Booksellers Blog

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Have you thought about your marketing for Holiday 2009 yet? You’re probably finishing your fall buying about now, and getting ready to breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe you’re planning on enjoying the summer, handselling some beach-reads, and preparing for back to school.

Not so fast.

Now is the time to prepare for your holiday marketing

If you are planning, wishing, or hoping to blog, set up an email newsletter, or use social networking tools to connect with your customers during this upcoming holiday season, the time to start preparing is now. It takes time to build a readership or a following online. It takes time to find your voice, to try new things and discover what works, and to integrate your online marketing with the rest of your business objectives.

You should start now, if you haven’t already.

Here are some things you should be doing and thinking about:

What is your online profile at this very moment? Set up a Google Alert for your store name, your name, and any keywords that are important to you. Google Blogsearch will tell you if bloggers are mentioning your store.  Use a search engine to see how you stack up in searches that prospective customers might use. What comes up if you Google “bookstore [yourtown]“? What about “best bookstore in [state]“. What about categories? What comes up if someone is looking for “mystery book” or “science fiction” or “history” in your area? Remember to use the terms that the customer will use, not industry lingo.

Fill out and/or update your Google Local profile. This is an important way to get your store details in front of people who are searching in your area.

What’s your goal? Do you want to bring more traffic into the store, highlight and sell more of your staff picks, increase attendance at events, build awareness of your store in your community, increase business through your website? Pick one (or 2 if you’re ambitious).

What online tools will help you reach those goals, in combination with what you are already doing in-store and through your traditional marketing?

If  you think you want a blog, but haven’t yet started, set up a practice blog. You can keep it password protected, and you can use a free platform like Blogger or Wordpress.com. Blog 2-3 times per week. Is it a realistic pace for you? After a few posts, you should start to discover the voice that you will want to use.  Also evaluate the platform — is it working for you? Will you need a more powerful blogging platform like self-hosted Wordpress?

How is your website looking these days? Is it up to date? If your website plays a part in your strategy, what can you do to improve it? Is it easy to use? Will someone coming to your website for the first time know what you want them to do? Is there a call to action that is clear and obvious (sign up for newsletter, reserve tickets for an event, etc).

Talk with some of your customers about their online activities and preferences. Do they wish they could order through your website more easily? Are they on Twitter? Do they want to learn about your events through Facebook? Do they want to learn more about your staff and the day-to-day of the store? Do they want a place to look at staff recommendations online? Do they want coupons or special deals? Do they like your newsletter. Does it come out too often, not often enough? Does it provide the type of information they want?

Are you ready to get started?

If you choose to blog, twitter, or have a Facebook page, the time to start building and playing with those things is now. Then, when that all important fall rush begins, you will be ready. You will have begun to build your audience. You will have a strategy in place and will be comfortable with the tools.

What are you waiting for?

I’d love to hear what you are planning, and if you feel ready to get started. Leave a comment, and if you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask them here.

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Don’t think of this as another twitter post, think of it as a continuation of yesterday’s post.

Becky McCray at The Small Biz Survival blog has an important post today: Is Twitter worth it for small town businesses?

She asks (and then answers) the tough questions that I know you have been asking:

But what about small town businesses? We don’t have the same share of our local customers on Twitter. How many people can you realistically reach if only 5 or 10 out of your town’s 5,000 people are signed up? How can that be worth the time and effort?

To see what she has to say, read the article at her blog.

Becky is one of the premiere resources for information on how small businesses can use online tools and social media. Her blog is worth a slot in your RSS feed reader.

And now, I promise, no more posts about twitter (unless there is something really important to tell you).

Thanks.

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I know, you’re tired of twitter. As much as I love it, I am also tired of incessant press and portrayal of twitter as the service that will save the world.

But there’s no denying twitter’s power as a tool for connecting.

