Draft Twitter Guidlines BNTempleLaw

Draft Twitter Guidelines
Barnes and Noble at Temple Law
Sean O’Connell
Twitter is a powerful tool that can be used to post information about our store and to build a stronger community and customer base. It is often a problem to figure out the best means of communications with customers. There is phone, email, or in person communications; but many customers are much more passive and would be more interested in helping themselves to information.
We have undertaken a twitter and should set a base set of guidelines for its use. In these guidelines I hope to create consistency and value. Both of these are essential to keeping customers engaged with our twitter and with our store. It is fairly obvious that random clips of 140 letters would hold little value to customers so we will seek guidelines to start from and expand as needed.
The three main focuses of twitter should be the three main functions of our store: Café, Books, and Temple Gear. Each of these areas can have either informative “tweets” that consist of pure information or promotional information. It is important to keep up both of these. Twitter is popular and successful if it has value to its followers, both in content (i.e. book reviews) and in money (i.e. sales and promotions).
Café
SOUP: The main café Tweet should be each day’s soups. Soup is one of our popular items and is what draws most of our regular customers. Posting the soup of the day on our twitter will bring our regulars to our site and introduce them to this new practice.
DRINKS: At the beginning of each promotional period Twitter should be used to promote the new corporate promotions for the season or month.
SPECIALS: Twitter should be used to promote the occasional meal deal in the Barnes and Noble Café. This will help promote use of the twitter and also make our customers more used to our online presence. One day per week should be designated as the Tweet special, possibly on “Twitter Tuesday”.
Books
Bestsellers: Twitter should be used to announce the new bestsellers being added to the College Bestsellers list each week. This tweet should also remind followers about our discounts for bestselling books.
New Releases/Features: As new releases arrive it may be advisable to post them on Twitter with a short summary and also list if it is being offered at any pricing discount.
Staff Suggestions: Our store has a great deal of staff that enjoying reading and luckily different genres of books. As we see fit staff can recommend a book they have read through twitter in the hopes of attracting some of our followers. This also helps to show that we have a sincere interest in our store.
Special Events: Special events should be posted two weeks, two days, and again the day of a special event (i.e. book signing). Special events may also include discounts on books, and the acquisition of local interest books. Twitter may also be a valuable resource for Textbook buyback and also textbook ordering from staff and students.
Temple Merchandise
New Merchandise: As new merchandise is brought in it would be very useful to post this on twitter along with details of the product, pictures, and a limited time discount on the product. The discount offers two advantages. It first offers real value to our Twitter follower and may also sell more products early on so that they are seen around campus, helping future sales.
Special Event Merchandise: If merchandise is acquired for a special event such as the 125th anniversary merchandise or basketball t-shirts, this could be a valuable tool to promote these products.
Brand Sales: Regular sales of Jansport, Champion, Redshirt, and all other brands in our store should be promoted through Twitter. These tweets should clearly state the product, discount, and also feature a picture.
Clearance Sales: As large amounts of products are reduced in price they should be promoted on Twitter along with the regularly scheduled clearance sales.

It may become clear that there is a lot of information to be posted on twitter, which is why I recommend picking certain days for certain tweets. New clothing should be tweeted as it arrives and new sales should be tweeted as they occur. But, some tweets will most likely become standard and should be limited so as not to crowd our profile.