brand shows up in the algorithm five times before a customer buys from you for the first time, the previous four contacts weren't failures — they were building the trust that the fifth contact turns into a sale.

Rule #2: Consistency > perfection. Three posts a week for six months deliver more than ten perfect posts in one month followed by nothing. The algorithms reward regularity, not genius.

Rule #3: Always a business account, never a personal one. A business account gives you statistics, ads, shopping and a host of things you can't get from a personal profile.

Instagram

What to set up:

  1. Business account (switch from personal in settings) — required for shopping, ads and statistics.
  2. Connection to a Facebook Page — via Meta Business Suite. Without this, neither Instagram Shopping nor ad management works.
  3. Bio (150 characters) — who you are, what you sell, for whom, plus a CTA and link.
  4. Link in bio — Linktree, Taplink, or (better) your own landing page with the most important links.
  5. Story Highlights — at least 5 categories: Products, About us, Reviews, FAQ, Behind the scenes.
  6. Profile picture — your logo, not the founder (unless you're a personal brand).
  7. Cover images in Highlights — a consistent style, brand colours.
  8. Activate Shopping on Instagram — product tagging in posts (requires an approved Meta catalog, see below).

Facebook

  1. Business Page (NOT a personal profile).
  2. Fill in all the info — address, opening hours, contacts, website, company ID.
  3. Call-to-action button — "Shop now" (linking to the store) or "Contact us".
  4. Activate Facebook Shop — a product catalog.
  5. Meta Business Manager — required for managing ads, pixels and catalogs. Without it, you can't do the advanced stuff.

TikTok

  1. Business account — free, gives you statistics and the option to run ads.
  2. Bio (80 characters) — a short description + a link to the store (allowed from 1,000 followers; before that, via a link in the comments).
  3. TikTok Pixel — install it via GTM (the only right way) or directly into Shoptet.
  4. Connection to the Meta catalog — so products can be pushed into ads.

A myth that's only half true: "TikTok is for teenagers, my audience isn't there". The reality: in the Czech Republic, TikTok has a broad user base reaching far beyond teenagers, and in many categories (lifestyle, fashion, beauty, family, services) it competes with Facebook and Instagram. If you think your audience isn't there, they very likely are — you're just not looking for them the right way.

Pinterest

A hugely underrated platform, especially for visual products (fashion, cosmetics, home, kitchen, décor). It generates steady organic traffic without burning budget. What makes Pinterest psychologically interesting is that users arrive with purchase intent — they're in the planning phase, not passively scrolling. In Eugene Schwartz's terms (Breakthrough Advertising, 1966), these are people at the second-to-third level of awareness — they know they have a problem or a desire and are actively looking for how to satisfy it. For e-commerce, that's an extremely valuable state of mind.

  1. Business account.
  2. Website verification — a meta tag or a file on the server.
  3. Activate Rich Pins — they pull price and availability from the store automatically.
  4. Product Pins — a link to your product feed.
  5. Boards by category.
  6. The first 30 pins by hand, then automation via the feed.

YouTube

Long-form content, an SEO booster (YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine after Google).

  1. Brand Account (not personal).
  2. Cover image, logo, channel description, a link to the store.
  3. First videos: product presentations, tutorials, behind the scenes.
  4. YouTube Shorts (vertical, max 60 s) — a faster route to organic reach.

Part 2: Connecting to Shoptet — the Meta catalog

This is the most underrated part of the whole stack. Without a connected Meta catalog you can't run dynamic remarketing on Facebook and Instagram. And dynamic remarketing has long been one of the highest-ROI channels in e-commerce.

What the Meta catalog is

The Meta catalog is a database of your products inside the Meta ecosystem. When it's properly connected, you can:

Why dynamic remarketing works psychologically

Dynamic remarketing is essentially a technological application of the mere exposure effect described by Robert Zajonc (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1968) — a user who saw a product has it in their head (even without realising it). When they see it again in an ad, the brain processes it as familiar, not new. And processing fluency (ease of processing), according to a long line of psychological research, translates into more positive evaluation and greater willingness to act. On top of that comes the endowment effect (Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler, Journal of Political Economy, 1990): the user psychologically "owned" the product the moment they browsed it, and returning to it feels like going back to something of their own, not buying something new.

