Holiday Shopping Showdown: U.S. Retailers Prepare for Social Media Battle

The battle over holiday promotions is shaping up to be an interesting one that is being waged through traditional and digital media.  On one hand you have retailers like Macy’s, Best Buy and Toys “R” Us, who have been building up their #blackfriday and Holiday promotions for quite some time.  Retailers taking this approach are requiring you to like them on Facebook to receive access to special deals.  They’ve already got their circulars up on Facebook and have teasers about what Black Friday deals are going to be available.  On the other hand, you have retailers like Nordstrom who are waiting to do anything Holiday related until after the turkey has its day.

For some of us at Simply Measured the annual retailer showdown is more exciting than the World Series (but less than Super Bowl commercials, those are sacred).  And this year, rather than doing just a recap, we will be posting a series of articles covering everything from what happens with #blackfriday and #cybermonday on Twitter as well as comparing Facebook strategies and trends for major retailers.  We’ve chosen a handful of the top 100 U.S. retailers that we will track over the course of the Holiday Season.

To set the stage for this battle of epic proportions, where approximately $60 billion is on the line,  we’ve taken a snapshot (above) of each retailer’s Facebook engagement, pre-Holiday madness.  We are going to monitor their progress over the next six weeks and we’ll be using many of the reports in Simply Measured 2.0 to answer questions like: does the brand with the most fans have the most engagement; are you able to retain the fans you gain over the course of the Holiday Season?

The battle will kick-off this season (as it does every year) with Black Friday.  As you can see above, consumer momentum and excitement is already building for the annual day o’ super deals.

So, stick with us over the next month and see who wins this Holiday Season.  Yes, we are going to declare a winner based on a variety of data points.  No, we aren’t going to release what the formula for winning is just yet because we want to keep you guessing like a little kid on Christmas Eve.  And, we don’t want you stealing our thunder, like Christmas steals Thanksgiving’s.

	10,561,418 Facebook Fans Must like for promos
	2,256,993 Facebook Fans Must like for promos
	6,450,557 Facebook Fans Like the page and enter to win
	190,490 Facebook Fans Like for deals
	1,101,309 Facebook Fans No promos till post Turkey Day
	3,014,045 Facebook Fans Currently focused on Parade Brigade
	6,062,566 Facebook Fans Promo raising money with the Love to Give campaign
	2,138,290 Facebook Fans Like for deals
	1,734,166 Facebook Fans No holiday promos yet
	365,413 Facebook Fans No holiday promos yet
	5,288,516 Facebook Fans “Game On, Santa” promo

• Posted on November 22, 2011 by Adam Schoenfeld
• Categories: Competitive Analysis, Facebook