Josh Christie, a bookseller at Sherman’s Books in Freeport, Maine, has a great post on his blog entitled: Twitter for Indies - search.twitter.com. Josh gives a quick and simple outline of how and why an independent bookstore can use twitter to connect with local customers. It’s not difficult, and it’s not very time consuming.

(And if you like your beverages made with hops and barley, make doubly sure to add Josh’s blog to your RSS feed reader.  He is as passionate about beer as he is about books and bookselling.)

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French journalist Henri Gilbert, Barcaldine, April 1900

I’ve been very excited to hear from a few booksellers that they have recently started blogs. Because I’m not sure if they are ready for public dissemination yet, I won’t post the links here now — but if you are a bookseller who has recently started a blog, and you want some visitors, please let me know — either post here in the comments, or drop me an email (ann at booksellers blog dot com). I’d love to highlight your efforts here, so that everyone else can cheer you on.

I came upon two posts today that will give you some simple tips for blogging.

How to Format YourPosts So People Will Read Them:  Julie Roads gives some practical advice on the relatively new blog that she writes with Ron Miller, Soc Media 101: Social Media Tips & How-tos for Beginners. There is much of value at their site, so I recommend that you subscribe and read all of the ealier posts as well.

Chris Brogan, author of the forthcoming Trust Agents (Wiley August 09; order one for yourself and a few for the store — trust me) talks about an important piece of blogging etiquette in his post Links Are Good Manners.

Still thinking about a blog but unsure if you should start one? Let us know if you have questions, and maybe together, the readers of this blog and I can help you figure out if it’s worth your time.

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Facebook has announced that, beginning Saturday June 13th at 12:01am, it will allow users to claim a “vanity URL”. This means that instead of having a personal profile at a URL like [http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1183876909&ref=profile], I will be able to have http://www.facebook.com/AnnKingman.

Is this a big deal for you? For your personal profile, probably not, unless you are a heavy user of Facebook and want an easy way to direct people to your profile. But for your business, it could be.

If you already have a Facebook Page for your business, you may be able to claim a URL for that as well. If your page has 1,000 fans or more (as of May 31st, 2009), you can claim your name.  So your page would be something like www.facebook.com/mybookstore.  That is easier to put in your advertising, on your bookmarks, and in your email newsletters.

If you don’t have 1,000 fans yet, don’t despair. Facebook has said that they will allow you to claim your URL after June 28th, 2009. In the meantime, if your business name is trademarked, you can protect it by filling out a form, and then claim it on June 28th.

A great article that explains all of this is at CNET: A users’ guide to personalizing your Facebook

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Image credit: Sreejith K via Flickr

Everybody’s talking about Twitter. In the past month or so, I’ve seen several booksellers and publishing people sign on to twitter to try it out. And I think many are engaging with new people, learning a lot, and having fun.

Here’s the thing: once you follow more than 30 people, the “standard” way of using Twitter (by going to the twitter web page) just doesn’t work. But if you try to keep down the number of people you follow, you don’t get the most out of Twitter, especially if you are using it as a business to engage with your current or potential customers.

How I manage twitter (and don’t let it manage me)

I follow back anyone who a) is not a spammer and b) does not have a twitter stream full of self-promotional tweets. If the first page or two of their twitter stream has something that shows they are human and somewhat interesting, I will follow them back. Since I don’t know if the follower is someone who works at a bookstore, or a reader or listener of Books on the Nightstand, I don’t want to alienate anyone that I might actually want to get to know.

The way I manage it: Tweetdeck. It’s a program that you download and install on your computer. So far it’s the best tool for twitter that I have found.

Put your friends in columns

The key in using Tweetdeck is to set up columns to group your followers. Above is a screenshot of my setup. I have a column for BookPeople, one for Book Bloggers, one for Social Media, and another for Friends. That column all the way over to the left — that’s everybody. I almost never look over there. If I end up talking with someone that I follow, I typically move them into one of those groups.

