Page 141 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M03_CHAF9601_04_SE_C03.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:09 Page 108

108 Part 1 Introduction

There are many well established sites for regular readers, such as LoveReading and
publisher sites, and countless more for fans of specific genres and authors. Librarything,
Shelfari and GoodReads are established social networks based on sharing book collec-
tions, reviews and recommendations.
Facebook now has over 100 applications relating to books, and over 28,000 users
have installed the iRead application. That’s not to mention all the excellent sites created
for and by younger readers.
In addition to reaching this broad category of ‘readers’, the internet opens up the
ability to introduce people to books according to their interest by connecting with them
via topical sites and communities.
Be it parenting, cooking, travelling, celebrities or fly fishing, there’s an opportunity
to reach people who may never go into a high street bookshop.
Q. Can you give us a rundown of your social media strategy thus far and plans
for the future?

Ros Lawler, Random House: Over the past 18 months we’ve experimented with a
wide range of activity on social networks – promotions on Bebo, fan clubs on Facebook,
author pages on MySpace, competitions on YouTube, and creating a community for
young fans of Jacqueline Wilson to name a few.
We’re currently running a competition on Flickr to design a cover for the book
‘Crowdsourcing’ (search for ‘coversourcing’ on Flickr to see the entries).
Through this activity (and a certain amount of trial and error!) we’ve developed
excellent skills and knowledge across our marketing teams, which we will continue to
fine-tune. We’ll be building on the relationships and ideas we’ve established and
continue to look for new ones.
In March, we are launching the Random House Widgets, a small digital version of
the book which users can flick through to recreate the book shop experience.
They will be available to grab from our site or from online retailers, and will allow
anyone to host the widget of their favourite book on their site or blog. Over time, this
will massively increase the reach of our books and develop the long tail of sales.
We also have some exciting plans for developing our communities of authors
and readers.
Q. You’ve been pretty active in Second Life. How effective a marketing channel
has it proved, both in terms of sales and branding?

Ros Lawler, Random House: Our Second Life activity is not intended to be a branding
exercise for Random House. The intention is to reach different communities of readers
and writers, and provide a space within which to experiment.
We’ve been very pleased with some of the results, particularly in the area of
non-fiction.
Q. Is scepticism about marketing in virtual worlds justified?
Ros Lawler, Random House: In some cases, yes. Stories of well known brands
spending large sums of money on campaigns which have been rejected or destroyed
by virtual communities have been widely reported.
In virtual worlds and social networks it’s more a case of giving ideas, content and
tools to the community and seeing what happens, than imposing a pre-planned
marketing campaign.
This can be a very daunting prospect for companies who are used to keeping a
tight control of their product or brand.