Social Media Tips from booksellers

3:04 PM, 6 August 2017

We have a lot of expert social media-using booksellers in New Zealand. We asked Thomas Koed from VOLUME in Nelson, Jemma Pirrie from McLeod’s Booksellers in Rotorua, Jenna Todd from Time Out Bookshop in Auckland, Baz MacDonald from VicBooks in Wellington and Louise Ward from Wardini Bookshop in Havelock North to proffer their thoughts on what makes a bookshop zing on social media.

Top tip - the one everybody agreed on

Ways that VOLUME do this is by posting images of their weekly table display: they have done gardening, strong girls and more over the past few weeks. This carries their shop through to the shop window of social media.

Jemma Pirrie from McLeods includes her staff in photos, or recommended book posts. If you get your prizewinners to come in store to get their prizes, ask them if you can take their photo and use it on Facebook.

Other great tips

• Social media is not a sales hammer, but a soft lasso to collect customers. Sales follow souls. (TK)
   
• Don’t make posts too wordy – keep them succinct and engaging. (JP)

• Don’t sign up for all social media channels if you aren’t going to use them all regularly. In this case, choose one and use it well, even if it’s just one post a week. (JT)
   
• Generate your own content and add only the most interesting shared content. (TK)
   
• Plan and write your social media posts in a quiet and focused environment i.e. not at the counter while you’re serving. It’s very easy to get links, hashtags and spelling wrong. Using a desktop when sharing links generally works better. (JT)
   
• More isn’t always best. You don’t want to clog the feeds of your followers. Make sure every post is a post of value. (JT)
   
• Keep your feeds diverse. Try not to fill your feed with niche posts and think of fun and creative ways to create varied posts. (BM)
   

People are bored most of the time. If you can regularly relieve this, even for an instant, rather than deepen it, you own them. (TK)

• Feature products people will want to share with their friends. Unfortunately, just creating a post doesn’t mean everybody who follows your page will see it. The reach depends on how much people engage with the post (how many click-throughs, likes and comments it gets). So it is important to pick products and messages which people will share, or tag their friends in, to achieve the effect you want! (BM)
   
• Don’t get too hung up on ‘likes’. Your followers will still see it and act upon it if they’re interested. (LW)
   
• Use Facebook to create and promote events. (LW)
  At the moment, Facebook is prioritising events in their algorithm. So the event you create on Facebook directly is more likely to gain momentum than one that you have created on your website and linked to on Facebook. It is simple to do, just choose ‘event’ in the options under your post window. (but please - don't make events for things that aren't events, like having a new book in-store unless it is a launch: just use an ordinary post).
   
• A picture goes a long way. Thankfully, camera phones make it easy to personalise your post to your store and make it more eye-catching in a follower’s feed. (JT)
   

• Highlight words by using capitals eg. PRIZE DRAW (JP)
  Booksellers NZ will frequently do this for giveaways, it genuinely draws peoples eye and makes a difference to how many entries you will get. However, do limit the number of giveaways that you do that don’t engage with your direct community. (and don't use all caps other than for that purpose, or for more than one-two words)
   
• With Facebook Prize Draws encourage likes and shares of the post to reach more people for your page. (JP)
   
• Mix ‘clickbait’ with posts that invite deeper engagement (even if these posts get fewer ‘likes’). (TK)
   
• Nostalgia works well for long-standing bookshops (JP) – a photo of the interior in the year each of the staff members were born, for instance! Or an old clipping from the newspaper on your opening day.