Social Media Spotlight: Socially Active

The book also inspired Chronicle to host a "Change the World Day," during which it closed its offices, and employees volunteered at different sites in the region. Throughout the day, employees tweeted about their experiences on Twitter and took photos that they posted to Chronicle's Flickr.com page so fans could see how they were helping to change the world.

Chronicle also relies on its authors to establish and maintain social networking pages that promote the brand and specific titles, and then interweaves those pages into the Chronicle Books social networking pages. "The authors become a really great resource for … content to populate our feeds," says de la Mare. "A lot of times the consumers are very interested in hearing directly from the authors. And we're really all about connecting people and not becoming a fortress between our publishing house and our authors."

"We definitely consider [social media] part of our overall marketing and publicity strategy. This is one prong," adds Algar. "We're really excited about being able to connect with our consumers in a way we haven't been able to before."