When Social Media Fails to Inspire: Transforming your library's social media presence

When Social Media Fails to InspireTransforming your library's social media presence

PART I: THE STORYKerri WilletteEmerging Technologies Librarian

University of Wisconsin-Parkside

Initial goals• Use social media to broadcast announcements

• Promote the library and library related events

• Increase website SEO

• Keep it as low maintenance as possible

Early Twitter activity

Early Facebook activity

#cricketsBlog Analytics 2010

New goals• Listening

• Being where our users are and knowing what they’re talking about• Following blogs, hashtags and lists that relate to our community

• Actively participating in our community

• Establishing alternate service points

• Being likable

ListeningHootsuite Streams: http://hootsuite.com

Sharing interesting, relevant content

PART II: THE DETAILSAmy WainwrightAccess Services Assistant

Columbia College Chicago Library

At the height of our success• Core group of 3 people managed social media

• But what did that look like in reality?

Supportive and interested coworkers

9 contributors

3 contributors

1 contributor

3 contributors

10 contributors

Organization• Monthly meetings with the blog contributors

• Hootsuite to schedule and track posts

• Policies for “claiming” comments and tweets

• Content driven by what our users needed and wanted

Why is this all in past tense? • Lost one member of the core group

• Facebook posting is spotty, twitter coverage is skimpy, and blog posting has mostly withered away

• Need to have a dedicated Social Media position

PART III: TAKE-AWAYSMolly BeestrumLibrary Instruction Coordinator

Columbia College Chicago Library

Lessons Learned• Form a team

• Define your vision

• Pick a few tools

• Define success

• Learn from failure

• Prioritize social media

• Listen

Team ApproachIdentify staff with interest in specific tools

9 contributors

3 contributors

1 contributor

3 contributors

10 contributors

Define your Vision• Public services or Marketing?

social media as alternate service point …

or

… a way of promoting resources and services

• Communicate shared goals

• Agreed upon vision

Pick a few tools• Don’t try to do everything

• Pick a couple of tools that fit your audience• Patrons already using it• Solves a problem• Highlights collections• Works in tandem

with other tools

Define Success• Counting hits, reach, follows, pins

• Success can be fleeting

• Success can be bittersweet

• Improvement is success

• Success from failure

Learn from Failure• Try it and see what happens

• Don’t ask for permission

• Call it a “pilot” or keep it in beta

• Even if it didn’t work, you still learned something

Prioritize Social Media• Don’t treat social media as an afterthought

• Communicate successes to administrators

• Press for investment; dedicated position(s)

Listen• Put down the megaphone

• Become a member of the community

Questions?

Columbia College Chicago Library

http://www.lib.colum.edu

• Facebook: facebook.com/ColumbiaCollegeLibrary

• Twitter: twitter.com/LibraryTweet

• Tumblr: ccclibrary.tumblr.com

• Pinterest: pinterest.com/ccclibrary