How to connect (step by step)

Path in Shoptet: Connections → XML feeds → Facebook catalog — here you'll find the automatically generated feed URL you need for Meta Commerce Manager. The feed URL is accessible without logging in.

  1. In Shoptet, copy the URL of the Facebook catalog feed.
  2. Open Meta Business Suite → Commerce Manager → Catalogs.
  3. Create Catalog → Type: E-commerce.
  4. Add Products → Use a Data Feed → paste the URL from Shoptet.
  5. Update frequency — daily (recommended) or hourly (for stores with fast-changing prices).
  6. Connect the catalog to the Meta Pixel — Catalog → Settings → Pixel Connection. You insert the Pixel itself in Shoptet under Connections → Social networks, the Facebook tab, the "Facebook Pixel and Conversion API" field.
  7. Activate Instagram Shopping — Meta Business Suite → Commerce → Get Started → Shopping. Approval takes several days, sometimes weeks.
  8. Once approved — you can tag products in IG posts.

What can block approval

Part 3: XML feeds and price comparison sites

In the Czech Republic, price comparison sites are one of the most important sources of traffic for e-shops. Together, Heureka, Zboží.cz, Glami and Google Shopping account for a large share of traffic in some categories — and, importantly, people arriving from comparison sites are in active buying mode, often with high intent. That's the central route of processing from Petty and Cacioppo's ELM model (1986) in practice.

Path in Shoptet: `Connections → XML feeds` (for Heureka also `Connections → Heureka → XML feeds`)

Automatically generated feeds

Platform

For whom

Cost

Heureka

Universal, strongest in the CZ

CPC by category

Zboží.cz

Universal, part of Seznam

CPC by category

Google Shopping

Universal, integrates with Google Ads

CPC within Google Ads

Glami

Fashion and accessories

CPC, GLAMI_CPC parameter

Facebook catalog

For Meta ads

No fee

Check before activating

Mergado: feed management at an advanced level

If you have more than 200 products and really want to maximise your comparison-site performance, invest in Mergado. It costs a modest monthly fee and does things no other tool in the Czech Republic does to the same extent.

What Mergado does:

A practical rule: Mergado pays for itself even at a relatively low monthly revenue from comparison sites. If comparison sites are generating revenue, not optimising your feeds is throwing money away.

Part 4: Instagram content on your store

Showing Instagram posts right on the store's homepage works as social proof (Cialdini, Influence, 2006) — the visitor sees you have an active brand, reviews, lifestyle content. When the content is good, mirror neurons kick in too (Rizzolatti et al., 1996): watching people experience the product simulates the same experience in the viewer's brain and builds a desire to own it.

How to do it in Shoptet: the Shoptet Market has various add-ons and integrations for displaying an Instagram feed on your store. Choose the specific solution based on your template and the current Shoptet Market (doplnky.shoptet.cz). After installation, the Instagram block is usually inserted into the page via the Template Designer / layout.

Practical tip: place the Instagram block between the hero banner and the product categories, not down in the footer. Nobody sees it in the footer, because according to Nielsen Norman Group eye-tracking data, most users' eyes on both desktop and mobile stay in the top half of the page, and only a minority of visitors scroll all the way to the footer.

Part 5: The content plan — what to post

This is the one part I can't do for you, because it depends on your product, your brand and your audience. But I can give you a framework that works across categories.

The 70/20/10 rule

If you post only sales content, people stop following you. If you never sell, people don't buy. 70/20/10 is a healthy balance.

The reason 70% of your content should be valuable, not sales-driven, is psychologically simple: the principle of reciprocity (Cialdini, Influence, 2006). When an audience receives value for free, a sense of obligation forms in them, which then converts at the first sales moment. A classic restaurant study (Strohmetz et al., 2002) showed that a waiter who gave guests a small gift (sweets) before the bill raised tips by an average of 14%, and a personalised gesture on top raised them by 23%. Social media works similarly: every valuable post is a small gift that builds a psychological reciprocity "credit" in the follower's mind.

