A new study suggests that kids are reading less. And while that trend is concerning, it also creates an important opportunity for libraries!
At a time when families, educators, and communities are worried about literacy and reading habits, libraries are uniquely positioned to become part of the solution.
In this episode of The Library Marketing Show, I break down what the research says, why it matters for libraries, and how you can use these insights to strengthen your library marketing and support literacy in your community.
Plus, kudos go to a group of libraries that received press coverage that you can emulate!
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
Photo courtesy Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
This is the last of a three-part series on branding for libraries. We’ve explored what branding really means in a library context (read about that at this link) and how to build a cohesive brand across your entire library system (read that post at this link).
But there’s one element that most libraries, including mine, still struggle with: Consistency.
Here’s a great example from my library. We realized last week that some staff are using chpl.org to refer to our website, while others are using CHPL.org. Our brand guide is clear about which one to use.
But if you consider staff turnover and how many things staff members are expected to remember every single day, this kind of brand slippage shouldn’t surprise you. It didn’t surprise me.
So, how do you combat that?
Let’s Clear Up a Common Misconception About “Consistency”
When people hear the term “brand consistency,” they often assume it means using the same font, putting the library’s logo on everything, creating rigid templates, or repeating key phrases or messages.
They’re not exactly wrong. Those things do have value.
Templates can save time, reduce decision fatigue, and help staff, especially those with no design experience (like me!), be more confident in creating materials.
And shared messaging — what I like to call talking points— is one of the most powerful branding tools you have. Because repetition builds recognition.
But there’s another important ingredient in effective library marketing:
Creativity.
Libraries don’t just need to be recognizable. They also need to be interesting, relevant, and engaging.
But balancing creativity and branding is hard.
Branding Should Create Confidence, Not Limit Creativity
One of the biggest misconceptions about branding is that it exists to make everything look exactly the same.
It doesn’t.
Strong branding should actually make creativity easier because staff are not starting from scratch every time they create something.
Think about it this way: Your templates, talking points, colors, and voice guidelines are not meant to be a cage. They’re meant to be a framework.
Within that framework, staff should still have room to:
Adapt messaging for different audiences
Highlight the personality of a program or event
Experiment with creative ideas
Make content feel fresh and human
A summer reading campaign shouldn’t feel exactly the same as a job seeker workshop or a local history lecture. The tone, imagery, and approach may shift.
But the underlying experience — the feeling people get from your library — should still feel connected.
That’s branding.
Where Libraries Often Struggle
Consistency becomes a problem when branding tools turn into autopilot. For example, your library may have a brand consistency problem if staff are:
Using templates inappropriately or changing them so much that they no longer feel connected to your brand
Avoiding templates entirely because they feel too restrictive
Forgetting to include important talking points or key messages
Copying the same wording over and over without adapting it for the audience or platform
Creating materials that technically follow the rules but don’t feel engaging or relevant
That’s when library marketing stops feeling intentional and starts feeling:
Generic
Disconnected
“All over the place.”
Or sometimes just… forgettable.
The Goal Is Consistency and Creativity
The strongest library brands find the balance between the two.
They create enough structure to feel recognizable and enough flexibility to feel human
Because your audience does not want every piece of marketing to look identical. But they do want every interaction with your library to feel connected to the same organization.
That’s the sweet spot.
Ask yourself: If someone removed your logo, would people still know it’s your library? The correct answer needs to be… yes! So how do you get there?
Start Here: Define 3–5 Voice Traits
Choose 3–5 words that describe how your library sounds.
For example:
Friendly
Clear
Encouraging
Inclusive
Curious
Whimsical
Authoritative
Make sure you give staff examples, like this:
Academic vs. Conversational
Academic: “Participants are invited to attend a program focused on early literacy development.”
Conversational: “Join us for a fun program that helps your child build early reading skills.”
See how it’s the same message but with very different vibes?
Here’s another example:
Passive vs. Active
Passive: “Registration is required.”
Active: “Sign up today to save your spot.”
Naming your voice traits helps your staff with this little self-test: Before publishing anything, staff can ask: “Does this sound like us?” If the answer is “no”, it’s time to head back to the drawing board.
Visual Consistency Without Template Burnout
Let’s talk about design, because this is where frustration builds fast.
Rigid templates with stringent oversight seem like the answer. But over time, they limit creativity, get ignored by staff, and may not fit every situation or program at your library.
So instead, focus on visual systems rather than templates.
Standardize:
Color palette
Font pairings
Logo usage
Image style (bright photos, illustrations, or icons?)
Do NOT over-standardize:
Layouts
Copy
Creative concepts
This gives you consistency and flexibility. Here’s an example from my own library.
These are three different plant programs at the same branch, but their graphics are all different, yet connected by elements like colors, shapes, and consistent fonts.
The Bottom Line
Consistency doesn’t come from control.
It comes from:
Clear direction
Shared understanding
Practical tools
When your staff understands the brand, they don’t need to copy and paste. They can create. And that’s when your library starts to feel like one cohesive, recognizable experience, no matter where or how someone interacts with you.
