One of the most hyped up shopping seasons of the year has arrived. Consumers wait in anticipation for some great discounts and offers during Black Friday. In order to create effective campaigns, brands must use social media listening to understand what their audience are interested in and build more engaging content during this peak season. 

To do it well, brands need to have a strong grasp of what social media metrics to focus on and that's where social media analytics can help. By measuring social media performance, brands can be confident that they have found the right approach and are tracking the right numbers to measure the success of the campaign. Using the Crowd Analyzer tool, we looked into a total of 487K  social media activity related to Black Friday in the MENA region during the first few weeks of November to identify the best practices to help your brand stand out during any social media campaign.

1. Pay attention to timing 

Recently, Black Friday has evolved to include different time periods. Even though they all revolve around the month of November, some brands have sales and discounts all throughout the month. Other brands have exclusive offers during the last week of November. By analyzing the number of mentions throughout the month, it is worth noting that mentions are increasing up to 9% as we approach the last week of November. This means that brands should really focus on putting out its Black Friday themed content during the peak of mentions. By then, consumers are more likely to actually start purchasing the products at this point.

2. Find out where your audience are 

It is key for brands to exist where their target audience are. Facebook is the dominating platform for Black Friday conversations with consumers interacting at 62%. So it makes sense that brands activity to be mostly on Facebook as well at 45%.  This indicates that there is a flow of conversation between brands and their consumers. On the other hand, Twitter seems to be the second platform for brand activity at 28%, but there is not much interaction from the audience. It is crucial for brands to pay attention to be specific about which platforms to focus on  as part of their social media strategy.

3. Always include visual content

When coming up with social media content, it is important to consider audience engagement. Visuals are on the rise whether it's photos or videos. Based on the data monitored, photos received the highest engagement at 55% , followed by videos at 42%. Engagement is translated to the most popular content in the social media world. The more popular the content is, the higher the changes for your brand to be visible. So brands should always focus on including photos in their social media content.

4. Listen to what the audience needs 

Black Friday has been around for enough time that consumers expect it during November. It is used as an opportunity to purchase certain products with great discount offers. It is important to tune into social media conversations to identify which products gain more attention. In the MENA region, consumers focused on electronics at 39% and apparel at 33%. The least popular products were kitchen appliances and grocery stuff at less than 5%. Such information can be leveraged to make sure that customers are satisfied with Black Friday campaigns.

The best way to get a baseline for Black Friday campaigns is to focus on audience expectations and understand what type of content resonates with them. Every brand has a goal to increase sales and generate revenue. There is a direct link between the quality of social media content and purchase sales. Social media is a key component in shaping how the audience feels about a certain brand. Crowd Analyzer  can support you with the instant real time social data about your brand that can help you as you start planning for campaigns for 2022.