Tweeting the Bookstore

photo by roger.elaws

Last week I talked about why I think the introduction of social media represents a potential new golden age for retailers. It just seems to me that the relationship-building inherent in social media is tailor-made for the small indie business that knows its customers personally, already maintains fairly constant contact with them and shares common interests, geography, etc..

Given my past experience as an independent bookseller, my thoughts naturally turn to how I might have used these tools myself to promote that business. Let’s take Twitter as an example. We’ll cheat a little and say that a significant number of my customers use Twitter on a regular basis. How might I use it to build stronger relationships with my customers?

In no particular order, here’s what I’d do:

Tweet special orders. That’s a no-brainer. Every time someone orders a book, I’d tweet them when it arrives. For customers whose tastes I know pretty well, I’d tweet the arrival of books I think they’ll also be interested in. I’d make note of titles customers ask me about and tweet them when they arrive in the store, setting up that impulse visit and purchase.

Tweet new arrivals. I might do it generally or I might build my database to reflect specific customer interests. History buffs would get tweets on the latest Lincoln biography, paranormal romance readers the latest Kim Harrison title, business book buyers the new Seth Godin book and so on.

Tweet magazine arrivals. Our store had a huge magazine inventory at more than 5,000 titles. We had customers who picked up every issue of a particular title—why the didn’t subscribe, I don’t know—and others who cherry-picked specific issues or made impulse buys from their favorite section.

The great thing about magazine customers is that they’re consistent and their tastes more easily categorized. If a customer loves Doll Reader, she’s more likely to be interested when a new doll title comes out. The same with model aircraft titles and Formula One racing titles.

To make sure our regulars never missed an issue of their favorite title, we kept a reserves log. If you wanted every issue of Canadian House and Home or Jeune Afrique, we would pull it when it came in and hold it for you. We held more than 700 reserves at any given time.

With Twitter I would immediately notify customers that their magazines had arrived. I could tweet all my automotive customers which car titles just came in. I could dice and slice notifications as broadly or as tightly as I desired, depending on how I organized my customer information. I could tease stories from specific issues that I thought might pique curiosity. I could set up a Twitter stream built around specific subject matter and build individualized audiences and conversations for those particular communities of interest. Want to know what’s new in the British tabloids? Subscribe to my royals stream and get notifications when Hello!, OK, Royalty and similar titles come in.

Tweet flash sales and other promotions. I’d use Twitter to goose sales on slow days, maybe sending out an alert that all books were 10 percent off for the next two hours. Or that we were giving away advance reading copies of books not yet released, but only to our customers on Twitter. We had hundreds of ARCs that publishers sent us all the time, so customers did us a service to take these off our hands.

Tweet author appearances. I’d use Twitter to build anticipation around an author signing, then tweet quotes or other interesting info during the event. Maybe I’d tweet special flash sales of the author’s back list prior to the event to build sales and interest in the signing.

Develop relationships with authors, agents and publishers. Speaking of authors, it was hard for a small store to compete with the chains for in-store promotions. Twitter could be used to develop long-term relationships with authors and their representatives, improving the odds that when a favorite author was planning signings in your area, you might be on the list of stops. Better still, you could encourage customers on Twitter to tweet the author or publisher, asking that your store be included on the tour. Tell me that couldn’t help a small store stand out from the crowd.

Share with other booksellers. Book Expo America and regional conferences were great places to meet other booksellers, pick their brains, share what was working and what wasn’t. For a small store, it was difficult to get away to these events. With Twitter you could develop your “brain trust” of fellow professionals and share ideas as they occurred. Imagine how valuable it would be to participate in an ongoing Twitter stream with hundreds of other booksellers, all sharing their ideas and innovations.

Tweet conference news. I’m sure many bookstores already do this, but if I attended Book Expo America today I’d be tweeting like a madman. Upcoming releases info, gossip from the floor, quotes from authors and snippets from their talks … I’d treat the conference as if I were a reporter for Publishers Weekly and my customers were my readers.

My ultimate goal in all this would be to position my store as my customers’ most valuable source of news and information on books, and to offer a higher level of customer service through the immediacy of Twitter.

That’s a quick (and incomplete) list of what I might do. What would YOU do?

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Tagged as: books, bookstores, magazines, retailing, social media, twitter