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"Sara Dunham is the community manager at online coupon site and community Savings.com.  You can read more of Sara's posts on the Savings.com coupon blog or follow @savings.\nEarlier this month, Savings.com hosted the first ever Save Up event in San Francisco, where we brought together the country's top deal experts (DealPros) to talk about the future of saving money. And it's important to note that these aren't experts by trade, they are experts by passion and experience.  They are real consumers who are saving tons and, lucky for the rest of us, they're sharing their secrets so we can all be honorary super savers.  One thing is definitely clear: it's the year of social savings. The savviest shoppers are all tapped into online social circles bubbling up around deals, and with the biggest shopping days of the year upon us, here are some social media tips from us and from our community of experts, to help you save big this holiday season.\nDeal Finding Basics\n\n\n\n\nFirst, the basics. Tons of consumers, retailers and brands are now posting Black Friday deals and holiday sales all over the Web in real-time, so often that's the first place you'll hear of a really hot deal.  Here's how to kick off your social shopping strategy with a bang.\n\n- Make friends with your favorite brands.  Do you have a handful of favorite brands and retailers? Find them online! Become their Fan on Facebook. Follow them on Twitter. These tools give us immediate access to great deals and special offers, some of which aren't available anywhere else.  Then, in the spirit of giving, share the wealth!  Do your friends a favor and post the sweetest deals you find to your own Facebook Page or Twitter feed.\n- Don't forget good old email. Set up a designated email account just for sale and promotional emails from merchants. While many of them are hip to Facebook and Twitter, there are still many others that aren't up to speed quite yet. You can often get limited-time, special offers through store emails and you don't want to miss those!  And if emails aren't your thing, then log onto an online coupon site, such as the forums at SlickDeals, which trove through all of these deals so you don't have to.\n- Ask around.  Say you know what you're looking for but can't seem to find it.  There's a HUGE community of savvy shoppers who love nothing more than sharing their savings mojo.  Ask your own network, ask brands or stores directly about the deals their running, or other discount seekers on Twitter.\n\nAdvanced Tips\n\n\n\n\nAll that said, even the most social media-wise shopper will exhaust themselves trying to sift through the throngs of holiday-related tweets, Facebook updates, email newsletters, and other promos. How can you cut through the clutter? You'll need to get a bit organized, and it's really not that hard. \n\n- Create your own Twitter list or follow existing ones. DealPro Erin Gifford of Coupon Cravings recommends creating a mini deal-focused list on Twitter, separate from your main feed, so the hot deals don\u2019t get lost among the tweets coming from your friends, family, co-workers and other folks you follow.  Or, you can get a great start just by following Erin's own Twitter holiday deal list, with her top 15 best feeds to follow, including Amazon, Toys R Us, Best Buy, Ebates and other entities that she expects to have the best deals this shopping season.\n- Use Twitter to reach your favorite stores and brands.  DealPro Toni-Lynn Barber of Delightful Chaos says that shoppers shouldn't be afraid to use Twitter to contact their favorite companies and brands directly to ask if they have current promotions or coupons available, or to ask about specific products on your gift list.  DealPro Claire Adams Williams adds that many companies with Twitter accounts offer real-time customer service. So if you have other questions about a return, a problem with a product, or anything else, then just ask - and then tweet the response.\n- Use coupon and holiday hashtags.  Twitter hashtags abound for coupons and deals.  Some of our favorites are pretty straightforward:  #blackfriday, #coupon, #savings and #deal are some of the most active.  But you don't need to stop there - besides scouting around for top deals as we decide what we're going to buy, many of us already have specific items on our gift lists that we're looking for this season.  DealPro Angela Maas of Suburban Jungle says that she not only uses general coupon hashtags, but searches for updates on specific products, such as #wiifit or #xbox. \n\nAnd if you're looking for a comprehensive resource, many of our DealPros use Cheaptweet as a one-stop shop that aggregates deal and coupon-related Twitter activity into a single feed.\nWhat savvy social media strategies do you plan to use to rock your holiday shopping this year?\nMore shopping resources from Mashable:\n- 5 Cool Ways Brands Are Using Facebook for Black Friday and Beyond- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Find Black Friday Deals- HOW TO: Use the Web for Socially Responsible Shopping- 10 New Sites for Socially Responsible Shopping- 6 Superb Ways to Shop Using Social Media\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, WendellFranks"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/11/26/holiday-deals/>