Why Online Communities are Important to Booksellers
As I was reading my RSS feeds this morning, I came upon a reference to an October 2008 report from Rubicon Consulting titled: Online Communities and their Impact on Business: Ignore at Your Peril..
Two key findings from the report appear in the introductory blog post titled “Online Reviews Second Only to Word of Mouth as Purchase Influencer in US” and I think they are relevant:
“Courting the small fraction of Internet users who write online reviews and comments is a very important task for many companies, but one they often neglect.”
As a bookseller, you have a distinct advantage over an online-only business. Once you identify your customers who blog and/or participate in book-related discussions or discussions of local businesses on social networks, you can engage them personally through face-to-face contact. I’m going to start thinking of ways in which you can identify those customers — please start thinking about it as well, and we’ll have a conversation about it here in a few days.
Secondly,
“Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily. What they don’t understand is that most other Internet users read those reviews and rely on them heavily when making purchase decisions. Taking good care of online communities can be a huge money-saver for companies trying to get more marketing impact from limited budgets.”
I wrote in an earlier post about checking your reviews on sites like Yelp.com and Insider Pages. Make sure you are also listed on IndieBound. There are many of these local business review sites out there. Find them and check your reviews. If your business is not there, list the details (but let someone else review it).
The full white paper is available for download at the Rubicon site, and it’s an interesting read when you have some time.
LitPark says:
December 11th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
It’s so reassuring to know that word-of-mouth and online reviews matter this much because that means readers and book-loving communities hold power. It’s not about units and marketing plans and money. It’s about one book connecting so deeply with one reader that that reader has to say something out loud. As it should be. There’s nothing the writing communities love more than publishers, editors, agents and booksellers who consider themselves one of us – not people to be used, not peons, certainly, but passionate, fellow booklovers.
Ann Kingman says:
December 11th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
LItPark, I think you’ve hit on one reason that our industry differs so much from many others out there — few of us are pure “marketers”, while almost all of us are passionate about what we are marketing — it’s a book, not “product.”
I believe that the biggest challenge — and the biggest opportunity — lies in connecting with our readers, and with helping readers connect with each other, to share word of mouth and recommendations. The bookstore (either the physical location or an online outpost of the store) seems to be the logical place for this to happen.