Between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the unending onslaught of online deals, there is another holiday shopping day that might get lost in the shuffle: Small Business Saturday. This year marks the second annual such event, a new tradition that tries to steal some addition from chain retailers and big e-commerce sites and give it to local vendors.
And this year, the fledging ritual is getting some serious attention from social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, and Google have all pledge their efforts in support, offering and encouraging small business owners to use their sites’ tools to promote shopping this weekend.
Local retailers aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit this weekend. What happens to consumers who want the discounts but sans the chain names (that are sometimes attached to controversy) they go hand in hand with? Small business Saturday can fill that void along with the help of some geo-social applications.
Foursquare
Foursquare has been at the top of the social-meets-location game since it began, and Small Business Saturday will be no exception. If you have an American Express card, sync it to your Foursquare account following these directions. Then when you check-in to shops who have partnered with the service via Foursquare on Saturday, you will see a button that says “load to card.” Then when you spend at least $25 or more at the participating store, you’ll get a notification saying $25 was credited to your Amex account. American Express is a sponsor of Small Business Saturday, so ratcheting up sales is in its best interest, but turns out they’re willing to compensate you for helping make the event a success.
Etsy
The purveyor of all things handcrafted is a natural fit for small business Saturday—and will appeal to those who want to buy “local” without leaving their living rooms. Just searching “Small Business Saturday” on the site brought up a slew of items that will be on sale this weekend, and this blog catalogued some of the best e-shops on the site that offered discounts last year.
Daily deal sites
While the likes of LivingSocial and Groupon tend to offer food and spa deals, the occasional local retailer pops up. Between now and Small Business Saturday, a minimal amount of homework and creating an account with one (or all) of these sites could save you some Monday. We’d advise getting with something like The Dealmix, which collects a large variety of all these local deals. Keep an eye out on any of these applications for vendor or shop deals in your area. Then make a call or check Facebook to see if they are participating in Small Business Saturday. Then add those savings to whatever discount the daily deal site was offering. Of course, you should check that you can use coupons during the Saturday sale.
Facebook
Facebook is offering a slew of tools for small businesses to take advantage of, but the site is also catering to consumers. Check out the Small Business Saturday Facebook page and you’ll have access to a variety of information, including city guides for optimizing your local shopping in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, as well as organized events in cities nationwide. Some of them include raffles, free gift wrapping, Santa visits for the kids, and community breakfasts.
Twitter
Be sure to follow your favorite local business on Twitter, if you haven’t already. We’re sure a great many of these sites will have implemented a Follow button (one of the tools in the Small Business Saturday kid), and will be using the hashtags #ShopSmall, #ShopSmallNov26, #SmallBizSaturday and #SmallBusinessSaturday to spread word of their discounts this weekend.
As far as saving when buying on eBay goes:
Use a site like Ebuyersedge.com to set up saved searches. You get an e-mail whenever a matching item is newly listed. Especially good for “Buy It Now”s that are priced right.
Try a misspelling search using a site like Typojoe.com to hopefully find some great deals with items that have main key words misspelled in the title. Other interested buyers might not ever see them.
If you see an auction that you want to bid on, use a sniping service such as Bidball.com to place your bid for you. It’ll bid in the last few seconds, helping you to save money and avoid shill bidding.
Yes great advice, sniping software.. wheres the human cost in all of this? Software designed to rip off your fellow man, these sort of attitudes where it comes across as guilt free when you create a situation that you’re happy that the seller ‘sells’ at a loss and you receive a ‘bargain’ in the process. I think its a disgrace, and ultimately theres karma and you can’t download the software for that.
Well, it’s not designed to rip off people, sniping is effective only against ignorant and or emotional/competitive eBay bidders that do not know how their proxy bidding system works.
Sniping actually puts you at a slight disadvantage because if 2 bids are the same or there is not enough difference between them to meet eBay’s minimum bid increment, the first bid in wins.
So, if all bidders were aware, were strictly rational when bidding, and could decide on the absolute maximum bid right off the bat, the best bidding strategy would be to bid the second an item is listed.
There is nothing unfair about sniping. All you are doing is waiting until the end of the auction to place your bid. You can do it manually if you have the time.
Another advantage of sniping – it can help protect you against shill bidding.