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Social Networking & Media - Getting Into SNM at Your Library
- 1. Getting into SNM at your library
- 2. Figuring It Out From Scratch
- 3. Social Media by Committee Circulation Reference Tech Services Children/Teens Tech Support
- 4. Social Networking Media SNM Committee
- 6. Creating Communities What’s the Goal? Branding Awareness Interaction Promotion
- 7. Pick One
- 9. Size Matters Smaller = Better: Control Consistency Scheduling Oversight
- 11. Getting Started Create Your Page Cover Photo & Profile Pic – your online personality Start Following!
- 12. Post and Post Again Post daily Mix up content Resist the urge to Self-Promote
- 13. A Picture’s Worth….. Higher engagement Mobile Friendly Bigger = Better
- 14. Keeping a Schedule Consider a scheduler like HootSuite: Schedule posts in advance Keep timing of content consistent Prevent duplication Save drafts
- 15. Interact Daily Engagement Personality! Ask Questions Always Respond
- 16. Trial and Error Track Likes, Com ments and Shares for what’s working and what’s not Shape future posts accordingly
- 18. Who’s Using It? Since 2010, 28 million & growing fast About 75% of users are women About 70% of users are ages 20-44
- 19. How Are They Using It? Discovery! Bookmarking Sharing & recommending Learning
- 20. Creating Boards Look at other Libraries for ideas & inspiration Title : − Clever & Creative − Short & Sweet Choose a category Cover
- 21. Start Pinning! Mix of Pins &RePins “Like” images to Pin later Watch the clock…
- 22. Pinterest Etiquette Pin from the post Credit the creator Don’t bomb your boards Follow &RePin
- 23. Upload Pins in Bulk Schedule Pins Metrics Useful Tools
- 26. Fast and Furious Real-Time Social Media 500,000,000 users! 750 Tweets/second Streamlined format
- 27. What to Tweet? Helpful tips Library news Bookish news Interesting RTs Fun facts, short quotes, etc.
- 28. Tweet Timing Tweets have short lives Cross-post from your other Social Networks, in addition to original content Schedule Tweets for evenings & weekends
- 29. Shorthand #Hashtag= what are we talking about? @Mention= who are we talking to?
- 30. Got a Website? Make it Social!
- 31. BEFORE: Website = Info Only Your Digital Library TODAY: Website = Digital Branch
- 32. Communication Telephone Email Social media Text message
- 33. Websites are Destinations Use color, sound, moti on Interact & Engage Tell your story
- 34. Interaction What can you do? Download Learn Get news Talk back
- 36. Keep Moving Forward Test drive new ideas Analyze results Fine tune Stay current
- 38. Try and Try Again
- 39. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- Hello I’m Louise LeClaire and I head up the social media committee at Cheshire Library. Cheshire Library began focusing on social media in the fall of 2011. Before this time, the library had Facebook and Twitter accounts, but they were used very randomly and without any clear focus. The purpose of our presentation today is to show you how we approached our library’s involvement with Social Networking & Media. I’m going to talk a little about our committee and how it works, then I’ll have each committee member come up and tell you a bit about what they do. Are we experts? No…
- … but that just means that if we could figure it out, so can you!We are still new at this and learning as we go. But we have had a good deal of success in a short period of time, and if you are starting a social media program at your library, you may benefit from some of the things we’ve tried and methods we’ve ended up with. There are lots of libraries out there doing social media, and many different approaches. A big city library will most likely have a different approach to social networking than a small rural library (and more resources, in most cases). Cheshire lies somewhere in-between : a suburban community of approx. 29,000 residents, about 13,800 of which are registered library patrons. We don’t have a dedicated Marketing Dept. or team of computer geeks handling our technology needs. So, like most of you, we work with what we’ve got.It was decided to form a committee with one member from each department :
- Circulation, Reference, Tech Services, Children/Teens, and Tech Support. to define what our social presence would be and how we could effectively manage it. One of our first orders of business was to rename ourselves the SNM Committee
- That’s Social. Networking. & Media. We even have a mascot [CLICK TO ANIMATE]We felt pretty strongly that there must be an element of fun involved in what we were doing.