So, what other questions do you have about branding? Ask in the comments, and I’ll tackle them in a future episode of The Library Marketing Show!
Subscribe to this blog, and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
If you’re sharing your Instagram posts to Stories to boost reach, you’re not alone. But it may not be helping you in the way you think!
According to Instagram’s head, this common tactic doesn’t actually increase reach the way many marketers assume.
In this episode of The Library Marketing Show, I break down what’s really happening with the Instagram algorithm, what this means for library marketing, and what you should do instead to make sure your posts are seen and engaged with.
Plus, a kudos nomination comes in for a library that’s busting myths about libraries!
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
How do you prove your library marketing is working without tracking everything your patrons do?
It’s a challenge many library marketers face. You’re expected to show results, but the usual tools and tactics don’t always fit.
In this episode of The Library Marketing Show, I share a few meaningful metrics you can use to demonstrate impact while still respecting patron privacy.
Plus, we’ll give kudos to a library in the UK for their unusual “outreach librarian!”
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
Photo courtesy Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
In this post, I walked you through what branding really means in a library: It’s the consistent experience people have every time they interact with you.
Now comes the harder question: How do you actually make that happen across an entire library system? Believe me, I know what a struggle this can be!
The Real Problem Isn’t Branding. It’s Alignment.
Most library marketers I work with tell me they struggle with branding because the library system is very siloed. Libraries are collaborative by nature but decentralized in structure.
Staff with different backgrounds and comfort levels with marketing
So people do what they think is best in the moment. And over time, that creates inconsistency.
Each department and branch creates its own promotional materials
Messaging varies depending on who writes it
Tone and style vary depending on who writes it
No one is intentionally trying to dilute the brand. But no one is working from the same playbook, either.
The Fix: Give Staff Clarity, Not Control
Here’s where many branding efforts go off track. Leadership tries to “fix” inconsistency by:
Locking down templates
Requiring approvals for everything
Centralizing all marketing decisions
That might create consistency. But it also creates bottlenecks, frustration, and disengagement. It also lowers staff morale, because it appears that leaders don’t trust branch or department staff to do their jobs.
Instead, what staff really need is clarity.
The 2 Things Every Staff Member Needs to Know
If you want your entire library to create promotion using one brand, every staff member, regardless of their role, should be able to answer these two questions:
1. Who Are We?
I’m not talking about reciting your mission statement. I’m talking about your library’s personality, tone, and voice.
Are you:
Friendly and conversational?
Educational and authoritative?
Playful and creative?
If staff don’t understand this, they’ll default to their own voice.
2. Who Are We Talking To?
Your audience is not everyone. I know that’s so hard to understand when you’re working in an organization that aims to serve everyone.
But when you are working on promotions, you have to target a specific audience. So, your staff must be trained to think in specifics.
Who are they hoping to see come through the door as a result of their promotion? Are they looking for:
Parents of young children?
Job seekers?
Lifelong learners?
Teens looking for a place to belong?
Some other target audience?
When staff can identify the specific people they are trying to reach, their messaging becomes more consistent — naturally
How to Communicate Your Brand to Staff
Your library doesn’t need a 40-page brand guide. Most libraries only need a simpledocument that includes:
1. Voice Traits (3–5 words)
These are the personality descriptors that guide how your library “sounds” in writing. For example:
For example, if your library decides its personality descriptor is “helpful, clear, approachable, and trustworthy,” you can tell staff that instead of saying, “Patrons must return materials by the due date“, you’ll say, “Just a heads up… return your items by the due date to avoid any fees.”
2. Visual Guidelines (colors, fonts, image style)
These define how your library looks visually across every tactic and channel, including social media, flyers, signage, and your website.
For example, your library might have three colors in your brand palette. Each color likely represents a feeling or emotion that you want your community to experience when they encounter materials from your library.
Let your staff know about the intentionality of your color palette by explaining each color’s associated emotion, like this:
Primary: Deep blue (trust, stability). We use this color for promotions about our hours and policies.
Secondary: Bright orange (energy, engagement). We use this color for promotions that include a call to action, like signing up or registering for a program.
Neutral: Light gray or cream. This color provides us with a clean background for promotions.
Set guidelines for font use. Be sure to lay out which font staff should use for headlines, body text, or as an accent font for special promotions for kids’ programming, summer reading, or other big programs.
Finally, give staff clear direction about the use of photos in your promotions. You may want to indicate that all photos must depict real patrons in one of your branches. (Check out this post about how to do a “stock photo day” to build your library’s cache of photos.)
If photos of real community members are not an option, let staff know what kind of stock photos they may use. For example, you may set guidelines that all staff photos must include:
Warm, candid, natural lighting
Diverse, inclusive representation
Focus on interaction (reading, attending programs, using spaces)
Coming Next
Now that you know how to align your team, there’s one more big challenge.
How do you create a consistent voice and look without making everything feel rigid and templated?
Your job is not to control every piece of marketing. Your job is to:
Set the direction
Define the brand clearly
Equip your team to execute
That’s what we’ll tackle in Part 3, which will publish on May 11.
