Holidays, Online Shopping and Influencers

Holiday Shopping For 2023 Is Strong

For all the talk about inflation, interest rates, politics and world conflict, the National Retail Federation expects record spending during the Holiday Season, from November 1 – December 31. Retail sales are expected to increase 3-4% over 2022. There seems to be a disconnect from the reports about low consumer confidence and actual spending.

Online shopping is still growing as more consumers will opt to shop in-store this year. Convenience is still key with 49% of online shoppers buying gift cards. According to Forrester, 30% of US online adults plan to do more in-store shopping in general this year (vs. 22% in 2022), while 26% said they plan to go to stores and/or malls on Black Friday weekend (vs. 16% last year). Fully 26% plan to avoid shopping in person when possible.

Shopping Live in TikTok and Other Social News

Have you tried live TikTok shopping? I will soon have a Santa sweatshirt as proof of this new way to shop! It’s like QVC on TikTok. Live shopping is just one of the major changes going on in the social world. TikTok recently announced it will begin subsidizing discounts up to 50% for sellers using its newly-launched TikTok Shop. TikTok is hoping to gain a strong foothold right out of the gate with US shoppers during the holiday season.

Other updates to look out for include AI-related content across social media, new reply features for Instagram, random feed prompts from YouTube and Collaborative Articles from LinkedIn. Threads, the new social platform from Meta, keeps rolling out new features as it tries to compete with X, formerly known as Twitter.

Social media platforms are constantly evolving due to technology changes and competition between platforms. The most important thing is to make sure you’re working with the same knowledge as everyone else. When you know your platforms in and out, you have the opportunity to utilize them better than your competitors and get the most for your digital marketing buck.

Here are some of the sources we use to stay up to date: Social Media Today, Mashable, and Social Media Examiner.

How Do You Pronounce That?

Hosting a podcast, we are constantly concerned about pronouncing names correctly. Well, I have a source for you to help with pronouncing many difficult English words. And it’s from a Frenchman who makes YouTube videos to teach us how to pronounce problem words like potable, cache, macabre or gnocchi.

The remarkable Julien Miquel is one of the most-watched producer of pronunciation videos in the world, according to YouTube. His videos have gotten 50 million views so far this year in the U.S. Since I just returned from Napa, this guide to wine words would have been most helpful.

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