5 Social Media Secrets to Saving Money

March 16, 2010— -- Living large with less isn't as difficult as you may think. Just ask the social media experts who shared their high-tech tips for frugal living at this year's South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin.

Using Twitter, Facebook and dozens of sites online, they've found ways to score big deals on hotel rooms, airfare, clothing, food and all kinds of other items.

"We're talking about having a more luxurious life without spending a lot of money," said Nichelle Stephens, who maintains the personal finance blog Keeping Nickels. She and her fellow "frugal warriors" shared their social media tips for saving money. Here are five:

Of the millions of tweets generated by Twitter each day, Hayes Davis, co-founder of CheapTweet, said that thousands are about deals on products.

His site, which launched in 2008, searches all of Twitter for the best deals and then pulls them on to one site.

The deals range from $25-off coupons at a local restaurant to 30-percent-off sales at the Gap, to free photo books from Kodak and more, but he said unless you already know about them an individual can't find them online.

"Just like any search engine, CheapTweet makes it much, much easier to find all this stuff in one place," he said. And you don't need to be an active tweeter to use it. Anyone can just visit the site to see the stream of deal-related tweets.

Faye Penn, editor of Brokelyn.com, a budget-living guide to Brooklyn, N.Y., recommended searching online for a coupon code before making any purchase. She said that though the Internet is full of "deal noise" and false promotions, sites such as RetailMeNot aggregate coupon codes from across the Web to help you find the deal you want.