Use Social Media to Promote Your Black Friday Sale

Customers start planning their Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping weeks in advance to get the best deals. Your business needs to make your deals easy for consumers to find, and one of the best ways is through social media.

Show Off your Black Friday Sale

Tease out pictures of your top sale items on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest a week out. Include images of the actual product and your price so customers can compare it with other stores they’re considering shopping at. Keeping your deals hidden until Thanksgiving day will reduce the impact your promotion will have. Stick a post to your Facebook page about your sale hours for Black Friday and the weekend with a link to your sales ad or a blog post showcasing the deals. It’s essential to make it very easy and visible to your customers so they can plan our their day. Use Facebook’s promoted posts to get your message seen by all of your fans, not just the 5-10% that Facebook displays for free these days.

Exclusive Black Friday Offers

Offer coupons to your social media followers that they can’t get anywhere else. The craft store Michaels created a Facebook-only coupon for Black Friday last year. They offered 30% off the entire purchase during limited hours. Many of their Facebook fans shared the deal with their friends, which lead to large increase in likes on Michaels page that week. Best Buy offered a contest to its Twitter followers last year to take a 6 1/2 second video of themselves in line on Black Friday. The videos were shared via Vine, and Best Buy retweeted the ones they liked the best.

Use Hashtags

If you’re posting deals on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or Vine, be sure to include #BlackFriday or #CyberMonday to help customers find your deal easily. Engage with your customers on Thanksgiving Day using hashtags that aren’t specially related to deals as well. Last year phrases such as #happythanksgiving, #recipes, #turkey trended on Twitter. If you’re selling sports merchandise, use a hashtag to reach out to the fans watching one of the three NFL games on Thanksgiving day such as #Seahawks or #ChicagoBears. Leveraging Throwback Thursday #TBT gives you a chance to share pictures of holiday, sale, or employees past in a playful way with your fans. Visit our blog about Tweeting for your Business for more ideas and information on hashtags.

Schedule Your Posts

Holiday deal shoppers will get up at 3, 4, or 5 a.m. to get a discount on the items they want. Schedule posts in Facebook to send out at those early hours to capture the customers on Black Friday. Engage them with fun questions like how far they’re driving that day, how warm they need to dress, do they take treats or coffee to enjoy while waiting in the lines outside of the store. Smartphone users will often while away the time in line by looking on social media. Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule posts for your Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus pages.