- All of the committee members were taking on the new social media responsibilities over and above our regular job responsibilities, so if it wasn’t going to be fun, it wasn’t going to work. Social media isn’t formal, by its nature it’s casual and has an element of spontaneity that you can’t carry off convincingly if it feels like drudgery. Whoever participates needs to do it because they believe in it and enjoy it.
- Social media enables libraries to build collaborative relationships with library users like never before. We can see new connections being formed out of seemingly thin air. Creating social networking communities not only creates a type of “virtual branch” of your library, but also serves to formulate a “brand” for your library as well. Using social networking tools like Facebook (etc), it’s easy to develop an interpretation and voice of your library and library staff. This is very useful in showcasing your talent to your local patrons and even the rest of the world. So, when starting to develop a library social media presence, it’s important to consider first of all, just what type of online communities you wish to create. Each Social Media platform is it’s own community, and your approaches to them shouldn’t be all the same.
- If you’re just starting a Social Media program at your library, it may be best to start out with one platform. For us, we weren’t sure how much time we could devote to this, so we decided to focus on one aspect of social media at a time. [CLICK TO ANIMATE] We chose Facebook as the most logical place to start, since the network was growing more & more popular, and we already had a rudimentary Page set up. We met as a group once a month to discuss and refine what types of things we were posting, learning what worked for our followers and what didn’t. We built on what worked, and eliminated what didn’t. Although we met formally only once a month, we were in frequent communication with each other via email & Facebook Messaging, tweaking and refining our content strategy constantly.
- As the months went on, we found our committee falling into a kind of natural structure, based on the individual strengths of the members. At first, all 5 of us were posting to Facebook, but it was hard to establish a regular routine, and avoid duplicating each other’s efforts. We tried scheduling days for each of us to post, which may work for some, but was not efficient for us. I often found interesting things to post when it wasn’t my day, for example, and would come up dry when it was my day. One of our members, Kelley, seemed to have a knack for finding the best material, and over time, it seemed most efficient to let her take over the main focus of the Facebook Page, with regular input from myself and the rest of the committee. When we added more Social Media sites to our roster, we followed a similar model, putting one committee member “in charge” of each account, with the rest of the committee members as support. By having each committee member put their main focus on one aspect of social media, we are able to spread the work out more effectively and feel less overwhelmed by a mountain of additional responsibilities. My role is to monitor all accounts to keep them sailing smoothly.
- One important aspect of this, we’ve found, is to keep the committee size manageable. For us, 5 has been the magic number. With a limited number of people contributing to the mix, it is easier to maintain control over the content, keep the tone of the content consistent, keep on track of scheduling content, and maintaining oversight of all the contributors. There are enough people involved to spread the work around, yet still maintain control over the output.We’ve had great success using this method, which we’ve fine-tuned by a lot of trial & error over the past year, particularly with Facebook. I’d like to turn the presentation now over to Kelley, our Facebook maven, who can explain how the Facebook arm of our social media plan works.
- It makes sense to us that today’s library should share content with its patrons in a way that best fits into the patron’s world. This is what we (librarians and Facebook) are all about – taking the library to the users, making it accessible and friendly, and letting patrons see from a visual perspective what the library has to offer. According to Facebook statistics, more than 1 billion users have an active account. Facebook has taken social media interaction to a completely new level of communication. It provides an outlet for us to market our library for free, interact with our patrons, and share valuable information. We’ve found there are many benefits we’ve received from having a library fb page: our patrons can communicate with us and each other, sharing thoughts about a book, or one of the articles we post, or one of our events. We can answer patron questions and get feedback. We ask patrons what they are reading or what authors they like… the more discussion, the more interaction, the better our page becomes.Library patrons “like” our page, allowing them to follow the library and receive any updates that we post. Every time someone “likes” our page, all their friends see that they “like” our library. This leads to easy (and free!) promotion that attracts other followers to our page.But before I get too far ahead of myself (and all of you), we should talk about how to get STARTED:
- I had my own Facebook page before we started our library page… basically to keep in contact with my teen patrons. At that time, I just created one account for myself- I didn’t see fb as anything more than a work tool and primarily a young person’s media. Since then, everyone and their uncle has jumped on the fb bandwagon- I should have kept my personal FB page separate, and created a page that was purely for professional use… but anyway, you need an account of your own of some sort, because Facebook pages are accessed through the personal accounts of their administrators. We selected a cover photo and profile picture that captured the personality we wanted our Page to convey. We had to be a bit careful, because there are specific rules that must be followed regarding cover photos. The current rule: (note that I said CURRENT- facebook rules change like New England weather) “Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.”I started following other bookish FB pages that I found interesting or had the kind of information that I wanted to disseminate. I found libraries, authors, publishers, online publications and blogs that have regular feeds about books, publishing, libraries, (or whatever) etc. I paid attention to the pages that those pages liked, and subscribed to any of those that seemed interesting too. (I created a Literary “Interest List” and grouped all my most useful feeds into one spot- this is a great way to consolidate all your facebook resources.) I also use Tumblr quite a bit- it has many book-related blogs with interesting content as well- and it’s especially good for graphics. (A great side benefit of all this is that you become amazingly knowledgeable about your areas of emphasis!!)Once you have a feel for what kind of info you want to share, it’s time to start POSTING.
