Of the $650 billion that was predicted to be spent this past holiday, a huge chunk was spent by Facebook’s 1.32 billion users, Twitter’s 271 million users, and Instagram’s 150 million users.  So if your business has a social media presence, hopefully you used it to your advantage by help to drive sales and extend brand reach.

Maybe you weren’t able to afford to entire commercial like Big Lots’ feisty “Nailing This” viral hit, but you can take a few lessons from this year’s small business owners as you plan for the holidays in 2015. LIBN profiled a few local small business owners like New York-based Monif C. Plus Sizes who promoted contests on Facebook which not only drove traffic to its website, but recorded email addresses to add to future email campaigns.

Francine’s Fashion Boutique of Huntington not only promoted hot holiday items or promotions like free gift wrapping on their Facebook page but also notified fans of their holiday return policy.  Here at Advantage, we took to our Facebook and Twitter pages to promote our holiday food drive, shared a few photos of our office decked out in the spirit of the season and also promoted important year-end information for our clients.

Whether your goal was to drive traffic to your website, connect with clients or just extend your brand’s reach to new customers, it’s important to have a presence, big or small.  Think you’ve got time to plan to your next holiday social media campaign? Valentine’s Day is only 7 weeks away. Get in the spirit and start planning now.