The Christmas and Holiday season are goldmines for most product based businesses. It is the time of year when you can almost count on making up for any sales shortfalls that you've accumulated throughout the year. Of course, before you can do that, you need to let people know that you're there. This is where social media comes in really handy.
Almost every company out there has a twitter account which they are constantly trying to grow, but their main obstacle is getting followers and having interaction. Because twitter is a gadget platform itself, companies in technology make twitter a priority. Companies like Dell, Microsoft, and HP use tweets and ads to promote new products, sales, The purpose of the accounts aren't just too promote products; they promote their brand and actively work to form relationships with the people who follow it. This is a key factor in making social media work for you.and holiday offers to their followers and the general population of twitter (through timeline ads).
Another important part of using Twitter correctly, particularly for businesses hoping to improve their holiday sales margins, is to fight the urge to flood the system with tweets about your discounts and deals. Obviously you want to get the word out, but you also don't want to annoy your followers to the point of unfollowing you. Picking a couple of items to highlight (once each) each day should be sufficient. Publish the promotional tweets for them once in the morning and once in the evenings. Let everything else you publish be focused on relationship building and conversation.
The platform which is seemingly taking the design and product market by storm is Pinterest and can be incredibly valuable for companies selling tangible products. Pinterest is used heavily for home design and fashion where people can actually look at styles and looks and then find places to buy them or duplicate them. Even companies who don't sell things could take advantage of this via Pinterst such as HGTV. With a 200 thousand + following they can post looks they love with affiliate links to get their end of the products sold via their pins.
Other companies who can use Pinterest are fashion brands. Not only do people buy clothes for themselves at holidays but jewelry and clothing are extremely popular gift items. Brands like FantasyJewelryBox or Ralph Laurencan present jewelry and clothing in an attractive way to online customers.
This is something that many businesses forget about when it comes to Facebook. Facebook, arguably the biggest "must have" of any company's social media portfolio often gets abused during the holiday rush.
The best way to use Facebook to improve your holiday sales is to focus primarily upon responding to the people who post to your page or who share your status updates with their own followers. Publish one or two status updates about the sales items you most want to sell that day. Then spend the rest of your social media time responding to people and thanking them for sharing your updates.
Sponsored Posts
On almost every social media and networking system there are opportunities to purchase sponsored updates that are forced into peoples' timelines-even if those people don't follow you. This is certainly a way to make sure that people see what you have to offer. At the same time, the vast majority of social networking and media users do not like having promotions forced upon them. You need to weigh how much promotion you truly need to do against the possible repercussions involved.