Thanks to social media, I get to meet one of my heroes this week.
Our tale begins in the autumn of 2001. As America mourned 9/11 and I started my senior year of high school, I took a weekly escape to Stars Hollow, Connecticut for the second season of the WB's Gilmore Girls. As I had only watched snippets of the previous season, I turned to Google with a search of "Gilmore Girls episode guide" for a bit of plot clarification. I stumbled upon a website that provided just that, for a variety of shows, called Television
Without Pity.
I discovered that a funny lady with the Internet handle of pamie (her real name is Pamela Ribon) wrote descriptions for each episode, adding her own commentary on the fictional lives of Lorelai and Rory. After each episode, I always looked forward to reading the hilarious yet touching stories from pamie's adolescence that she'd incorporate into the recap.
Just about the time GG went on summer hiatus, pamie reopened her old website and announced that she'd sold her first novel. I've followed her work—online, in print, and even on television—ever since.
As a pamie stalker devotee, I took notice of a post on Twitter that she wanted to visit derby cities during her current book tour (her latest novel, Going in Circles, is, appropriately, about roller derby). And the wheels started turning in my head.
Bellingham has a roller derby team: the Bellingham Roller Betties. Bellingham has a great independent bookstore with a healthy tradition of author events: Village Books. I sent out a couple of emails and tweets, and made a few desperate phone calls to get everyone coordinated. And then I waited, impatiently.
A few weeks later, my contact from Village Books announced that pamie would visit the bookstore for a signing on Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 7 PM (that's this weekend, people), and stick around for the Fairhaven Outdoor Cinema viewing of the roller derby film Whip It, along with the Roller Betties. As pamie wrote in a blog post, "You go to the bookstore, listen to me make jokes for half an hour, maybe win a present and then we all walk outside to watch Whip It! It's like I'm going to Stars Hollow." I just hope we can live up to her idyllic notion of our quirky hamlet.
So why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to ask not what social media can do for you, Bellingham; ask what you can do for social media.
What you can do is engage in a dialogue with your customers, or readers as the case may be. Ask for feedback, and actually respond to it. Maybe you can't respond to every @reply (yep, someone actually started an account for that), but make sure your account is more than a daily posting about your business's news and events. In today's world of instant gratification, it doesn't take much effort to let customers know that they're appreciated and that they matter, because your business won't last long without them.
Although I'm just one of many followers, this experience has shown me that Village Books, the Roller Betties, and pamie herself really care about what their fans have to say and they’ll jump through hurdles (or fly up from California) to make dreams come true. I'm a fan for life.
Now I just need to decide what I'm going to wear when I meet the famously infamous Pamela "pamiedotcom" Ribon (one b), aka May Q. Holla, on Saturday.
