The rise of the smartphone has brought along a lot of new trends for people around the world. In addition to allowing people to have nearly all of the world’s information sitting in their pockets, iPhones and similar devices have led to the popularity of selfies (a term that you can now find in the dictionary!)
Lucky for college bookstores, in no demographic are selfies more popular than with people in their early 20s. To you, that means students. With that in mind, we’ve come up with a few ideas on how you can use the selfie craze to your get students talking and to get more customers in your store.
Flash your cash
With the exception of getting exams over with, there’s perhaps nothing students look forward to more at the end of a term than selling their books back and getting some sweet, sweet cash. So to celebrate their newfound riches, encourage your students to take a picture of themselves with their sellback cash and upload it to Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform that you use.
In addition to having the students upload their selfies, ask them what they are going to spend it on, and have them post their answers on their own social media accounts.
You can even feature items for sale in the store with the selfie promotion. For example you could put up a poster offering X amount of dollars off of a certain spiritwear item if students purchase it with their sellback cash. At the checkout counter, you should then encourage them to post a selfie of themselves with their new gear to social media along with whatever hashtag you ultimately settle on.
Track your participants’ selfies
If you are interested in tracking all of the selfies your students upload (and why wouldn’t you be?), make it easy to track all of your participants by using a simple hashtag. Whatever hashtag you decide on is ultimately up to you, but we are suggesting #<schoolname>Selfie or #SellBackSelfie.
Reward your participants
After a week or so, cut off submissions and put everyone who submitted a photo into a raffle. Then select your winners at random and give out some prizes. We are suggesting store merchandise or gift cards, but feel free to choose whatever prize you’d like. After the winners have been chosen, you can even print out their selfies and feature them together in the store!