- I found that we needed to post things consistently- and that means daily- really, every. single. day. So, one of our first steps was to figure out how often each day we wanted to post. Post too often and we’d run the risk of spamming our fans’ feeds, post too infrequently and we wouldn’t engage our audience enough for them to maintain a social connection with us. We discovered that as a rule of thumb, a Facebook post has about a 3-hour shelf life, so allowing at least 3 hours between posts seemed like a good guide.I do my best to vary my content, find the right mix of status updates, photos and links. I try to keep my posts light & conversational. Facebook is supposed to be FUN, so I’m always working on finding a balance between playful and professional. I always keep in mind that I am the voice of my library on FB, so I keep my tone consistent with the personality of the page- not necessarily my own personality.We noticed that we had to resist posting too many promotional-type posts, and not make our FB page one long infomercial about our “product”. I know, this goes against all your instincts here, but we found that Facebook (for us) is not the ideal place to talk about all our new books & library programs. We make our facebook page focus on literary things our followers would find interesting or amusing. Honestly, a little goes a LONG WAY with self-promotion.
- We do a lot with graphics and photos- a picture or photo can help spread your brand message faster than anything else. Facebook is very visual, people share photos more than anything else. 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, making it the world’s largest photo-sharing site. We can unequivocally attest that a photo will almost always generate more engagement (likes, shares & comments) than a link or status update. If you can add a photo to your post, do it. If you can make the photo bigger, do it- mostly because over half of Facebook’s 1 billion users access Facebook on their mobile devices, so try to imagine what your post will look like on a tiny screen.I do a ton of experimenting with what SORT of graphics I share with our fans too- some things seem to be perennial favorites: lol cats and nostalgia always seem to get a lot of response for example. I’ll try just about anything (within the bounds of good taste, that is) and sometimes I hit it big with posts that go viral, and sometimes I totally flop. I just never know what will seize upon the collective minds of our followers, so I just keep trying different things. And even when I DO find something that always seems to go over well, I’m still careful not to post too many of those sorts of posts either- I want our page to always have interesting and different content so people will want to come back to see what I will post next.(Little Golden books photo posted Aug 4, 2012, shared 88 times. Cartoon shown posted Feb 1, 2013, shared 490 times.)
- Once we decided how many posts a day was optimum, we established a posting “rhythm” for our page. We noticed that a lot of our posts that were posted first thing in the morning, or later in the evening (that is, when the library was closed) seemed to generate the most buzz. The logical next step was to figure out how to schedule or queue up a bunch of posts ahead of time, so that we didn’t have to work from home posting things to our page. We looked at a number of social media managers/schedulers and found that HootSuite was about the best for us and made my life a great deal easier.We quickly figured out some of the Advantages of a scheduler:We could update multiple social network accounts from one place (multiple Twitter, Facebook and blog accounts, etc.)By scheduling messages in advance, it kept the timing of our posts consistentWe avoided duplication of efforts when cross posting to our different social mediasWe could save drafts of our posts to send wheneverFor those times when something comes up that we want to post right away, we can use a mobile apps to post from wherever we are.It’s not enough to just put up posts, though, you also have to INTERACT.
