Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Customers are inundated with options when shopping for educational materials. For the campus bookstore, this means your website needs to be a helpful resource that offers customers easy access to course materials and school-branded merchandise while also giving them payment options that include Student Financial Aid (SFA). Here are some ways you can make your website a relevant and trusted option for your customers.

Our retail management system is always adapting with industry changes and technological advancements. We’ve spoken with some system support experts to get tips that will help you save time and increase efficiency. 

Artificial intelligence has shaped the textbook industry in a variety of ways as publishers and retailers have adapted to innovation. It encompasses data trend analysis, automation of textbook sourcing, and even customer interactions through smartphone applications and cash registers. 

The final day of the MBS 2019 Forums sessions started with a discussion about digital flexibility. Digital flexibility requires stores to look ahead and prepare for an ever-evolving textbook industry. Staying knowledgeable of industry changes keeps stores ahead of the game and capable of providing the best experience for customers.

What sets Twitter apart from other social media mediums is that it promotes user engagement with other users through quick messages or tweets. Twitter’s fast-paced stream of posts makes timing and quantity important factors in your profile’s success.

Twitter is most popular with those in their 20s, according to Sprout Social. This makes Twitter an excellent choice to use for promoting your campus bookstore.

“With Twitter, we also have a younger audience. There, things like humor, memes, GIFs and more casual posts do well,” Auxiliary Services Marketing Manager, GVSU Laker Store, Liza Guikema, said.

For an audience of young millennials and Gen Z, Snapchat is a great way to advertise. Snapchat gives students a seemingly more private way to stay connected. Built on instant gratification, a greater sense of privacy and whimsical filters, it quickly became a favorite social platform for students. For campus bookstores, it can be a fun way to interact with your audience. To enhance your bookstore social media, we’ve created this comprehensive guide to Snapchat specifically for college stores.

No other medium lets you share ideas, expressions of art, photography and life events like Instagram. It is the premier image-sharing site for over one billion worldwide. It also provides a digital marketing resource for campus stores. Instagram creates a space in which you can share information like upcoming events, sales and merchandise. Instagram’s like and commenting features make it easy to not only share but also engage with students. 

However, effectively using Instagram can be tricky if you’re not sure what you’re doing, so we’ve created this comprehensive guide to enhance your campus bookstore’s 2020 digital marketing.

Facebook is the largest social media website in the world.While reaching your intended audience has never been easier, it can still be difficult to engage them. We’ve put together a helpful guide on Facebook marketing for campus bookstores that will walk you through setting up an account, guide you on what kind of content to post and give you a rundown on how Facebook ads work. While many companies use Facebook to make announcements, there are a myriad of ways you can leverage it to drive students into your campus bookstore.

Social media is a wild beast that we are still learning how to tame. We’ve gained quite a lot of ground in the past few years with understanding how it can be used to reach audiences effectively, but still an important question arises, “How often should I post to social media?” Most professionals will tell you to post consistent, quality content as often as you can. That makes sense, but what does that mean, and how can a campus store prepare and organize a social media schedule? Use this blogpost to create a schedule that will set you on the right path for your digital marketing.

Students are using social media daily, so it’s important for your campus bookstore to be a part of how students communicate. Marketing through social media will not only make your store competitive, it will provide a trustworthy source for students to purchase their books from each session.