Here are 3 social media marketing tips on best practices for social video, a new shopping feature from Instagram and best practices to get ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in November 2021.

New Facebook series on ‘Data, Creative & Advertising Excellence to help you with your social media marketing.

In the first released chapter of the new Facebook series ‘Data, Creative & Advertising Excellence’, you can find a great shortlist on social media marketing tactics you can use to make more effective social video ads and improve your performance.

If you want your social videos to work harder for you check out the ‘best practices’ and ‘highly recommended practices’ list in this Facebook article.

Download from Facebook

Look out for new social marketing ads in your Instagram shop tab

Instagram recently launched the ads feature in the Instagram shop tab for a new social media marketing tactic to help grow your sales. Keep your eyes peeled for when the feature is activated in your ads account. They are currently rolling this out to each market. This feature makes it easier for people to discover you, particularly when they’re already in the browsing mood. Below is an image of what the ads will look like in your shopping tab.

social media marketing instagram new ads shopping feature
Instagram new ads in shopping tab

Black Friday (Small Business Saturday) and Cyber Monday (BFCM) – are you ready?

Black Friday falls on Friday, 26th November, Small Business Saturday is on Saturday, 27th November (observed mainly in the US) and Cyber Monday is on Monday the 29th November.

Each year this major shopping weekend has been growing significantly around the globe. So much so that last year many e-tailers had higher revenues during this time than they did for pre-Christmas sales. It is expected this year will be bigger than ever due to the impact of the pandemic on shopping in store and delayed shipping.

So if you haven’t started thinking about your social media marketing plan for this upcoming weekend here is a high level marketing checklist to get prepared:

  1. Define your promotional offer – I am a supporter of value add, particularly for premium brands rather than discounts. However for BFCM, I highly suggest you go with a significant discount to increase your reach based on so many consumers online ready to shop during this time.
  2. Develop your advertising creative
  3. Design a website banner and promotional pop-up form
  4. Design a promotional emails series
  5. Set-up your coupon or voucher
  6. Integrate the promotion across your social channels


This is a fantastic, detailed downloadable resource from Velstar. As well as an article by WooCommerce and Shopify for further reading.