I try to make a point of dipping into my “all following” column once a week or so to see if there’s someone I want to move to a group, and to see if there’s anything interesting going on. But unless someone from that column replies to me or retweets one of my posts, I don’t typically take notice of them on a day-t0-day basis.

It’s on all day

I run Tweetdeck on my home computer, and leave it on all day. It pulls in the tweets and keeps them, so at any time, I can check in and quickly scroll through messages that came in while I was doing other things. Again, I usually keep this to just one or two columns, so it takes just a minute or two, and I don’t miss anything.
Remember, though, that Twitter is not like email. There is no expectation that you are looking at every tweet. If someone wants to reach you about something important, they will send you an @reply or direct message (and I suggest having your DMs forwarded to your email — you can do this in twitter settings).

Other powerful things that Tweetdeck can do

There are some other features of Tweetdeck that I couldn’t live without:

• Retweet with the click of the mouse
• Built-in URL shortener, to save characters when you are tweeting a link
• Email a tweet you like to yourself or someone else
• Follow, unfollow, add or remove to groups easily from within Tweetdeck
• Favorite tweets you want to read later. You can then create another column for Favorites and read at your leisure
• Create a column for a search term and it will automatically put any tweets with that term in the column
• Follow conferences or conversations that use a hashtag (#) by using a search column

But really, 20 minutes a day?

There are, of course, exceptions to the 20 minutes a day. If I’m in a conversation with someone on twitter, I’ll likely stick around until its natural end. I have also started to use Twitter as my morning news source with my cup of coffee. Many of the people I’m following tweet interesting links and breaking news (follow @jafurtado for publishing news). I find twitter to be fun, so occasionally I will spend 1/2 hour or so in the early morning or in the evening talking with people about publishing or book blogging or whatever.  But on an average day, when I’m busy with work or calling on bookstores, I spend no more than 20-30 minutes on twitter, broken into 5-10 minute increments.

There are a few other twitter “power tools” that I’ll write about in future posts, but really, this is the biggie.

I hope this is helpful. If you have any twitter tricks or tips to share, please let us know in the comments. And if you have questions, ask them there, too; I’m sure others have the same questions.

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image credit: pixieclipx via flickr

Have you watched the Gary Vaynerchuk BEA video yet? If not, please do. Really. It’s not only motivating, Gary brings up some controversial topics that I would love to see debated and discussed among booksellers. If those things are being talked about somewhere, would you please let me know where?

If you have watched the video, would you mind leaving a comment so that others who are doubting will hear your thoughts? I know it’s a huge time commitment, but I know of at least two booksellers who have watched it and told me that they found it inspiring and worth the time.

Speaking of comments: in Gary Vayenerchuk’s BEA presentation, he made the statement:

“Content is king, but marketing is the queen and she runs the household.”

A twist on this idea appears in a fantastic blog post from Mack Collier at The Viral Garden, titled: ‘The Idea that Content is King in Blogging is Total Bullshit.”

It’s one thing, Mack says, to have a well-written blog, but, he says:

Every day I read hundreds of blog posts. And every day, I see dozens of truly GREAT posts that get no comments. Every day I see dozens of pretty good posts that get dozens of comments and have vibrant conversations.

The difference? Most of the bloggers that write those pretty good posts are also pretty good about leaving their blog and interacting with people on OTHER sites. They comment on their reader’s blogs. They tweet their links on Twitter. They are ACTIVELY social with social media.

Commenting on other blogs is something that is overlooked in discussions about social media. I know that we neglected to mention it in our BEA panel for booksellers. It’s the “social” part of social media. Every time you comment on someone’s blog, if you include your URL, that comment will link back to you. People are curious. They will want to know who you are. And if you leave comments of value, they will likely become readers of your own blog. It sounds simple. It is simple. And it’s important.

Now, you might feel that you need some practice commenting. Feel free to start here. Leave a comment, and see what happens.

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I’m still trying to condense my thoughts about BEA into a manageable post.

