Yikes – the holidays are just (days and weeks) away. Do you have something clever up your social media sleeve to increase holiday sales and bring more attention to your brand?
Last year, according to Statistic Brain Research, 90% of people reported shopping online and $1.5 billion was spent on Black Friday alone. With online shopping increasing every year, you can be sure that people will be buzzing around the internet in the next few days looking for ideas of what to buy. Smart businesses will capture their attention with social media updates and promotions.
Here are 5 last minute ideas to show off your business and make your holiday sales a bit more jolly:
1. Show your thanks by recognizing your top customers and followers.
Who are your top customers or influencers? Everyone has them. They’re the people that are loyal to you, retweet your content on Twitter, share and engage with your announcements on Facebook, favorite your Instagram images and overall support your business. Give those people a shout out on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. Share a story, a photo or just thank them publicly through your social media platforms. Make sure you tag them so that they see your words of appreciation.
2. Advocate a nonprofit you believe in and invite your followers to help.
Is your business doing any charitable giving? Invite your followers and customers to be part of the goodwill. This is the time of year when many people want to reach out and help those who are less fortunate but aren’t sure of the best way to do so. By offering them an easy solution you are helping them contribute and helping the needs of a non-profit. One idea is to do a matching program, where you contribute a set donation amount for every donation your customers make. Alternatively, you can collect donations from your customers and offer them a steep discount on your products or services when they contribute.
3. Encourage followers to help you merchandise.
Even if you have most of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales planned, invite your followers to chime in on what they want to see on sale. We all know that visuals on social media are effective. Take advantage of that by showing several photos of products together and ask your followers to vote on which item to have on sale. No doubt you will get some suggestions, plus folks clicking over to your website to take advantage of the sales.
4. Give your fans a video tour of your shop.
Do you Periscope? If you do, this is a great opportunity to do a little tour of your offline store the days before Black Friday with some hints of what is going on sale so that customers can start planning their holiday shopping. Not a Periscope person? No worries. Do a quick, casual video with the same idea and post it to your Facebook. You audience will love the inside scoop of seeing your products “in person” rather than just in a photo. Want to stretch the power of video even further? Promote your video with a Facebook ad to a targeted audience of people.
5. Increase your reach with holiday hashtags.
Hashtags are an excellent way to increase the reach of your message when using Instagram and Twitter. Create a hashtag for the holidays or take advantage of other popular and timely hashtags. Not sure how much traffic a hashtag is getting? Do your homework on Tagboard. #holidayshopping, #blackfriday and #holidaygifts are some of the most common holiday hashtags that are already seeing a lot of activity.
Did some of these ideas get your inner Santa thinking? We’ve got more where that came from. Click on over to our “20 Tips to Increase Holiday Sales with Social Media” guide and let the holiday creativity continue!
