Not by design, Spellbound has always seemed to reach very different audiences on Facebook and on Twitter, which in turn has informed the tone and content of what I post on each platform.

In my experience, our Facebook page seems to reach more local shoppers compared to our Twitter account and definitely has the most noticeable effect on event attendance. Assuming the reported statistics on audience reach are trustworthy, Facebook often seems to offer the best bang for the buck as far as paid advertising. For Spellbound, that’s mostly in the form of paid “boosts” for events.
Our Twitter account seems to be more effective for local media awareness and for nationwide industry networking than our Facebook page and a bit less effective for local customer interaction, even with careful attention to popular local hashtags. (In our case, #avl for Asheville, etc.)

Is there an inherent difference in users attracted to each platform, or in the way users tend to use each if they have profiles on both Facebook and Twitter? I was the only person handling these accounts until recently and I’ve often wondered if there was a difference in my approach initially that led to reaching different audiences or was my differing approach truly just a reaction to the audiences I happened to find on each? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I tend to be much more casual in tone, more opinionated, and more impulsive with the likes and retweets on Twitter, whereas on Facebook I’m much more attentive to the bookstore’s image and conscientious about trying to post enough but not too much. I’ve recently hired someone new who is taking over a lot of the social media posting, so it’ll be interesting to see if these patterns hold. I’d also be very curious to know if other bookstores have a similar experience of very different audiences with these two social media platforms.
Instagram is relatively new territory for Spellbound, but one of the first trends I’ve noticed is that we have a lot more teen followers there than on our other social media accounts. This makes sense as I’ve read countless articles advising that teens are generally drawn more to Instagram and Snapchat and less to Facebook and Twitter (where their parents hang out, presumably). So far, we seem to be attracting local and non-local followers fairly evenly on Instagram.

The next social media challenge, should Spellbound choose to accept it, is YouTube. If we get brave enough to take the plunge and start a channel there, I’ll be sure to keep our ShelfTalker pals updated on our progress.