- In Facebook, conversation is a huge draw—it’s the primary activity of most Facebook users. The status update box is our main point of connection to our Facebook crowd. Keeping our library’s status updated is real work, and it takes time to do right. We believe that daily engagement—keeping up a steady flow of content and conversation—is key. I really work at being personable online. I make sure my status updates read like something I’d say out loud. (Sometimes, it helps to actually say your status updates aloud.) If it’s not phrased like something I would say in conversation, I edit away. The more conversational we sound, the more opportunities for conversation we’ll have. Once I figured out that I had to initiate conversation, I started asking questions and attempted to always be witty. I share really interesting stuff about the literary world, quotes, comics, and anything else that showcases reading or libraries. The point is to give our Facebook community the content they want, and they will become our fans. Even more importantly, they’ll start interacting. Get that interaction going, and our followers—the ones wanting to interact with us on our facebook page— we hope will become advocates for us, our library, and libraries in general—not only online, but in person, too.We also make it a point to respond as soon as possible when a Fan comments on one of our posts. It lets them know that we appreciate their input and that we are paying attention to what they say.
- We discovered that little research and experimentation can go a long way to providing positive results. Facebook provides you with data to help you figure out what’s working (and what’s not working) for your Page.We look at how many likes, comments, shares, or impressions our posts receive. We did a ton of experimenting with the timing of posts… things like different days, different times, and the space between our posts is all a factor for how much engagement we get. After we tracked our stats for several weeks, we found that trends started to emerge, and we adjusted our postings accordingly to get the most engagement from our content.And speaking of content, we noticed that a lot of content might get seen, but it was relevant content that was shared. We keep track of what content gets shared, as well as when it gets shared. We keep an eye out for trends in the type of content that gets the most engagement.SO- the major point I am making here is to PAY ATTENTION to everything (as much as you can) and react accordingly.
- We started our Pinterest account in June of 2012. It was the “new hot thing” and we figured we’d better get on board and take advantage of the buzz.We approached Pinterest differently than we did Facebook, although we followed the same model of having one committee member being the main administrator of the account, with input from the others.Carrie is our Pinterest leader, and she’ll tell you more about what we’ve learned about Pinterest so far…
- Pinterest is a digital bulletin board or scrapbook for collecting and sharing the interesting things you find online.The site has 28 million users and growing. About 75% of the users are women, but the number of men on Pinterest is growing rapidly.Most of the users, about 70%, are between the ages of 20 and 44.
- Pinterest is all about discovery. Finding something cool online and sharing it with others is the social aspect of Pinterest. Everyday people are finding new and creative ways to use Pinterest. They are using it to bookmark websites that they find interesting and want to revisit later, as well as great recipes and decorating ideas. Pinterest is a place to share and recommend things that you think others will find interesting. It is also a great place to explore and learn about specific topics. These are also many of the things people are using our physical library for, so Pinterest seemed like a natural fit for our library.Our approach to Pinterest was to treat it as a sort of online “collection” of links. We view our Pinterest Boards as an additional collection where our followers can find content that is educational, enriching & entertaining– or all of the above!
- Getting started on Pinterest was easy. The first step after we created our account was to create some boards. It helped us to look at other libraries' Pinterest accounts to get ideas and inspiration. We had to ask ourselves, Is our account going to focus solely on things like book lists & program ideas? Is it going to be all about our library, or will it have a broader focus? We decided that we wanted a combination of book and library centric content a long with entertaining and informative content. It's important to realize that there will be a lot of trial and error in creating boards. Sometimes the boards we thought would be the most popular ended up as complete duds and many times the boards we weren't so sure about endedup beingvery popular. It turned out that coming up with witty titles, that aren't too long, is the most challenging part of creating a board. We want to be clever and creative, but not exceed 22 characters. There aren't any limits on how long your titles can be, but only 22 characters will show up above each board, so we try to stay within that limit. For example we have a board called “books and movies on your fingertips” , but unfortunately it shows up on our boards page as “ books and movies on your fi”. Now, I liked the title and honestly couldn’t come up with anything else, but when you look at our board page it doesn’t look as nice as the others. We found that it's also important to assign a category to our boards so that people searching for a specific subject will be able to find our pins. We also try to use searchable keywords in the title and board-description so that people can find our boards. If people find your pins and like what they see & RePin it, you will gain new followers. After we have collected a number of pins in a new board, we select one that is particularly eye-catching and use it as the cover image. This image can be changed as often as you like. With our new book boards, we always change the cover image to show one of the most recent additions to the collection.
