Find all of your Black Friday deals on social media

Facebook has a number of apps designed to save you money this Friday

Black Friday is not my scene. Every time I’ve ever had the notion of trying to go a store at 6 am to get a television for 75% off, I’ve had images of trampled old ladies and people getting into a fistfight over a blu-ray player. For most of my life, Black Friday deals simply did not happen.

Now, with social media, though, finding Black Friday deals is that much easier. And anything that can save me a few bucks without risking my life is fine by me.

Among those who have either put coupons on Facebook to help shoppers get great deals, or have created apps to help shoppers, are Fab.com, FedEx, Macys, The Gap and Kohls.

Some are designed to give discounts, like The Gap, which teamed up with Postagram to allow its fans to send Facebook photos as free postcards, amd Tiny Prints, which  is giving its Facebook fans a 25% off coupon for holiday cards and address labels, 

Canadian flash deal site Beyond the Rack is posted deals for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Discounted brands include Steve Madden, Ugg, and KitchenAid. Facebook fans will get a coupon for $10 off their purchases.

Others have created apps that help their shoppers learn about existing deal, such as Macy’s, which created an app that helps its users learn about sales, new products, make shopping lists, like and share items with friends, and share the fact that they have purchased specific items. And PetSmart allowed its Facebook fans to vote for the top 10 holiday pet gifts.

Samsung's America’s Smartest Shoppers app allows fans to win prizes by testing their Shopper IQ, as well as find other deals, that can be shared with their friends.

And others, like Kohl’s, are incentivizing shopping through charity. The department store has agreed to donate $1 to Toys for Tots, up to $500,000, for each new Like it gets on its Facebook page from November 23 through December 24.

Social media shopping

A number of social media sites have also added features that are meant to aid their users with holiday shopping this year.

Earlier this month, Pinterest began rolling out a test of secret boards Thursday, in order to stop other people from knowing what you’re into on the social network.

In a way, the secret boards act kind of like a Facebook post that is set so only certain people can see it. The user can either keep the secret boards to themselves, or share them with other users that they invite, but no one else will be able to see them. Users can have up to three secret boards.

The reason that the social network said that it has made the secret boards available now is because of the upcoming holiday season, so people can pin gifts they want to buy without having those people know about. 

Facebook has also done its part to encourage holiday shopping by launching the revamped Gifts feature in late September. Unlike the last time Facebook added a Gifts feature, these are actual things you can send people.

The way it works is that a user decides to buy someone else a gift, so they will go that person’s timeline and click the Gift button at the top. They select a card, add a personal message and then send the gift. The recipient will be notified, and asked for their address. The gift can be paid for immediately, or the sender can choose to wait until the recipient enters their info.

The sender will never see the address of the person he or she is sending the gift to and the person receiving the gift won’t see the price. They can also change the size, color and style of the gift. 

Gifts can include cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, a stuffed animal from Gund, a digital gift card from Starbucks, cookies, household goods, tshirts and posters.

Facebook recently announced some new partners for its Gifts service, just in time for the holidays.

The new gift outlets include babyGap, Fab, Brookstone, Dean & Deluca,L'Occitane, Lindt, ProFlowers, Random House, and NARS Cosmetics.

Facebook is also adding some digital subscriptions to its lineup as well, so now users can send TV shows and music with subscriptions to Hulu Plus, Pandora, Rdio and more.

New gifts and retailer partners will be rolled out in the next weeks, including wine from Robert Mondavi Winery and Chandon.

Twitter has done its part to encourage small business credits by announcing that  will be giving away up to $1 million in free advertising credits to the first 10,000 new small businesses that decide to advertise on the network. Each one will get $100 in free credits, which can be used toward both Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.

(Image source: https://www.lifetimemoms.com)