By Rieva Lesonsky
Social media should be a big part of your holiday marketing plans. A recent survey of Twitter users reveals how they plan to use the social medium to find the best deals.
I’ll be writing about consumers’ planned shopping behaviors for the month of December elsewhere, but what about this week? Nearly half (46 percent) plan to shop Black Friday sales. Most (76 percent) who don’t plan to hit the stores on Black Friday are staying home “because the stores are too crowded.” More consumers (56 percent) plan to participate in Cyber Monday.
Likely due to the calendar (once again we have a short holiday shopping season this year), consumers aren’t wasting any time—40 percent have already started shopping.
To help small business owners be more effective Twitter has teamed up with other companies, including Google Small Business Community, Hootsuite, HubSpot and SproutSocial to host a series of free digital events.
Twitter also has developed a mobile app, the Twitter Small Business Planner (found at the App Store or Google Play).
And of course you can check out what your competitors have planned for the week. Just check the popular holiday shopping hashtags #BlackFriday, #SmallBizSat and #CyberMonday.
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at rieva@smallbizdaily.com, follow her on Google+ and Twitter.com/Rieva..
