Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Once the turkey and the pumpkin pie have been given a good home, attentions in the US tend to turn toward holiday shopping. Those Black Friday deals are likely calling your name.

If you run a business, it’s go-time – and you hopefully have been putting some effort into your online presence. Stats from eMarketer show that 17% of all consumers use social media in their shopping decisions. According to the same group, online holiday shopping has grown this year by 5.4%, impressive when you consider the economy has seen better days. That works out to an estimated $30 billion in online gift spending for November and December this year. Forget pumpkin – we want a piece of that pie!

We recently provided some links to tips for improving your e-store, and believe us, those are handy. But what about ways to harness content marketing and social media to drive promotions?

Here are some examples of what some notable brands are doing with Facebook Connect:

Walmart: The Christmas List Workshop
What aren’t they doing? Through their promotion, you get to “Christmas Yourself”, put together your list, get a sense of what these friends and family members want and then hunt down the deals at Walmart.

Walmart: The Christmas List Workshop on Facebook

Toys R’ Us: You Vote, You Save!
The name says it all. Give Toys R’ Us a little input on what offers you like the best, and you get a coupon to purchase gifts at a special low price. It blends what people like best: sharing their opinion and getting a deal.

Toys R' Us: You Vote, You Save on Facebook

Gap: Holiday Factory
Sort of like a personalized Mad Lib, this app grabs your profile details to create a holiday centered around you. You can then add this holiday to your events calendar, invite friends and presumably coo over Gap fashion. And of course, there are deals to be had on “your” day. You can take a look at my own Jensgiving, a holiday that involves one of my main hobbies:  Eating.  How true:

Celebrate Jensgiving with Gap's Holiday Factory on Facebook

Be sure to take a look at the list Mashable came out with of interesting Facebook promotions. Their list includes Intel, JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy and Macy’s. Some of what they found are beautifully simple – like Fan-Only promotional offers – and others are more involved like Fan Challenges – the more people who sign up as fans, the lower the price of a product drops. They’re all great examples of how Facebook and content marketing can be used to create engaging, sharable promotions to stand out from the competition.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 5:58 am and is filed under Content Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.