The final quarter of every year presents ample opportunities for content creators and marketers alike to seize upon a virulent demand for information, products and services. With a disproportionate amount of money spent during the holiday season, many e-commerce businesses and brands sink or swim based on the amount of traffic and commerce they generate during the final two months of the year. Likewise, affiliate marketers understand the need to create better forms of content in order to attract shoppers and inevitably convert them. Despite this, many fail to understand just how powerful social media can now be in the overall element of holiday campaigns. Below, we’ll discuss where social media can assist brands in marketing their offerings.

Integrated Shopping Features

Networks such as Facebook have begun experimenting with a variety of built-in shopping solutions for users. A quick search query on Facebook with a mobile device or desktop, for instance, presents the option to select “shopping” as a search option. It is here that users will be able to find listed products from status updates that are relevant to their searches. In addition, Instagram has recently deployed an “Instagram for Businesses” page that helps provide brands with unique ideas for pinging users this holiday season. Pinterest features buyable pins, which allows users to make purchases of select products and services directly through the social network.

Advertising Solutions

Every social media network now gives brands the potential to reach large numbers of individuals through their targeted ad platforms. With Facebook, advertisers can utilize the classic platform to target individuals by interest, location, age and more. Twitter now provides a video monetization feature with its ads that can connect to its accelerated mobile pages, which is perfect for showcasing various products. Pinterest has combined its powerful ad campaigns with an improved local search to help suggest to users various relevant ads for products available within a close proximity. Many brands are already familiar with the ad platforms offered by social media, but 2015 has seen a clear progression toward the integration of these services with additional features designed to integrate product purchases on the networks themselves.

Classic Post Reach

Even with emerging shopping solutions within the platforms and advanced advertising opportunities, a holiday season campaign would not be complete without classic posts made by social media profiles. Your brand or business’ pages and profiles can help quickly connect fans with products and services that they will enjoy. Affiliate marketers can quickly push out product reviews and other forms of helpful information, pinging users with valuable information that also integrates the option to buy. Likes, shares, retweets and other forms of post engagement all help to boost reach. This makes it crucial that the holiday campaigns being used in an organic sense be captivating, creative and relevant to an audience’s interests.

Conclusion

By utilizing classic posts and the reach they can provide, advanced advertising opportunities via each social media network and an emerging series of integrated shopping solutions, 2015 can be a great holiday season for brands that successfully target all three of these valuable approaches on social media.