Twitter is Nicaragua.
That’s what I learned at a very interesting seminar hosted by OPuS at Brookes on Wednesday night.
At the event, sponsored by Blake Lapthorn, Sam Missingham (Lounge Marketing) and Davina Quarterman (Wiley Blackwell) outlined ‘how’ and ‘why’ publishers should get involved with social networking .
In John Pilger’s War on Democracy, a former Chief of Operations summed up the CIA’s involvement within Central American politics , in the last fifty years, ‘if we don’t control it, someone else will’. Sam made the point that publishers and their products are being discussed online, if they don’t get involved in the process of creating a public image, they will lose control of that image. Further to that, there are the economic benefits of communicating with such large numbers (50m on Twitter, 350m on Facebook).
Just to clarify my terms, I know of no publisher that plans to disrupt Twitter’s banana trade.
Sam provided us with the reasons for. She talked us through the steps she took to enter this brave new world with a 150 year old brand like The Bookseller: enter cautiously, with a personal account; find out how the site works; then start to build followers by providing what people want. Sound easy? Try it.
Using twitter increased traffic to The Bookseller site by 60%, the update feed at @TheBookseller is the third biggest driver of traffic to the site. Davina pointed out that you can do things like this – set up RSS feeds and twitter updates – without logging in to each site: things can be set in motion so that your followers or friends are automatically notified on changes on your site e.g. your news.
In her presentation, Davina gave examples of what Wiley have done online, showcasing their competitions and groups that allow them to communicate with interested parties and develop a community without shouting at people. They use twibes on Twitter to follow important trends and create Facebook pages for their journal titles, like Ecology Letters, to allow readers to discuss the hot topics. Twibes, in particular, seem like a useful way of finding out what a particular group thinks e.g. librarians.
It all seems a very friendly, involved way to do marketing. Questions of time and reward were well met by the presenters as they gave examples of increased exposure and sales. Davina talked of Return On Engagement rather than Return On Investment but that’s a discussion for another day.
Questions were also raised as to how a publisher should behave on social networking sites, with the consensus being: humble, encouraging, This idea of nurturing engagement is a popular positive spin on social networking at the moment; to throw another metaphor into the mix – it turns what could be nannying into parenthood. Not everyone is going to be addicted to following your updates, but the important thing is to encourage those that are, while providing content that the casual browser can relate to.
It reminded me of the Adam and Joe show on 6Music, that offered listeners the chance to contribute songs and then gave the contributors attention by championing the best. They don’t say ‘listen’, they offer the chance to be heard. People tune in to hear the funny songs, and are drawn to contribute because of the attention. Once they’re contributing, the enable (the show) wins by receiving content and feedback.
Wednesday was a night of show and tell, featuring all of the internet-only things that can get ignored when you can’t see your monitor for the slush pile, and OPuS did well to get with the programme by offering free wireless and a hashtag discussion of the show over on twitter at #opustalk.
As a conclusion, the attendees were shown the DK ‘The Future of Publishing’ video that’s been doing the rounds. Comments were made about it being a rip-off of an American Association of Retired Persons video. This is true, but I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t looked it up on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
Have a look at the #opustalk page to see what I’ve forgotten, with my short attention span and fickle memory…
F.A.O those who tweet. As it’s #FollowFriday, keep an eye on @samatlounge and @dquarter for future marketing insights, and (unrelated but a favourite) @Gleonhard does a good line in discussing the future of books.
Ewan