- Pinning is a lot of fun! Searching for new content on Pinterest and online can be addictive. We’ve learned that it’s best to mix up content with a combination of Pins (images you find on the internet) and RePins (images you find on other Pinner’s Boards). If we find a too many things to RePin at one time, we save some of them for later by “liking” them. We can RePin from our “likes” page whenever we need to.But be careful because time really flies when you are pinning – the hours can slip away!
- There are some general rules of conduct that we learned quickly. As a library we want to be cautious of plagiarism and give credit where credit is due. For example we have a bookish art board that features amazing creations made from re-purposed books. Whenever possible, we mention the artist in the description, or link back to the images original website. We also learned that it is really important to spread out our Pins. We don't like to bomb our followers home feeds with 50 posts of book covers, for example. That would bound to annoy our followers. We try to keep it at about 5 Pins at a time, at varying intervals throughout the day. It's very important to Pin from the individual Post(or Perma-link) and not from the sites home page or slide show. When you click on an informative Pin, such as a recipe or DYI, you want to go directly to the information. You do not want to have to search the site to find that information. We try to follow back and RePin from the people who follow us. If they took the time to find and follow us, we like to return the favor by following at least one of their boards. That's how we become “social” by sharing and connecting with as many people with similar interests as we can.
- There are several tools out there that can help you maintain your Pinterest account. Most of them are free, but not all of them. We are just starting to try some of them.The most useful tool we have found by far is Pingraphy. It allows us to select any number of images from a site and pin them immediately, stagger them over a determined time frame, or schedule them to post at a future date. It’s been particularly helpful to me when I’ve run across a lot of great images but I don’t want to bombard our Boards with too many Pins at once. Pingraphy has also been very helpful when I want to Pin an image from our online catalog. Linking to a specific page in our catalog is extremely challenging. Every link has to have a specific URL edited into it in order to work properly, and Pingraphy makes it easy to edit the link before Pinning. Pingraphy also offers very basic analytics about your account, which is nice because Pinterest analytic information is not quite as easy to come by as Twitter or Facebook.Up until just a few weeks ago Pingraphy was free and working great for us. Then to my horror their site seemed to just disappear. One day everything was great the next poof no more pingraphy. After some research I learned that they would be back, but there would be some changes. Well they are back and they are no longer free. A basic plan is $12 per month or $144 per year and the premium plan is $28 per month or $336 per year. Because we have found it to be such a useful tool we decided it was worth the cost.[CLICK TO CHANGE SLIDE]There are also a few tools available if you want to create some of your own pins from scratch. I’ve only recently started trying this, but a few sites worth mentioning are Quozio, Pinstamatic, Pinwords, and Some-ecards. All of these sites allow you to add text to a graphic background and then Pin directly to Pinterest.
- So that’s where we are with Pinterest…Over the past couple of months, we began turning our focus toward our Twitter account. Here’s Eileen to give you an overview of what she’s been working on.
- THANKS CARRIE-Cheshire Library has had a Twitter account for a couple of years, but AS WE STATED EARLIER Facebook was our primary focus and then we BEGAN ADDING TO THAT with other types of social media. We were really only using Twitter as a means to cross-post from our other social media accounts. We’ve just begun exploring ways to give our Twitter account its own unique voice, so we’re very much in the TRIAL-and-Error phase right now as far as content goes. ABOUT 4 MONTHS AGO we began producing content” for Twitter specifically.Finding the right niche for Twitter in our social media plan is what we’ve begun working on, and we’re still at the beginning of the learning curve. AND AS MY COLLEAGUES HAVE MENTIONED you just have to continue to try things to see what works and what doesn’tSO….I’ll share with you a few of the things we’ve learned so far.
