From the category archives:

libraries

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Does your library have a social media strategy, or are you, like us, flying by the seat of your pants?

There’s something to be said for experimentation, but eventually your organization will reach a point where you’ll have to decide whether to commit to social media as part of your public service mandate, or to drop it like so many other “emerging technologies” that have gone before (social bookmarking, anyone?). MPOW has decided to bank on social media, and I’ve been given the responsibility of coming up with a guiding policy. Here are a few questions I’ve asked myself along the way that may help you create your own policies:

  1. Who are you? There’s a concept in the business world called the “elevator pitch” in which you have to pitch your idea or brand in the time it takes to go from one floor to another in an elevator. When thinking of social media, you’ll need to be able to give your pitch in 140 characters or less.
  2. What’s your point? Are you trying to build awareness of the library’s services and collections? Are you trying to build loyalty or improve the public perception of the library? This next suggestion will be hard but I’m going to make it anyway — choose one, and stick with it for awhile. Don’t spread your message too thin, and focus your efforts. Targeted messaging is easier to measure.
  3. What does your audience think of you? What kind of relationship do you have with them? Do you practice customer-centered service, or do you still make decisions without talking to the people? Find out what your audience thinks of you by holding focus groups, conducting surveys via social media (twtpoll is a great tool), and asking people to tell you about their experience with the library.
  4. What face will you present to the public? Will you be authoritative and aloof? Professional but personable? Human or robot? Or perhaps you’ll strive for a balance between these choices? Either way, be consistent. If your library has a website style guide, include a section on social media messaging that covers tone of voice, language use, and authority. If you don’t have a website style guide, what are you waiting for? Stop reading this and go write one!
  5. How will you measure success? This may be the most important question of all, because unless and until you know what sort of return you’re getting from these efforts, you might as well be shouting in the dark. Up until now, we’ve mostly relied on page views and follower counts to tell us how well we’re doing, but going forward I think we’ll be rolling out targeted metrics that are aligned with specific library publicity and fundraising campaigns. We’ll also be poring over analytics data to help us measure patron success and failure rates on our website, and will be trying to tease out the story of how well our engagement methods are working for us. Exactly what we’ll measure and how we’ll measure it is still rolling around in my brain. Watch this space for more details.

You may notice that I haven’t mentioned tools at all. There’s a good reason for this — remember MySpace? Mm-hmm, exactly. Audiences shift. Web users adopt and abandon tools regularly, and as such, information organizations should focus on strategy, not tactics. We often get so hung up on a particular tool that we’re reluctant to abandon it when it’s no longer working for us. Stop the madness. Be willing to follow your audience when they leave Facebook or Twitter for The Next Big Thing. Read sites like Mashable and Guacira Naves’ The Online Strategy House, and keep abreast of the changing landscape so your organization won’t be caught by surprise when the shift happens. With your goal in sight, the plan of action will take care of itself. Answering these questions can help shape your goal.

So, am I off the mark with this? What other areas should I consider when developing a strategic plan for social media? Leave feedback in the comments.

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Gorge of Eternal Peril: Library Signs and Patron Interactions

23 May 2010

OK, the title of this post is on the hyperbolic side, but I do have a point. But first, a little light entertainment: Does your library put a Bridge of Death before your customers? Oh, I’m sure you don’t have a Bridge Keeper who requires patrons to answer “these questions three” before approaching the desk, [...]

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BrainDump: Social Media in Libraries & Information Organizations

6 May 2010

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 [...]

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Getting to Know the New York Public Library

26 February 2010

The New York Public Library recently unveiled their new website design, and I must say that I’m very impressed by the amount of user research and testing that went into seeing this project through. The site is lively, colourful, and eye-catching, and the information architecture, labeling, and information flow all seem to have been designed [...]

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Libraries and Conceptual Models (a brain dump)

4 January 2010

Does your library’s floor plan or system of organization match the conceptual model of your users? MPOW doesn’t (not always) and this fact has never sat well with me, ever since I set foot across the library’s threshold as an employee. A conceptual model, in case you don’t know, is a collection of thoughts and [...]

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Libs With(out) A Face

16 December 2009

Earlier this morning, I saw a tweet from Jennifer (@typealibrarian) where she announced the new logo for her library’s Twitter page. What I saw there made me smile. If you’re not a library type, you might not see anything all that unusual about this page, but as a public librarian, seeing a library that chooses [...]

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Foursquare at Vancouver Public Library

4 December 2009

An update to a previous post: Vancouver Public Library has just launched a Foursquare promotion. Even though the idea came from a customer, it’s my first time doing a promotion for the library since I started working here, and I’m pretty excited about it.

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Announcing Canadian Libraries

26 November 2009

Canadian Libraries is live! I decided to start CanadianLibraries.ca because most of the library news websites focus heavily on US libraries, with only a sprinkling of Canadian library news. I wanted to target a Canadian audience, so Canadian Libraries will feature news and information of interest to libraries and library workers north of the 49th [...]

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Usability vs. User Experience: What’s the Difference?

16 November 2009

Recently, Jenica Rogers wrote about usability, and how the concept has become quite the buzzword in libraries these days. Jenica wrote that she thought librarians weren’t certain about what usability meant, but that we seem to be paying more attention to it than ever. To illustrate her understanding of usability, Jenica shared some experiences she [...]

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Heroes and Mentors with Steve Lawson

15 November 2009

Steve Lawson is the Humanities Librarian at Colorado College. In this installment of LIS Heroes and Mentors, Steve talks about Ze Frank, Jason Scott, inspiration, and meaningful collaboration. A few heroes from Steve Lawson on Vimeo. Many thanks to Steve for his contribution. If you’re a librarian/library staffer and you’d like to talk about your [...]

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What Does Your Library Tweet About?

26 October 2009

Are Wordle clouds passe? I hope not, because they’re one of my favourite information visualizations. This is a sample of the topics that have been discussed on my library’s Twitter feed in the last couple of days. What kinds of items do you post to your library’s Twitter feed?

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Twitter Bootcamp for Library Staff

26 October 2009

This week I’ll be conducting two training sessions for library staff that demonstrate how we use Twitter and other social media tools to interact with library customers. While I’ve trained staff before both at the library and in other organizations where I’ve worked, this presentation has proven to be one of the most difficult ones [...]

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