Deck the Halls With Blogs and Videos: Improve Your Holiday Sales With Social Media

If you’re a cutting edge marketer, you have next generation media hung by your virtual chimney with care. This holiday season, marketers are using an array of highly innovative, diverse and market-savvy Web 2.0 media to connect with customers. We recently looked at a dozen of the hottest products and brands to see how they’re differentiating themselves from the competition and reaching new markets.

1. Talk their language. Starbucks’ recent agreement to act as an Apple iTunes Wi-Fi music store has focused new attention on the coffee house chain, but it has been Starbucks’ ability to communicate to its patrons that is fanning the buzz this holiday season. A podcast series called “Coffee Conversations” addresses many topics of importance to their customers, with an entertaining focus on coffee.

2. Personalize your appeal. Making a product more personal can enhance sales and brand loyalty. Trendy shoe and handbag designer Taryn Rose has created “Taryn’s Blog Page,” where visitors can read the founder’s bio about her years in medicine, and her dedication to creating more comfortable high fashion footwear. The blog includes entries about events she’s attended, and even a recipe for a relaxing homemade foot scrub.

3. Show them what you can do. Two hot products are particularly effective in using videos on their Web sites. The Casio Exilim digital camera site has downloadable video segments demonstrating the product and its features. Apple’s newly announced iPod Touch utilizes the social networking systems and hardware Apple helped to popularize as a way to demonstrate and promote its latest product.

4. Provide a little cachet. Handbag and accessory icon Coach has created “Coach Clique,” a site where visitors can access insider information, advice and other key benefits. Included are Coach-branded screensavers and wallpapers and a page matching your astrological sign to the “right” Coach bag. The site has an exclusive club feel with considerable content for the search engines to index.

5. Invite them to speak their minds. It sounds a bit frightening – opening your site to the opinions of others about what you do and sell. But some of the hottest sites this holiday season have found such consumer-generated content to be particularly effective. Upscale discounter Target has opened a forum for customers to place their own — relatively uncensored – product reviews, which reside directly below detailed information about the product for any potential buyer to see and submit a comment.

6. Reach them where and how they want to be reached. Company-sponsored blogs continue to be popular. Sephora has taken it to another level. The beauty product specialty store offers their popular “Red Carpet Blog,” which tracks what’s hot in Hollywood fashion, general industry trends and best selling products. Site visitors can choose to have regular blog updates sent directly to their mobile phones.

7. Welcome them to new worlds and social networks. This holiday season we saw a number of brands creating their own social networks to engage potential buyers. Comparison shopping engine Pronto allows users to create their own profile, generate content and interact with other users through some unique messaging features. Webkinz has reached out to Internet savvy kids by including a secret code with each of their plush pets, granting access to a virtual Webkinz world. The child enters a safe and fun social network revolving around their interests and their new Webkinz pet.

8. Engage in some proactive discussion. Rumors about successful companies are not uncommon, but Starbucks’ way of addressing them is. Consider it the “anti-buzz.” The Starbucks’ Rumor Control page reaches out to visitors, inviting discussion on some of the untrue stories and comments that frequently circulate about the successful chain.

9. Create a social profile. Three months before its launch last November, the wildly popular Nintendo Wii had its own MySpace page, allowing fans to post messages, read the Wii blog and network with other Wii enthusiasts. Those interested in the product could find discussion of the YouTube demonstration videos and insider looks at the games that would be forthcoming. The tactic created a pent-up demand leading to the most successful holiday sales performance in U.S. video game history.

10. Speak with one voice in many places and ways. The most successful holiday marketers will integrate their social marketing strategies and tactics with their other product promotional efforts. We discovered some good and not so good efforts here. In one instance, a special product site with many interactive social features did not offer any opportunities to reach a sales outlet. Social media works most effectively when it’s fully integrated into an overall marketing strategy.

Lisa Wehr is CEO and founder of Oneupweb.