However, I do want to highlight one of the best sessions at BEA. It was also the only BEA-organized (as opposed to ABA-organized) session that was targeted specifically to Independent Booksellers. In this video, Gary Vaynerchuk is talking to YOU.

It is a bit over an hour long. And I know that seems eternal with all of the other things that you need to do. But please, make yourself a cup of coffee or tea (or beer or wine) and settle in. You will not agree with every idea Gary has, and I look forward to a debate of those ideas: but I *know* that you will find inspiration. Thanks to HarperStudio for making the video available.

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Are you going to BEA? I’ve combed through the workshops, panels, and Author Stage events to pick out a few social-media related sessions that I think you shouldn’t miss. This is not all-inclusive — much of the BEA programming appears to be social-media related. However, I did want to highlight a few sessions that I know will be great and that I plan on attending:

• Thursday, 2:45-400pm, Room 1E12  : Social Media and the Independent Bookseller (scroll down to the bottom for details of this session).OK, true confession time — I’m one of the panelists, along with Len Vlahos of ABA, Stephanie Anderson of WORD bookstore in Brooklyn, and Megan Sullivan of The Harvard Bookstore. Still, I think it will be a great discussion about using social media to promote your bookstore. Please join us.
• Becoming an Agent of Trust: Publisher and Retailer Strategies for Harnessing New Social Media Tools to Grow Communities
  10:30AM - 11:30AM (Friday, May 29, 2009, in the  Autographing Area (I think)) In the old days (and by that, we mean 10 years ago), the Internet was a place where one put up a site, paid for a few banner ads, and then everyone sat around and waited for the money to come in. Ten years later, we’ve learned how to build dynamic relationships through content, through the use of  social tools and community platforms, and by the new and expanding nature of trusted relationships in the Internet age. Join Chris Brogan as he walks you through a simple exercise of goal-strategy-execution, sharing various social media and online marketing tools, such that you’ll leave with actionable next steps to pursue for yourself. Learn how to be a trust agent from one of the guys who wrote the book on such things.
  Presenter:

  Chris Brogan - Author, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust

  Julien Smith - co-author,Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust

  I’ve talked about Chris Brogan here before, and I urge you to check in on this session if you have a chance. Chris is an entertaining and inspiring speaker, and a far cry from many of the “Death by Powerpoint” business presenters. Chris always has great ideas about social media, and I’m eager to see what he brings to BEA.

• Saturday, 2pm, Room 1E14:  Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It! (Harper Studio)I’ve been remiss in talking about Gary Vaynerchuk here on this blog, mainly because he has been written about everywhere else. He is the Social Media whiz kid who used the internet to grow a single location brick and mortar wine store into a multimedia empire. Think I’m joking? In less than 10 years, he took the family business, Wine Library in Springfield New Jersey, from $6 million to $60 million annually. He’s now paid big bucks to consult for companies. I’ve watched many videos of Gary’s presentations, and he is always motivating and inspiring, and unlike any business speaker you’ve ever seen.

I will be at BEA on Thursday through Saturday, and I do hope that I get to meet you if I haven’t already.  I will be at Booth 4077, Firebrand Technologies, on Friday 5/29 from 1-2 pm. Firebrand has thoughtfully provided space at their booth for book bloggers to meet their readers. There will be 44 book bloggers doing meet and greets at the booth throughout the course of the weekend. Check out the full schedule of “blog signings” (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the many author signings that happen at BEA), or download a pretty, printable pdf.

Have a great show!

(edited to change the Chris Brogan session to the one that I think you will find of most interest. It’s more of a workshop format, from the description. The BEA website is pretty confusing, isn’t it? The BEA Education Sessions are listed there under the “Big Ideas at BEA” moniker, and are easy to miss.)

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I won’t take any of your time editorializing, because I really want you to read, and digest, Mike Shatzkin’s blog post, Digital change: what’s an independent bookseller to do?

So please, just go read it. I’m sure he’d love your comments, and I will follow you over there to see what you have to say.

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