HOW TO: Use Social Media to Find Black Friday Deals

Susan Payton is the Managing Partner of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog, and teaches marketing courses at Marketing EggSchool. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.

We’re a week away from Black Friday and just a few years ago, if you wanted to find the best deals, you had to wait for the sales flyers to hit your newspaper or mailbox. You’d make a list of what you wanted and get your game plan together. But that’s all changed because of social media. Tools like iPhone apps, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook will be key in helping competitive shoppers get a leg up against the thousands of shoppers vying for the deals of the century this season. And with holiday spending projected to be down 3% from last year’s low numbers, stores are doing whatever they can to make it easier for shoppers to spend their money with them.

Blogs and Websites

Weeks before Black Friday, blogs and websites like Black Friday 2009 and BlackFriday.info have been uploading sales flyers from every store imaginable to help shoppers plan out their attack on the biggest shopping day of the year. For gadget-lovers, Gizmodo’s #blackfriday feed has the latest posts about the best electronic deals to be had.

Mom-related blogs and forums, such as MomsLikeMe, a geography based networking site, or Triangle Mom2Mom, focus on the strategies for what to do with the kids when shopping on Black Friday, local sales and events, and advice on how to stretch that dollar even farther.

The benefit to blogs is that they are updated constantly, with deals being posted every day. Find one or two you like and subscribe to their RSS feeds to stay abreast of the latest Black Friday news and offers.

My Black Friday Deals takes a sprinkling of social media and mixes it together with a dash of blogging to create a place for shoppers to interact. The site uses the mobile photo slide show app Whrrl to allow bloggers to take pictures of the best deals they can find in stores and upload them to the site to be voted on by deal seekers. The best deals will then be shared on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook.

Full disclosure: Susan works with Collective Bias, which runs My Black Friday Deals.

Social Media

Bloggers, consumers, and brands alike are all using Twitter and Facebook this year for Black Friday. Staples has been “leaking” its own Black Friday deals on its Twitter and Facebook accounts for days, and a search for the term #blackfriday on Twitter nets an endless stream of deals, tips, and links that will help shoppers save on Friday. You can also check out the @blackfriday account, which tweets Black Friday news from across the web.

Macy’s too has been priming its followers on Twitter for its Black Friday sales, as well as its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Wal-Mart, which has claimed it won’t be beat on price on Black Friday or after, is tweeting its deals already in place, and will likely do so through Black Friday.

The dedicated Black Friday blogs and web sites (such as the ones mentioned above) are also getting a piece of the social media pie by creating Fan Pages on Facebook, like the one for Black-Friday.net. Pages like this really put the power in the hands of the people, who can share deals as they find them.

YouTube is chock full of videos about Black Friday, as well. The site has a large library of clips from both consumers and major news networks, with advice on handling the crowds on Black Friday, what to expect at the stores, and tips on which stores have the best deals.

There’s an App for That

Now that I have an iPhone, I get excited about functional, useful applications like the Black Friday apps that have come out this year. DealNews has a free Black Friday app that lets you sort deals by “Early Bird,” “In Store Only,” and “Limited Availability,” as well as see photos of the sale items.

The Toys R Us Big Book Favorites app lets users make wish lists, find deals, and share deals (it’s free, too). The $0.99 BF Deals app, meanwhile, lets you see a map of other users at stores so you can find a less crowded one (assuming a lot of the shoppers have the app), and it sends your deals to your Twitter account. There are others (do a search in the iTunes store for “Black Friday”), and stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart may incorporate Black Friday deals into their existing iPhone apps.

Wrapping It Up

If you’re planning to brave the crowds on Black Friday, be smart. Get on Twitter, Facebook, or the dozens of Black Friday blogs to find the deals you want. Take your iPhone with you to reduce the number of stores you go to in fruitless search of items that were sold out at 5 AM. And most of all, good luck to you!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarcusPhoto1

Tags: black friday, deals, List, Lists, shopping