Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton-Jan

The UK website The List posted “Five Reasons to Go See Depeche Mode” (for those of you who don’t know DM, see their website and the music video for DM’s best song ever — OK, see DM’s second best song ever too).  So, picking back up…the story was quite cute, each reason being named for a Depeche Mode song title.  Quite funny, and rather nice.

But here’s where it gets good.

Depeche Mode then Tweeted this story, of course adding their hashmark keyword #depechemode (hashmarks — anything with the # in front of it, is a keyword to keep track of certain topics in Twitter).

That story then hit their 240,000+ followers and the discussion exploded on Twitter about Depeche Mode, the number of DM-related Tweets rising significantly over previous days.  People got that Tweet, got excited, and then started Tweeting about other DM stuff too.  Additionally, since Depeche Mode started using Twitter, their #s have increased consistently as word gets out.  Usually, such regular increases as these (see below, taken from TwitterCounter) are only seen through consistent viral marketing, such as that being used by DM with this example.

So what lesson is here for the library?  Tweet when people are talking about you, and link to the original story or post.  Re-Tweet particularly nice Tweets about you.  Be consistent in sending out updates — but don’t overwhelm your users.  Tweet things that your user base might be interested in.  Remember – they’re fans.  They’re following you because they care.  So listen to them, reach out to them, and see if they can in turn reach other people and make new fans.  Another lesson would be to pay attention to you Twitter stats, and use tools like TwitterCounter or HootSuite to follow what people are saying about you.

It’s all about listening folks.  Listening and responding thoughtfully.