- Twitter is FAST AND FURIOUShas an IMMEDIACY that many other social networks don’t. It is “REAL-TIME” social media. Think of it as a HYBRID of INSTANT MESSAGING AND BLOGGING.Twitter has 500 million users = the 2nd most popular Social Network (AFTER Facebook).About 45% users are Male, and 55% are Female.It’s “a much faster-paced network” than Facebook or PinterestAn AVERAGE OF 750 Tweets are shared on Twitter EVERY SECOND.Because “of the faster pace” it’s MORE STREAMLINED 140 characters forces you to BOIL DOWN YOUR message to the bare essentials. You need to be INFORMATIVE but CONCISE and ENTERTAINING. A good tweeter… is a real WORDSMITH.there’s less need for “bells & whistles”. You have to be able to tweet your message in 140 characters and perhaps UPLOAD a photo or graphic.You May IN FACT find yourself hitting the BACKSPACE key because you’ve gone over 140 characters. SO once you’ve counted your characters, added your photo, and red your tweet back to yourself to check your “tone of voice” you hit send andAND then as Emeril Lagasse would say “BAM”…you’re done.
- OK so WHAT DOES A LIBRARY TWEET ABOUT? What WE FOUND WORKS for us is……TO TWEET ABOUT----Helpful Tips not only about the library but also about the local community DON’T FORGET WE HAVE A SECOND PHOTOCOPIER ON THE LOWEL LEVEL, remind customers THAT ITS SCHOOL VACATION WEEK AND WE HAVE MUSEUM PASSES!And for local community HIGH SCHOOL TESTING DATES, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE BREAKFAST, NEW RECYCLE BINS FOR THE TOWN ARE BEING DISTRIBUTED-Library News- PROMOTE PROGRAMS and SERVICES- date & time Anime Club, details about Book Club Services-- Mention our FEATURED AUTHOR OF THE WEEK – Remind followers about UPCOMING BOOKSALE & Announce customers can now access Consumer Reports through the online database- Bookish News – AWARD WINNERs such as Alex Award, Pen/Faulkner Award, BOOKS that have recently been released as films..OR EVEN News such as the recent Death of children’s author E.L. Konigsburg- Interesting Re-Tweets Retweeted Local newspaper’s report that Cheshire HS named by US News&World Report as award winning high school in State and Nation. Re-tweet post from ALA like “libraries are community hubs” or Retweet our neighbor CHESHIRE ACADEMY”s tweet about their upcoming antique fair IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE SURE YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THE ORIGINAL TWEETER WHEN YOU RETWEET THEIR TWEETFun Facts, short quotes – Why not share “The city of New Haven’s celebrating its 375th birthday!” ANDWe found that people LOVE all kinds of literary Quotations anything to do with books and libraries…Several get RETWEETED…we’ve also RECENTLY STARTED EXPERIMENTING WITH VINE which is an app that let’s you create and post short videoclips to Twitter.Some libraries use Twitter as a customer service tool, even use it to answer reference questions. WE use it to ask our followers for feedback like “What types of Programming would you like to see at the library?”We’re learning that Our focus with Twitter is our local community. We follow Cheshire & Connecticut-based libraries, people and places, and we include more content about our library specifically.
- SO..When & how often to Tweet?TWEETS HAVE SHORT LIVES-Facebook posts have an average effective life of 3 hours. Tweets have an average effective life of “less-than- an- hour.” Statistically , that would mean you should be Tweeting 3X as often as posting to FB, but that may not be realistic.Suffice it to say that you can post much more frequently on Twitter than you can on Facebook without annoying your followers.AND by using cross-posts from our other Social Networks along with original tweets WE KEEP a fairly consistent stream of tweets flowing.WE FOUND THAT Tweets in the afternoon and evenings, and on weekends, generally “get seen” the most. This is when a scheduler like Hootsuite, As Kelley mentioned, comes in handy, because many times the “best time” to Tweet is after regular work hours. Hootsuite also let’s us spread out the tweets in a timely manner. So if our Facebook posts are at 7a, 10a, 1, 3 ,7 I try to Tweet between those times.Hootsuite is also great because it actually counts the number of characters in your tweet for you and alerts you if you’re over 140 characters.Hootsuitealsooffers a URL SHORTENING SERVICE which is really helpful because it decreases the number of characters in the url like when you’re uploading photos or links to other sitesFINALLY I should add that it’s best to first read what’s currently trending on Twitter…say in the last 10 minutes.. before Tweeting.If something important or urgent is going viral I don’t want to jump in with a tweet about facepainting in our children’s room. SO TIMING IS IMPORTANT IN THAT RESPECT AS WELL.
