Are you ready for Christmas shopping?

Have you heard of Black Friday? It’s the day following Thanksgiving in the US (this year November 25), when traditionally, the US starts its Christmas shopping.

The reason I’m telling you this is that I recently read on Mashable that 61% of Americans will be researching for the perfect gift on social networks – wow! But what is more important is that of this 61%, 72% of them will be using Facebook.

If you have a business that sells overseas these are important stats. Not just because people are researching online, but also because the survey found that 43% of people plan to shop online. The stats might be different here in Australia, as we don’t have an official Black Friday day when shopping kicks off, but you still need to make sure your page is ready for all those people checking you out. 

Getting ready for Christmas

Here are some tips for getting your page ready for the mad Christmas rush. 

• Get a welcome tab for your page – with all those people searching on Facebook for shopping ideas many may land on your page, so make sure that they know what you offer.
• Create a tab on your page using the IWIPA or a static HTML app that has shopping ideas; this could be by colour, price, who they are for, eg. boys, girls, etc.
• Get fCommerced up!  Tech speak for saying add a store to your page so that people can buy online. What I love about the stores on Facebook is that you can offer people a discount on what they are buying if they share it with their friends.
• Change your profile picture to a Christmas-themed one; this could be as simple as adding a Santa hat to your logo. This may sound odd, but it’s exactly the same as physical retail stores you go into that put up decorations, so do the same online to get people in the zone.
• Make your posts relevant to the time of year, eg. countdown to Christmas, or asking questions like what did you get last year that you regifted?
• You may want to offer a discount or a special offer for your Christmas shoppers; this could be in the form of when they like your page they get it, or just have it as a tab for anyone to access. Use this as a way to clear stock or just increase your sales over the period.

I know that for my Mocks brand Christmas is my biggest sales time of year, and it has already started. Now I know how many people are using Facebook to research I’m going to get out there and start promoting all our special offers.

What will you do?

Finally, I wanted to let you know that I have just launched a new how-to social media video site, where I show you how to use social media to grow your business.

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks mobile phone socks, Chief Rabbit at Social Rabbit – your guide in the world of social media, founder of Steps – the online Facebook and LinkedIn training course and author of ‘Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business’. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.