Types of content that work

  1. Product showcases — beautiful product photos, not a catalog but lifestyle.
  2. Behind the scenes — production, packing, the team. It builds trust, because in modern marketing transparency has become a signal of the authenticity customers actively seek out.
  3. User Generated Content (UGC) — customer photos and videos. It works better than professional content precisely because it feels authentic and activates the "people like me" social proof — an effect Cialdini documented in the hotel towel-reuse study (Goldstein, Cialdini & Griskevicius, Journal of Consumer Research, 2008): a message referring to "people like you" was a third more effective than a generic appeal.
  4. Educational content — how-tos, usage tips, how to choose. It reinforces the brand's authority, another of Cialdini's principles.
  5. Entertaining content — memes, trends, humour.
  6. Testimonials — reviews in post format, not just in Highlights.
  7. Influencer collaborations — micro-influencers (1,000–50,000 followers) typically generate a higher engagement rate than big celebrities, because they feel more authentic and activate the principle of unity (Cialdini, Pre-Suasion, 2016) — the feeling of "one of us" is psychologically more powerful than "someone famous".
  8. Giveaways — contests to boost reach and followers.

Posting frequency (recommended)

Platform

Feed

Stories

Reels

Instagram

3–5× a week

daily

3–5× a week

Facebook

3–5× a week

daily

2–3× a week

TikTok

—

—

5–7× a week

Pinterest

5–10 pins a week

—

—

YouTube

1× a week long-form, 3× a week Shorts

—

—

LinkedIn (B2B)

2–3× a week

—

—

Reels and TikTok formats that generate views

Viral structures that work consistently:

  1. Unboxing — opening a package of your products.
  2. Before / After — a transformation after using the product.
  3. GRWM (Get Ready With Me) — products in a routine.
  4. Myth busting — debunking myths about your category.
  5. How it's made — the production process.
  6. Day in the life — a day of the founder/employee.
  7. Haul — showing off a new collection.
  8. Trending sounds — riding current trends.
  9. Q&A — answers to frequent questions.
  10. Tips & Tricks — tips for using the product.

A rule that applies across the board: the hook in the first 3 seconds decides everything. If you don't grab the customer in the first second, they scroll on. Start with a claim, a question or a visual shock, not a slow intro. Behind this is Joe Sugarman's concept of the slippery slide: the only job of the first sentence (or the first second) is to get the viewer to the second. The second to the third. And so on. No moment in the video can have a "gap" where the viewer loses a reason to keep watching — the algorithm notices it before you do.

(The topic of "hooks" for Reels and TikTok deserves its own article — it's in the works.)

Part 6: Launching ads on social media

This deserves its own article (in the works), but the brief minimum you need to know:

  1. Don't run ads without the Meta Pixel + CAPI — you won't have the data to optimise.
  2. Don't run dynamic remarketing without the Meta catalog — you're throwing money away.
  3. Don't launch a campaign without at least 5 different creatives — Meta needs variations to test.
  4. The first 7 days = testing, not scaling — don't push the budget; let the algorithm find what works.
  5. Optimise for Purchase, not ViewContent or AddToCart — quality > quantity.

Pre-launch checklist

The full series: How to start an online store in 2026

This article is part of a seven-part series on starting an online store in 2026. The other parts:

FAQ

Do I need a profile on every network?

No. The minimum: Instagram, Facebook, Google Business Profile. If your segment is visual (fashion, food, beauty, home), add Pinterest. For B2B or a service segment, LinkedIn. Add TikTok and YouTube only once you have the capacity for video production.

What is the Meta catalog and why do I need it?

The Meta catalog connects your product feed to Facebook/Instagram. It enables: automatic dynamic remarketing (ads showing the specific products a user browsed), shopping via Instagram Shopping, and product tagging in posts. Without a catalog, 60–80% of Meta Ads features don't work.

How much does Mergado cost?

Mergado offers tiers from an entry-level plan (one feed) up to higher plans for large stores (dozens of feeds, advanced rules). For a new store the PRO plan is usually enough — it lets you optimise feeds for Heureka, Zboží.cz, Google Shopping and the Meta catalog.

How often should you post on Instagram?

The recommended minimum: 3–5 posts a week plus daily Stories. Fewer than 3 posts a week and the algorithm stops recommending you to new followers. More than 1 post a day without quality, on the other hand, burns your engagement. Quality matters more than frequency — 3 great posts beat 7 average ones.

What's a good content mix?

The 70/20/10 rule: 70% valuable content (tips, how-tos, backstage, behind-the-scenes), 20% stories and community (customers, team, values), 10% direct sales messaging (promotions, discounts, launches). If you flip the ratio (70% sales), your followers leave.