- Twitter has developed a kind of shorthand language all it’s own. Two OF THE TERMS that we’ve found important to know are the “Pound” or “Hashtag” and the “At” or “Mention” sign. Both of these enhance your ability to communicate in different ways.Attaching a #hashtag to the beginning of a word in a Tweet makes it searchable, kind of like keyword tagging. It “makes a conversation on a certain subject” trackable. This can be useful if you are holding a conversation (or Tweet Chat) with several people on a particular topic. If you want to direct a tweet to specific person, using the @ symbol before their twitter name will “notify them that you have mentioned them in a Tweet. This can be useful if you are answering a specific question OR asking someone a question.So…….. that’s where we’re at with Twitter, it’s a work in progress BUT we’re finding it’s A GREAT WAY TO REACH OUT TO OUR CUSTOMERS……. AND TO BRING OUR LIBRARY AND OUR COMMUNITY…. TO THEM.[CLICK TO NEXT SLIDE]
- Next I’d like to bring up Mary, our Webmaster, who’ll talk about some of the ways we’re making our WEBSITE more social.One social tool you all have already is your library’s website. It’s the oldest social media tool out there! We often don’t think of a website as a part of a social media program, but it’s a tool for engagement and interaction that should not be overlooked. I recently revamped our website with social media and mobile technology in mind.
- In the beginning, websites were purely informational: Addresses Phone numbers HoursIt was a great way for our customers to get information about our libraries even when we weren’t open. Customers expect a little more from websites nowadays!The roles of libraries (and their websites) are changing. [CLICK TO CHANGE SLIDE]Libraries are now offering many of their services via the web.Websites are no longer just billboards with static information. We think of our website as a digital branch of our library. And just as we would interact and communicate with our customers when they walk in the door of our physical building, we also wanted to communicate with them at our digital branch.So, how did we go about making our website more social?
- One of our first priorities was Communication. We wanted our customers to contact the library via the method that was most convenient for them. To accomplish this we provided four different methods of communication:Phone numbers, not just the library’s main number but also popular depts. We didn’t just put our phone number on the front page. The main number is on the front page, and department numbers are located on the Contact a Librarian and About the Staff pages. (Because you never know how someone is going to search for something.)We haveemail contact forms (directed to SPECIFIC staff members) throughout our site.We included Social Media links. They are on the Footer, Slider, Contact a Librarian page. Sharing buttons (Sexy Bookmarks)We also use text messaging.Customers can sign up for notification of holds and due dates on items.There are a lot of different ways to communicate nowadays, and everyone has a preferred method of communication. We decided to let the customer decide!
- Today websites are destinations. We wanted our website to be a destination!We took a page from the Disneymodel of doing business and decided we would do the same thing they do and engage as many of the senses as possible through the use of color, sound and motion:Color attracts attention and that’s just what we wanted. Warm beige background with a deep blue header; brightly-colored images are used throughout the site.How to add sound to a website? There are several ways to add sound to a website. Tutorials, videos, even music. We are just beginning to experiment with enhancing our website in this way.Movement catches the eye and gives life to our website. We have an auto-advancing slideshow across the top third of our new homepage. Scent: (Thatold book smell for an authentic library experience) One of our goals was toInteract and engage with our customers. We discovered our customers did not want a passive experience. So we set out to make our site interactive. More on this in a moment.We also wanted to tell our library’s story: Our library’s tagline is: Education. Enrichment. Entertainment. Our website really shows that that is what we are all about.1. We put our best stuff on the front page. Special programs. Online databases. Mad Scientists Club. Anime Club. We wanted to flaunt what we do well, what makes us special. (But don’t overdo it. A cluttered front page reduces your customers’ ability to locate anything. More is not always better!)2. We realized that blogs are a very good way to tell customers who we are and what we can do for them. We have threeon our front page and more within the site. 3. Rebel Mouse is also very good at this! It collects your online data and presents it in an easy-to-view Pinterest-type format that really showcases your social presence. We have a RebelMouse page embedded into our site and it showcases our social media presence.So, how did we create an interactive website….
