Black Friday and Social Media – Boost Your Business

In today’s economy, businesses are using social media to promote businesses’ goods/services. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are being used as serious vehicles to reach consumers in a giant way to advertise great deals.

As we speak, hundreds of deals are being advertised online and many Black Friday advertisements have been leaked to the public. Black Friday bargains are being offered from many retailers, even though the big sales blitz is still a few days away.

Using social networking sites makes sense for businesses not only because they can reach large numbers of consumers who have decided to follow them but the businesses can also reach the consumers basically at no cost.

They are using social media. This is a brilliant strategy because it will reach a much wider audience, an audience that will now be able to see the tremendous savings that are being obtained on laptops, TVs, cameras, computers, GPS devices, and much more. Other retailers are expected to do the same.

The social media channels are now considered major vehicles to disseminate information. Research has shown that numerous shoppers will be shopping online this Black Friday. Research also shows that a large number of shoppers intend to use social media sites to do their holiday shopping.

Not only will the stores be showing their deals on the social media sites but they will be advertising them with Email campaigns as well. After Black Friday is over, the shopping will continue on Saturday, which will make way for big online sales on Cyber Monday.

And the fun won’t end on Thanksgiving, traditionally seen as the day that the holiday shopping season launches. For example, after Thanksgiving, an iPhone application, which now tracks Black Friday deals, will show sales for Cyber Monday because it is the first weekday after the Thanksgiving weekend and many consumers shop online on that day.

Other companies also have Black Friday technology, including BlackFriday.info. The website, which posts retailers’ Black Friday specials, has teamed up with AOL to launch a Black Friday toolbar to give web users one-click access to its updates.

Toys “R” Us has mobile shopping, which allows customers to shop its online inventory using their mobile phones. Customers can use the mobile-enabled Toysrus.com or BlackBerry and iPhone applications to research products, get shopping help, and make purchases during in-store shopping trips and to check the availability of items that are out of stock in the stores.

Every message posted on the company’s Facebook page, also is condensed into a 140-character Tweet and distributed via Twitter.

Dealnews.com also has a free Black Friday iPhone application, which will display rumored and verified ads on users’ iPhones. Consumers can either save them to a shopping list or connect directly with a retailer’s Website to make purchases.

The application will switch over to Cyber Monday specials after Black Friday is over.

Yahoo! Shopping has an iPhone app as well that allows consumers to search UPC codes while shopping to compare store prices against online prices.

Just a few years ago, if you wanted to find the best deals, you were forced to wait for the sales flyers to show up in your newspaper or mailbox. You would make a list of what you wanted and formulate your game plan.

That has all changed now because of social media. Tools like iPhone apps, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook will be critical in helping competitive shoppers to have an edge against the thousands of shoppers going for the deals of the century this season.

One other important thing to keep in mind is that there are people out there who want to take advantage of others. That means that when you buy items online with a credit card, you are making yourself vulnerable to security risks and it is very bad if your private information falls into the wrong hands. Security has come a long way but there are still risks about which you need to be aware when you put it out there.

Conclusion

In today’s economy, businesses are doing whatever they can to make it easier for shoppers to spend their money with them. It is becoming a more and more popular trend to offer amazing deals not only on Black Friday but for some time before and after Black Friday as well. That way, everybody wins. One last piece of advice, though, is that you should educate yourself before you buy anything. What may seem like a great deal may be an illusion. Being educated should help you to come out ahead in the end.

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