Brighten Your Day

One "tweet" changed everything for a local bookstore in Portland

December 28, 2012

One "tweet" changed everything for Roberta Dyer, owner of a small bookstore in Portland, Oregon. As Broadway Books approached it's 17th year, the economy tanked while online shopping continued to spread like wild fire.

Dyer feared her store would not survive the winter season. After a conversation with her son Aaron, he decided to take matters into his own hands and reach out to the online world in a desperate attempt for help.

Aaron got home from work one day and wrote a blog post about his mother's bookstore.

"I have a credit card that has $1000 left of credit on it and I want to spend that money helping people get to my mom's store. If you got to Broadway Books between today, December 10th and Christmas Day, and spend $50...I will buy you a burrito out of my pocket."

He posted the link to his blog post on Twitter. From that moment, everything changed for Roberta Dyer and Broadway Books.

The single tweet from Aaron was retweeted over and over again. His blog which gets on average 3 visits a day began to receive hundreds of visits a day.

The people of Portland rallied. More and more new customers were showing up at Broadway Books every day.

"They were literally running out of books to sell," said Aaron.

Broadway Books was saved with a single "tweet", and business has continued to increase ever since...thanks to Twitter.