One of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance's (SIBA) major goals for 2024 is creating community, and to that end, they have launched social media scavenger hunts on Instagram to connect member stores with readers, increase social media engagement for participating stores, and increase subscribers to The Southern Bookseller Review.

This week, the scavenger hunt theme is "Southern Indie Bookstore Bingo," where readers click through Instagram posts of 24 stores and The Southern Bookseller Review to fill bingo squares. Once they view all the posts, they fill out a form to be entered into a drawing to win a $100 gift card to the participating store of their choice. The scavenger hunt model allows readers to discover new indie bookstores while gaining social media followers and engagement for participating stores. Thus far, more than 50 readers have completed the scavenger hunt, with most also subscribing to The Southern Bookseller Review. Participating stores have also seen a climb in Instagram engagement, seeing an average of 175 likes on each post as of the writing of this article. 

SIBA launched the first social media scavenger hunt in February to promote the 2024 Southern Book Prize nominees. 17 member stores participated, and more than 300 readers completed the scavenger hunt. All participating stores saw a significant increase in social media engagement, including some who bumped their follower count up by 300+ organic readers.

Member stores are excited about this new initiative and eager to participate. Lucile Perkins-Wagel, owner of Blinking Owl Books in Fort Myers, FL, shared about February's scavenger hunt, "It was a fun and easy way to bring more traffic to my store's Instagram page, AND to highlight a really cool SIBA program! I would absolutely participate again."

SIBA plans to do social media scavenger hunts for major events, such as the Southern Book Prize, Indie Bookstore Day, Bookstore Romance Day, and Banned Books Week.