In the run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, your marketing goes into overdrive. The biggest sales event of the year is a necessity for brands, so it’s important to get it right.

Your social channels play a particularly crucial role here. With more customers heading online to bag a bargain before Christmas, social media presents a vital opportunity to drive up sales.

Read on for a social media checklist to help you get the most from Black Friday this year.

Give your social profiles a Black Friday overhaul

Your Black Friday social checklist should start with your social media profiles. Raise awareness about your BFCM sale by updating your bio, banners, profile, and cover photos with related messages.

Your cover photos are especially important — they’re the first thing your customers see when they visit your profile. Create a custom cover photo for each platform highlighting your sale.

The same applies to your bio. Highlight your Black Friday sale and include a trackable link to monitor where your clicks come from. This data will help you target your BFCM campaign next year.

Finally, pin a Black Friday post to the top of each profile. This can either highlight your sale or include a selection of your best deals.

Schedule your posts with precision

You likely already schedule your social posts to publish on preset times and dates. But this is only successful if you publish them at the right time according to your target audience.

To drive engagement with a post, coincide its publication with the time they are likely to use social media. Research the best times to post on social and schedule accordingly. Bear in mind that different platforms have different algorithms, so the right time for Facebook won’t necessarily be the same for Twitter.

Remember to tailor your posting times to your specific audiences too. For instance, if you’re based in the US but you also have a UK customer base, you’ll need to factor that into your post timings.

It’s worth diving into your social profiles’ individual analytics here. While there are general guidelines to the best time to post on social, your audience is unique. Your social analytics for each platform provides an insight into your target personas and will help you find the exact right time to post to better impressions and engagement with accuracy.

Conduct comprehensive hashtag research

Hashtag research is crucial at this time of year. They’re what get your content seen by the right customers, so it’s worth spending some time drilling down into the right hashtags for you.

This is especially important on Instagram. The platform is ideal for Black Friday thanks to its heavy reliance on hashtags plus its Shoppable posts feature.

While there are some obvious hashtags to include (#BlackFridaySale, #BlackFridayDeal, and so on), you can drive more sales by using niche, targeted hashtags too. General purchase-specific searches increase at this time of year as well, not just BFCM queries, so it’s important you conduct hashtag research to maximize your sales.

For instance, hashtags such as #giftsforher help capitalize on festive purchasing while tying your content into a wider Black Friday strategy. Used in conjunction with your Black Friday-specific hashtags, this helps drive up sales through ultra-targeted hashtags campaigns.

Create bespoke product guides for each buyer persona

Black Friday isn’t just a chance to grab a deal for yourself — it’s also the perfect opportunity to get a bargain gift for someone in the run-up to Christmas.

Choosing the ideal gift for someone can be tricky for customers. But you can make it easier for them and drive sales into the bargain with targeted gift guides for your followers.

Create multiple gift guides tailored specifically for your various buyer personas. For instance, if one of your personas is a family-oriented male with an interest in the outdoors, you might include his-and-hers hiking gear or family-size tents.

This is just an example — you know your personas inside out, so you’ll know which products are best used for each one.

Cascade these guides across your social channels in the run-up to Black Friday. Use paid ads to target each guide to the relevant persona.

Build buzz and urgency in every post

The best Black Friday social campaigns build buzz and urgency over a long period of time. Simply announcing your sale doesn’t make it resonate with customers. Instead, you should craft a sustained campaign that builds into a crescendo.

Start with teaser posts that give customers an insight into what’s to come. Discounts and deals samples are a good start, as well as selections of your best products. As the day gets closer, increase the frequency of your posts and include more comprehensive information (such as the gift guides mentioned earlier).

Power words are important to consider here. Time-driven words and phrases such as “hurry” or “limited time only” tap into your followers’ sense of FOMO to compel dithering customers to buy sooner rather than later.

The earlier you start this, the greater the impact you’ll have on Black Friday. If you start late, don’t fret — there’s still time to drive up awareness on social. Use your social strategy in conjunction with a sustained email campaign for a multi-pronged approach that chases customers from all sides.

The checklist above gives you a solid grounding to drive sales during the biggest shopping event of the year. It’s not too late to implement a solid social strategy to maximize profit during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Follow the tips above and get your campaign off to a flying start.

Author: Rodney Laws

Rodney Laws is an online entrepreneur who has been building online businesses for over a decade. Rodney uses his experience to help fellow entrepreneurs start and run their own companies. Find out how he can help you by visiting EcommercePlatforms.io or heading over to @EcomPlatformsio.