Companies to integrate social media on Black Friday

Brands preparing to update inventory and real-time deals for holiday season

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are known for their big ad campaigns and margin-basement sales, but one thing that they aren't known for is their extensive use of social media -- until now.

A search optimization firm, WebiMax, has seen that brands are using their social media outlets to promote and push the holiday slasher sales by engaging their audience with real-time updates.

WebiMax explained the changes on the horizon for how brands will use their social media channels for updating nation, weekend long sales, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Founder and CEO of WebiMax, Kenneth Wisnefski, explained some of the strategies that brands will have by using their Facebook and Twitter accounts to help shoppers get the deals they want at the stores nearest to them.

"With concern to Black Friday, retailers and merchants want cost-effective methods of communicating door-buster deals to consumers.  Social media presents this opportunity," said Wisnefski. "Not only will they post deals [on the social networks], but people can also directly interact and comment on the postings, creating a rich experience for the consumer."

Big retailers such as Best Buy and Target are expected to post the individual sales they will have going as well as tweet updates on specials and inventory throughout the day.

Using social media as a marketing and functional tool for special deal helps in circulating the information further to create buzz for the product and spike demand. 
Best Buy alone has more than five million Facebook followers, Wal-Mart, 10+ million, and Target, 6+ million. 

With 87% of smartphone users accessing the Internet at least once daily on their device, consumers are expected to use different social media while they are out shopping on Friday (namely, waiting in lines and tweeting pictures of insanity seen to #blackfriday streams) and brands want to be a part of the conversation and buzz.

Additional deals and updates will be available like never before, and could curb the disappointment of going to a store for a particular item to find that they ran out hours ago.  I think shoppers will appreciate the content, as long as it is being refreshed in a uniform ad accurate way.

Wisnefski expects that with the rise in demand for finding the best deals and the drop in discretionary income, Americans will be looking everywhere for the most bang for their bucks -- and if the updates and insight on social media pull through for this shopping season, we can expect opportunities in the future.