I’m in the process of organizing a social media workshop for librarians and library staff. I know what works and what doesn’t at MPOW, but to be honest, our initial forays into social media weren’t exactly formal or supported by a social media strategy. While we knew we wanted to enhance our (then) new website with social features that would encourage patron participation the actual execution of these ideas has been slow in coming.
I know a fair bit about social media; I’m also pretty honest about what I don’t know, but I digress. I know what we did and what our lessons were, but I’m struggling with coming up with a structured workshop to teach others how to make their static web presences more social spaces. So far I’ve come up with this basic outline:
Day One
- Understanding Social Media – What is it?
- Monitoring Social Media – What are they saying about us?
- Developing a Social Media Strategy – Should we do this?
- Using Social Media Tools – Hands-on workshop
- Setting up a blog
- signing up for social media services
- putting yourself out there
Day Two
- Using Social Media Tools, cont’d.
- Know your users
- Develop a learning culture
- Solving problems with social tools
- Improving communication with library customers
- Highlighting library collections, services, products, staff
- Assessment – How are we doing?
- The Social Workplace – Using social media to collaborate with staff
- Going Beyond – Network building, transparency, and maintaining your social media presence
Is this too much? Is it not enough? Are there areas I’m leaving out? If you were attending a social media workshop, what sort of topics would you like to see covered? What about “homework”? Is it a good idea to give an assignment for participants to work on between sessions?
As always, comments, suggestions, and feedback are appreciated.