Book stores are inherently lucky in that every one of their products contains a story. Unlike clothing or electronics where you have to dig deep, a book’s story is right in front of you. Book stores can utilize social media by bringing characters to life, use different types of content to put new spins on stories, and create a magical world within the store itself.

Anatomy

1) Bring characters to life through social media. Personal Twitter handles and Facebook profiles make it easy to create a personality for a fictional character. It also makes it easy for fans to communicate with the characters and create a personal connection between the two. This has recently been done successfully by Ford, for its Doug the Hand Puppet character, and SideKicks/Tribal DDB for its Salty character. 2) Utilize different content mediums to put a spin on stories that have only ever been consumed in their text form. College humour leveraged this by creating cartoons of famous video games characters eating at a restaurant. Adidas also did this with its Adidas Star Wars Cantina 2010 video in which it had celebrities interacting with Star Wars characters in the Cantina from the original movie. Taking figurative characters with big personalities and placing them in common social situations like these gives fans an interesting look at their personalities and brings to life situations they have imagined countless times in their mind 3) Create a magical world for your bookstore as one filled with the figurative worlds and beings inherent in your books. The film Night at the Museum, and its sequel, showed that imagination still reigns within people`s minds. Playing on customer’s imaginations like this is easy, as a store can discuss the haphazard social conditions that would ensue if every character in every book suddenly came to life in the store. Or if each book was itsown world and characters could jump between books and enter those worlds. Go to www.wishpond.com/merchants to build your own Facebook Storefront that syncs directly with your website or POS system.