A Noble Idea: Barnes & Noble in Social Media, Part 1

Since childhood my toy store of choice has always been Barnes & Noble.  The New York Times has called B&N “by far, the largest bookstore chain in the United States,” (article) and they are looking to expand their reach overseas in the near future.  As you have probably guessed from my previous blog posts, books and reading are a great passion of mine.  Though B&N originated in 1873, it did not open as a full-fledged bookstore under the name Barnes & Noble until 1917 in New York City (Wikipedia).  Since then, the store has grown in size and offerings.  A traditional B&N will include sections for DVDs, CDs, stationary/journals, novelty gifts, magazines and a café (Starbucks) in addition to books.  However, it is B&N’s newest item which generates the most buzz and the most profit:  the Nook, a tablet which offers “incredible reading and entertainment,” boasts the website.  Customers can choose from the NookHD+, HD, Tablet, Color, Simple Touch w/ Glowlight, Simple Touch, and 1^st Edition.

 

 

For the past three weeks I have used Social Mention, GoogleTrends, Twittalyzer, Facebook, Twitter and UnabashedlyBookish (BN Community blog) to follow the online exploits of the bookstore giant and its famous Nook.  Though the Nook has a separate Facebook and Twitter page, for the purpose of this blog, I will be focusing on Barnes & Noble’s company accounts.  The purpose of my research is to see how being such a large chain affects the company’s ability to focus on creating relationships with and connecting to their customers.

Web presence

Barnes & Noble has done a fairly decent job representing themselves online, creating as previously mentioned, a Facebook page for both the company and one just for the Nook. They have followed the same model on Twitter, trying to connect to their customers in 140 characters or less.

  

 

Since branding is such an important part of marketing, especially in large companies such as this, I expected the pages to have a common theme.  Instead each is treated as a separate entity, with their Twitter account containing no graphics at all.

 

In addition to their traditional social media sites, B&N uses their website to drive sales, inform customers of new items and announce special promotions.  As they are currently gearing up for the release of the Nook HD and HD+ on November 1^st, a graphic of the items has been on the homepage for at least the last month.  Also part of the website, UnabashedlyBookish promises new content each day, giving customers the opportunity to engage in literary conversation with B&N staff and other customers.  Spanning the six different B&N blogs, the company maintains, there have been over 23,650 posts as of October 21^st.

 

Data Doesn’t Lie

If we look at the company using the online tool Social Mention over the course of three weeks, we see steady increases in areas such as strength, going from 6%, jumping up to 23% and finally 32%.  The reach also saw a major gain, starting off at only 18% and then skyrocketing to 51% before a final buoy set it at 62%.  However, sentiment and passion did not enjoy the same good fortune, each declining.  Passion in B&N fell from 55% on October 9^th down to 35% on October 15^th.  One week later on the 21^st, passion had only rebounded by 1%, leaving it at 36%.  With regards to sentiment, B&N saw a high on October 15^th with a 6 to 1 positive sentiment and then a drop to only a 3 to 1 ratio by the next week.

To see more linear representations of the company’s sales over time, I used Google Trends to look at the company over a 30-day and 90-day time span.  (This interest was confined to United States consumers.)  Though both graphs show a relatively high level of interest, the numbers seemed to have reached their peak in mid-September and have been on a decline since then, with only brief peaks.  A few contributing factors may have been the upcoming announcement of the new Nook products on September 24^th and pre-order sales for J.K. Rowling’s book “ACasual Vacancy,” released September 27^th.

Looking at the Facebook page data for the company, there has been a small increase from week to week in the amount of likes they have received, growing from 1,468,873 likes on October 9^th to 1,472,595 on October 18^th.  The largest and more surprising increase came in the number of people talking about B&N, jumping 6,726 people in just one week.  While not looking at the Nook Facebook page specifically, it is important to note that while gaining 1650 likes, the page has dropped 5,373 people talking about the Nook.

 

But what do all these numbers translate to?  Barnes & Noble hopes it will translate to more customers engaging with them on the site so they cannot only energize current customers, but cultivate new areas of growth for the company.  A number of posts ask their followers to tell them what they are reading, or leave a question for an upcoming author interview.  One post on October 5^th asking B&N followers what they plan to read that weekend received almost 1300 comments with 547 likes.  A more recent post asked customers to tell what DC comic book character they were being for Halloween, generating a number of comments and almost 300 likes.

Unfortunately B&N has not connected to its followers on Twitter as closely as it has on Facebook.  With 61,746 followers, the company spends most of its time on Twitter answering customers.  A trend seems to be that while positive tweets are generally responded to quickly, angry tweets about poor customer service or missing merchandise have to sometimes wait 2-3 days.

 

Looking at date from Twitalyzer for the company for the most recent week of October 15^th-21^st, B&N is categorized as a casual user.  To make more effective use of connecting quickly with customers, the company I believe would benefit greatly from linking their Facebook and Twitter accounts so the same posts go to both feeds.  This will also give a sense of continuity to both pages and could improve their analytics from Twitter.

 

In the coming weeks I plan to look more closely at how or if their response to customers improves in both of their main social media sites.  Since their new product is set to launch on November 1^st, it will be interesting to see if the company decides to do any type of social media blitz surrounding the release and how they respond to consumer issues directly following the release.  Being such a large company can present a challenge when it comes to meeting customer’s needs.  If Barnes & Noble can create and sustain a stronger online customer service response model, it will prove they are ready to handle the groundswell and begin using it more to their advantage.