Chances are most (some? all?) direct sales brands will be offering Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, or Cyber Monday promotions to their consultants – or perhaps they've already started.

Well, you're not crazy, right? You know how big Black Friday can be for direct sales. Everyone saves and plans for Black Friday to kick off their holiday shopping. So of course you want to be ready for that.

8 Ways to Maximize your Direct Sales Black Friday Weekend

1. If your direct sales company provides social media assets, text or private message them to your best hostesses and customers before you spray them all over social media. This will help make your VIPs feel extra super special that you shared the promotions with them first or by sharing them on exclusive channels. And, you never know, they may sign up to host a Black Friday party! Personal communications always win over mass messaging.
2. Once your best hosts and VIPs know about the upcoming deals, start teasing (within allowed limits) to the rest of your audience. Most Black Friday shoppers already know what they want to buy and from whom before Black Friday is here – so get yourself on their shopping list. If you wait until the last minute to let them know what your specials are going to be, you risk missing them.
3. Watch your timing! Don't cannibalize your Black Friday sales by promoting Small Biz Saturday or Cyber Monday too soon. Get those Friday sales in first.
4. If you're posting to a hashtag-driven platform like Instagram, do your research ahead of time. Make sure you're using a strong mix of community, branded, and industry-related hashtags to get the highest reach and targeted audience.
5. Make sure it is easy to contact you by including your contact information in all your posts and messages. And make sure your links are easy to remember. Nothing kills a sale faster than when someone can't find the shopping link. Use a domain redirect to help keep your links branded and easy to remember.
6. Remember earlier when I said share them with your best hosts and maybe they will sign on to host a party? Well, they aren't the only ones who might want to party! Once you've spilled the beans to the rest of your audience, upsell the party opportunity throw together a quick virtual party over on Facebook or Sqweee for Thanksgiving weekend, so your hostesses and customers can share the promotions with their friends and family, and earn some additional free product (check with your company to see if they allow the weekend promotions to apply to parties; if not, you can still upsell the party opportunity, just tweak things a bit so there is no misunderstanding about these special deals).
7. Don't underestimate the value of convenience. No stores, no lines, all online! While some people may still prefer the sites and excitement of heading out into a crowded shopping area, there are plenty of other people who want nothing to do with all those lines and crowds. So play on that — “you don't have to miss out on the deals just to avoid the crowds.”
8. Remind them what they get when they shop with you: your message, your branding – the value that you bring to the table. You are so much more than the products you sell or the direct sales company you sell for – so emphasize that! Use that.

For many of us, Black Friday is the culmination of all the effort we've put into our social marketing strategy all year. All those relationships you've been working on, those content arcs, all that trust you've been building — it all pretty much leads up to this sales weekend.

Over $10 billion will be spent on Black Friday this year, and 126 million people will shop online on Cyber Monday. Keep your posts genuine and your relationships personal — keep it social — and I'm 100% sure you can get a piece of that very large direct sales pie.

#EmpowerSocial