By Jacques Hart

The rise of social media has fundamentally altered the way consumers shop, as well as how companies identify and court potential shoppers. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday fast approaching, it’s time to put into effect some social media best practices to seize the holiday spirit and exceed your sales goals for the holiday season. Preparing your fulfillment infrastructure and website is crucial, but leveraging social media marketing to stimulate and capture demand will prove to be a deciding factor on whether or not your business capitalizes on what is certain to be a historic holiday e-commerce period this year.

Below, we’ve crafted a list of 6 smart and easy things your company can do to optimize your social media channels for maximum Black Friday and Cyber Monday impact.

• Give your Social Pages a Seasonal Refresh
  First impressions can make the difference between a new customer and a missed opportunity, so before launching your holiday sales, make sure your company’s social media presence looks the part as well. Design new profile headers and pictures, freshen up some of the copy, and ensure the look and feel of your company’s profile is consistent across all of your social media profiles. Don’t be afraid to draw attention to your featured items and promotions via your page, instead use it to your advantage to make it easier for consumers to see what types of goods your business is selling and how enticing your offers truly are.

• Step Up The Volume of Social Media Posts
  This holiday season, it is important you boost your social posting frequency beyond what you usually publish. Like we’ve mentioned before, the holiday shopping season is highly competitive and saturated with companies trying to get their products and promotions noticed, just like yours. Posting two to three times a week just won’t cut it when there are so many other options for consumers to choose from. You need to be getting eyeballs on you and your deals on a daily basis. By making a plan and creating engaging social posts ahead of time, you’ll see that posting at this increased frequency won’t be as burdensome or daunting as you may fear, but rather result is strong sales momentum.

• Use Calls-To-Action and Urgency to Your Advantage
   Once you’ve got consumers looking at your posts, the onus is on you to put the pressure on and convert a sale. If there’s one thing people are afraid of on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s the fear of missing out on a deal, so by incorporating strong calls-to-action (CTA’s)’s within your posts, you instill a sense of urgency within shoppers that puts pressure on them to stop overthinking and pull the trigger on the purchase. Using count-down tickers and sales expiration dates are also effective ways to create a sense of urgency and push consumers towards transacting.

• Latch Onto The Seasons’ Hottest Hashtags
  Hashtags are a tremendously powerful tool when properly utilized, and the holiday season is the perfect time to incorporate them into your posts to associate yourself with the most popular user-generated tags. Don’t just assume putting #BlackFriday or #CyberMonday will get the job done though, take the time to research which hashtags are very active and fit the tone, usage, and category of your products. If you sell Bluetooth speakers for example and want to target teens/young adults, hashtags like #giftsforteens or #collegegifts will be incredibly popular and specifically cater to the type of consumer you’re looking to target. There are limitless options here, capitalize on it and ensure your posts will have a free stream of views trickling in.

• Play to The Emotions of The Holidays
  At the end of the day, the holidays are an emotional and heart-warming time of the year, and it makes great sense to connect your products to these emotions and pull at the heartstrings of consumers. Contextualizing your product within the scope of the holidays will show shoppers how your products fit into their lives, but more importantly, show them the emotions that would come with owning and using them. Showcasing your product in imagery that’s tied to the holidays is a great way to achieve this context and give shoppers the emotional connection they need to resonate with your product.

• Invest in a Paid Social Media Strategy
  We end this list with an unfortunate reality: In order to capture the eyes and wallets of shoppers, you will need to devise a paid social strategy and amplify your posts. The holidays are a competitive time of the year for businesses, and in today’s digital landscape, organic reach won’t cut it. You need to pay to play, so set aside a budget appropriate for your business size and ambitions, and focus on what type of content you want to promote and through which platforms. This approach will cost more, but achieve results far beyond what organic social media can achieve.

This holiday season will be one for the record books. Putting these 6 strategies into effect paired with a strong social media foundation will ensure that your company will have a jolly holiday sales season.