Subscribe to this blog, and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
Running social media for a library is challenging. Running it alone is something else entirely.
A viewer recently asked how one person is supposed to handle it all — and it’s a question many library marketers are quietly asking.
In this episode of The Library Marketing Show, I share strategies to help you stay consistent, reduce overwhelm, and focus your efforts where they’ll have the biggest impact.
Plus, we’ll share kudos for a library that received a huge shout-out from a major author in a major magazine.
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
You might be writing the same great library emails, but getting very different results lately.
That’s because email platforms like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook are changing how messages are delivered and displayed, with AI playing a bigger role than ever.
In this episode of The Library Marketing Show, I walk through what these changes mean and how to adjust your email marketing strategy to keep reaching your audience.
Plus, a library nominates their neighboring organization for kudos… find out why!
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
Photo courtesy Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
When most libraries talk about branding, they’re really talking about logos, colors, and templates.
But branding isn’t only what your materials look like.
It’s how your library feels to the people you serve.
And that experience doesn’t center only on the work that your communications staff does. It comes from every single staff member. This is especially true for small or rural libraries and for large metro libraries.
A solid library brand will define your library in a crowded world. It’s the thing that makes people say, “I love my library.”
But many libraries struggle with branding. When I asked, “What do you need help with?” in the State of Library Marketing survey, one of the most common answers was “branding.”
So, we’re going to tackle that! This is the first in a three-part series all about library branding.
Branding Is Not a Logo
We’ll begin with this concept, because it’s the root of the problem.
Branding is often confused with:
Your logo
Your color palette
Your graphic templates
Those things matter. But they are expressions of your brand, not the brand itself.
In fact, research into library branding shows that a library’s brand encompasses multiple dimensions tied to user experience, perception, and emotional connection — not just visuals.
That means your library’s brand is shaped just as much by a storytime experience, a conversation at the circulation desk, the tone of a Facebook post, or signage in your building as it is by your logo.
Here’s the truth: Your library already has a brand! People in your community have an existing impression of your library. This is true even if you’ve never written a brand guide, your graphics are inconsistent, and your co-workers all seem to do their own thing when it comes to library promotion.
So, you’re not starting this journey from scratch.
Real Library Examples: When Branding Becomes Part of the Library Experience
One of the best examples of true library branding is the transformation of Rangeview Library District into Anythink Libraries.
Here’s what happened: The Rangeview Library District was considered by its community to be old-fashioned, small, and unappealing. In 2009, as part of its renewed branding efforts, the District changed the names of its libraries to Anythink libraries.
But the library did more than a name and logo change. They renamed every branch. The changed staff job titles to include “Concierge” and “Guide.” They reframed the entire library experience around creativity and curiosity.
It was a complete alignment of experience, language, and culture. And it worked.
The rebranding led to higher circulation and visitor numbers. The system was able to connect with users and pass a levy, which helped them build or renovate libraries. And they were awarded a national Medal for Museum and Library Service.
My own library, the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library, also went through a rebrand in the last five years. While our name change is not as significant (previously, we were The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County), we are transforming our connection to the community.
Yes, we created a completely new visual palette. But the core of our new branding is focused on our beliefs, which every library staff member is committed to living out through their work. Our beliefs are:
Empathy: We believe in everyone’s innate value and potential.
Enjoyment: We believe there is no prescribed path to knowledge, so why not make the journey fun?
Connection: We believe we got farther, together.
Community: We believe libraries are incubators of community.
That defined focus on those four beliefs is strengthening the connection our library has to the community, elected officials, and donors. That’s the power of branding.
Many libraries have also leaned into branding through physical experience and design. In fact, studies show that libraries are increasingly positioned as community hubs and cultural spaces, with branding tied to how people use and feel in the space, not just what they see.
Branding encompasses everything. The building, the programming, the atmosphere — all of it contributes to the brand.
Where Most Libraries Go Wrong
Most libraries don’t have a branding problem. They have a disconnect problem.
It usually looks like this:
Marketing creates one type of message
Youth services create another
Branches design their own flyers
Social media has a completely different tone
This creates a fragmented experience. And from a patron’s perspective, it feels like interacting with multiple different organizations instead of one library system.
So What Is Library Branding?
Here’s the simplest, most useful definition I can give you:
Your library’s brand is the consistent experience people have every time they interact with you.
Branding is not owned by the marketing department. Branding is created by the entire staff.
That means every flyer, every conversation, every program description, every social media post is either strengthening your brand or weakening it.
Coming Next
In the next post on April 27, we’re going to tackle the biggest challenge libraries face when it comes to branding:
How do you actually get an entire library system to act like one brand?
Meanwhile, if your library has worked on branding, I’d love to hear what worked, what didn’t, and where your staff struggled. You can let me know by commenting below or by emailing me.
Subscribe to this blog, and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
Library circulation isn’t what it used to be — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
A viewer recently asked about these changes, so I dug into the data. In this episode of The Library Marketing Show, I walk through five circulation trends and what they mean for how libraries should market their collections moving forward.
Plus, we’ll give kudos to a library whose promotion helped some unhoused people move into a safer situation!
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 