Booksellers Blog

I’m sure you’ve heard the buzz about Twitter.  It’s the new “shiny object” in the social media space. And you may have noticed that I did not list Twitter as one of the “tools” in the online marketing “toolbox” in my earlier post. In fact, I deliberately stayed away from any mention of Twitter–because while I do indeed feel that Twitter can be very effective in engaging with customers, I really see it as “Social Media 102″ for marketing and promotion. This past week, however, I’ve been asked about Twitter by booksellers, and I’ve seen some new bookstores establish their Twitter accounts, so I feel the need to write about it here. It is very easy to take mis-steps that can derail your twitter efforts.

I compare Twitter to a large cocktail party.

When you enter a cocktail party, you don’t immediately shout “Buy this book at my store.” You don’t even approach the nearest person and announce “Famous Author is coming to my store.” Instead, you say hello, listen to an in-progress conversation before jumping in, and make some small talk. Once you are engaged in the conversation, and you think your conversational partners are interested, you can work the announcement of your sale or your event into the discussion. If you’ve engaged your conversation partners and made them feel part of the discussion, and given some genuinely interesting information, they will probably tell others at the party about your sale or event. And that’s basically how Twitter works. People choose to follow you because they find you interesting, want to get to know you, already know you, or want to hear what you have to say. If all you post are advertisements or links to blog posts or products, you will find it hard to get the kinds of followers you want — those who will not only visit your site or come to your events, but those who will tell their friends and spread the word.

Your customers (and prospective customers) want to do business with people, not faceless companies.

Twitter is a great way to show that you are a person, or even collection of people, who are interested in topics that are important to your customers. A Twitter account using the company name is fine, but you should be sure to show the person behind the name. Patrick at Vroman’s is a great example of this.  He posts about Vroman’s events or books they are featuring, but he also talks about what he has read, and he engages in conversation with people that follow him. If there are multiple people who will twitter for your store, consider using their first name plus part of your store name as their twitter handle. This is the practice taken by Dell Computer. Their most well-known twitterer is RichardatDell. Richard helps customers with problems they are having with Dell computers, but he also posts things that are not at all Dell-related. His followers have come to know him, and they know that he is different from LionelatDell, who can also help with Dell-related issues. If you are interested in Twitter, my recommendation is to start an account and just observe for awhile. It takes a few weeks to get the idea of how powerful twitter can be when used in the right way. If you are unsure about your store’s presence on twitter, you can always start an account under your own name and then change it or add an account to reflect your store’s name. For specific ideas on how to use twitter for your business, Chris Brogan has a great post entitled, “50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.” There are also some great ideas in the comments. I will warn you, it’s slightly addicting. If you do join Twitter, please be sure to follow me: http://twitter.com/AnnKingman