- We wanted to give the customer something to do. How did we accomplish this? Downloads: Books, music, informationLearn: We have databases that offer foreign languagecourses (such as Transparent Language and Muzzy ). We also have tutorials, such as ebook help. Some libraries make their own tutorials, others borrow. If you don’t have the staff to make your own, there are any number of good tutorials on youtube that you can link to.News: We wanted to provide our customers with the latest library news. One of the ways we do this is through our newsletter. We offer customersthe option of signing up to receive our newsletter in their email or viewing the most current newsletter right on our website.Blogs are great because they offer dynamic content; we wanted to give customers a reason to keep coming back.News posts: We made suresure these are on our front page. We did not want to make our customers search for time-sensitive content.Talk Back:Customer Survey.We have an ongoing survey on the front page so we can get get our customer feedback.Email. We use embedded email forms throughout the site.We pay as much attention to the customers accessing our digital branch as we would to the customers who walk through our front door.Speaking of paying attention to your customers…
- In order to have a social website, it MUST be mobile friendly: In January 2012, 11% of our customers were accessing our site via mobile devices. By December 2012, 41% of customers were accessing our site via mobile devices. Need we say more? (This is from the Pew Research Center: Internet and American Life Project) Note: The number of mobile subscribers in the United States is GREATER than the entire population of the U.S. Most adults have more than one mobile device.We use analytics like Google will tell us what type of devices our customers are using, and we made sure our site looks good on those devices! By the way, CPL customers overwhelming use Apple devices:ipad. The #1 device being used to access our site, followed closely by:iphoneipod touch (Sony & Motorola are a distant 4th & 5th)So now that we have designed our new site are we done? No…..
- A website is always a work-in-progress. We are always trying something new. This keeps our site fresh and it keeps our knowledge up-to-date. 1. We take all new ideas for a test drive. Our customers will always let us know (via comments or analytics) what works and what doesn’t.2. Weanalyze the results of any changes we make. Was the feedback positive or negative? Did anyone even notice?!3. Then we fine-tune if necessary. By the way, fine-tuning often means discarding something that just isn’t working out.4. Staying current is an important goal for us. Things change quickly. We try as best we can to keep on top of the newest trends and do not rely on old knowledge. The phrase “that is so 6 months ago” is not just a joke in the social media business!END OF WEBSITE SECTIONLouise comes back to podium…
- There are lots of tools out there to measure and analyze your Social Networks. Most of the in-depth tools cost money, though. We have made use of several freebies, and have found that by combining the data, we can get a pretty clear picture of how we’re doing. Facebook has its own analytics tool, called Facebook Insights, and it’s a great place to start. Try out several of the other free tools to see which ones are a good fit for you.
- We’ve spent the last hour showing you some of the things that have worked for us. What we didn’t show you was how many things we tried and failed with along the way. That would have been a much longer presentation! My point is you have to keep throwing ideas out there & trying new things. We had lots of ideas that we thought would take off, and totally tanked. And other things that were kind of throwaway ideas that turned out to be extremely well-received. We’ve found that you absolutely cannot predict the hive mind!So try something for a while, analyze it, try to make it better if it’s not working, but don’t be afraid to throw it out if your followers don’t seem to care about it. For example, we have tried many different ways to promote our programs on Facebook, and every time it’s like you can hear crickets chirping when we do a programming post. We learned this lack of reaction that programming info or info about our collection is not what our Fans come to our Page to see. It might work for other libraries, but it doesn’t work for us. So we keep self-promotion to a bare minimum, and work on other, less direct ways of promoting ourselves. It was a hard lesson to learn!
- Pin: an image added to PinterestBoard: a collection of Pins with a common themeRePin: reposting someone else’s Pin on your BoardFollow: “Following” someone means you'll see that person’s Pins shown to you in real-time on Pinterest. You can “follow all” of someone’s Pins or follow just certain Boards.
- Know the lingo: Tweet – both a noun and a verb, a post on Twitter is known as a “Tweet”, when you post something on Twitter, you “Tweet” it.@so-and-so – a comment aimed at one user, but visible to all your followers. DM – direct message. Private message to another user, goes to user’s inbox.RT – ReTweet, or sharing someone else’s postHashtags – putting a # before a word in a Tweet to make it searchable, like keyword tagging. Makes a conversation on a certain subject trackable.
- Ideas we’re looking at for further down the road:Twitter Chats - A Twitter tweet chat is a pre-arranged chat that happens on Twitter through the use of Tweets) that include a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation.???????????????????????????????????