Mobile shopping is expected to increase by more than 10 percent this season.

Follow these six steps to ensure your limited-edition deals make a social media splash this Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

1) Prepare your social media profiles

While planning your social media strategy, it’s always good to start with your profiles. Coordinate your social media accounts to ensure all profile pictures, banners, bios, descriptions and links are updated to advertise your Cyber Monday and Black Friday promotions.

Here are a few optimisation ideas:

-Cover photos are the first thing people notice on your social media profiles. Create a custom one for each of your profiles to promote your sale.

-Update your bio or call-to-action button to include a direct link to your dedicated Black Friday or Cyber Monday landing page.

-Pin a tweet or Facebook post announcing the best deal at the top of your timeline.

2) Build a sense of urgency

Most shoppers have a natural sense of urgency during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but that doesn’t mean you can’t inject some FOMO (fear of missing out) into your social media campaigns.

A simple yet effective way to create a sense of urgency in eCommerce marketing is to sprinkle time- or scarcity-related words throughout your social media content. Words like “today” or “now” trigger people to think something is in limited supply and urge consumers to take immediate action.

Other examples of time-related trigger words to weave into your content and CTA buttons include:

• Hurry

• Shop now

• Limited-time offer

• Instant savings

• Save today

• Limited number available

• Don’t miss this

• Today only

PRO TIP: Don’t overdo it. Shoppers can quickly become immune to a stream of so-called limited-time offers. Moderation is the key to success here. Test a few calls-to-action and see what works for you instead of bombarding your audience with constant sales pitches.

3) Create targeted gift guides

Picking gifts for friends and family is always challenging. You can make it easier for your customers by creating a series of gift guides aimed at different segments of your target audience.

Let’s say you run an online store that sells apparel and novelty items. You might create guides that include your products, like “The Best Gifts to Get the ‘Game of Thrones’ Fan in Your Life” or “30 Hostess Gifts That are Better Than Wine.”

Publish these guides on your own blog, or as guest posts on a site with a similar target market, and promote them using paid Facebook ads that reach specific audience segments.

4) Use dedicated hashtags

Do some hashtag research before you plan your social media campaign. This will help you understand the mood and interest of your target audience, and you can plan your social media posts accordingly.

While major Black Friday and Cyber Monday have some obvious hashtags (#cybermonday, #cybermondaysales, #blackfridaydeals, etc.), it’s worth finding out what other trending hashtags you can use in your posts. For instance, searches for #giftsforher, #giftsforhim and #christmasgifts rise significantly during the holiday sales season.

Choose hashtags that are relevant to your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and use them in every social media post promoting your sales.

5) Leverage the power of emotions

Humans are inherently emotional beings. They like to feel and, when they do, they also like to share their feelings with their family and friends on social media.

A study of 1.6 million organic posts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ conducted by the social media optimisation platform SocialFlow found that 99 percent of posts received little to no engagement. The content that does go viral makes people feel something.

Here are 10 emotions that work best on social media:

• Amusement

• Pleasure

• Interest

• Joy

• Surprise

• Hope

• Happiness

• Affection

• Delight

• Inspiration

Embed these emotions in the content of your social media posts to get attention. Get it right and your post may just go viral.

6) Plan and schedule your posts

In the fast-paced world of social media, timing is everything. A well-timed post can be the difference between creating social media magic and an eCommerce marketing ploy that falls on deaf ears.

When you are preparing a Black Friday or Cyber Monday campaign, it’s always good to start early, plan your campaign, and create and schedule your social media posts well in advance.

There are many tools for social media scheduling tools out there, including Hootsuite and Buffer. If you are selling on e-commerce platforms like eBay, Shopify, WooCommerce or Etsy, you can use a tool like Around.io which helps you create posts directly from your product listings.

Three reasons why you should schedule your social media posts:

• When all your content is created at once, your design and messaging will be consistent.

• You can schedule your posts at times that best reach your target audience.

• You can focus your time and effort on selling during your busiest months.

Final thoughts

Regularly assess how your social media content is resonating with customers. Make sure to reschedule posts that are getting a lot of engagement.

Lastly, don’t forget that while discounts and deals are a big part of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, shoppers still value the overall customer experience—and your social media presence is an important part of that.