Angela Hursh, Library Marketing Expert

Need a Free Stock Photo or Illustration for Your Library Promotions? Here are the Top Ten Websites Where You Can Find Them!

Main Library Cincinnati Library Catalog Department 1946

A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s so true in marketing.

The visual you choose to accompany your promotions can make all the difference. The quality of that image may determine whether a person engages with your content… or moves on.

Most libraries don’t have a budget to hire a photographer for every campaign or marketing initiative. They may not have a graphic designer to create illustrations. So, they rely on free stock photos and art to create promotional material that looks professional and modern.

But libraries must navigate the tricky legal maze of copyright issues associated with images, icons, and photos.

The basics of copyright laws

Unless you have a stock photo subscription, your library should use images in the Public Domain or images that are covered by Creative Commons.

Public Domain: If a photo of image is in the public domain, that means the creator has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, change, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

Creative Commons: Anyone can then use the work in any way and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, subject to other laws and the rights others may have in the work or how the work is used.

This post gives a thorough explanation of copyright issues surrounding stock photos in particular.

Finding the right image for your library promotions

Your library can purchase a stock photo subscription. But, if you are working with a limited budget, there are many websites where you can find high quality, free stock photos. That’s where this list comes in handy.

I based my list on a couple of factors.

Websites where finding a photo or illustration is easy.
Websites where you don’t need an account to download photos or images.
Websites that had photos and/or art of subjects that pertain to libraries, like books, reading, and diverse populations.

I have provided a brief explanation of the copyright licensing for these websites. But, to fully protect yourself and your library, read the license requirements for each site thoroughly before you download.

The complete list of ten free stock photo websites for libraries

Creative Commons: This site is dedicated contains the most diverse selection of shots I’ve seen on a free photo site to date, with more than 500 million photos available. You can search by license so you can be sure to get the photos that you can use in any situation with or without attribution, according to your preferences. You can also search by the sources, and by the way in which you wish to use the photos. Attribution is required for most photos.

Freepik: Freepik has a limited number of free photos for download. You can use them for commercial or personal projects and in digital or printed media. Attribution is required.

Gratisography: This site contains a limited number of free photos and vectors. They are bright and eye-catching, even whimsical. It’s divided into easy-to-understand search categories. You can use the photos for personal and commercial projects including advertising campaigns, websites, blogs, and social media. Attribution is required.

Negative Space: Another site under Creative Commons with full use of photos for commercial purposes. Their photos are organized into collections for easy searching. They have plenty of photos of books and readers.

Pexels: A great site containing lots of high-quality photos and videos. They’re all free to use on your website, blog or app, in print materials, on social media, and in ads. Attribution is not required. You can modify the photos and videos.

Pixabay: The site contains 2.3 million free images and royalty free stock photos as well as free illustrations, vectors, videos, and music. You can download and modify content for commercial or non-commercial use without attribution. You cannot use the content for any products for sale, like t-shirts or other library merchandise.

Reshot: You can use any of the 25,000 photos and icons from this website for social media, online ads, education, commercial, and editorial projects for free. No attribution is required. Photos are searchable by orientation.

Stockvault: This site offers more than 138,000 free photos. You can search by license, but there are plenty of free photos for libraries licensed as Creative Commons CCo, which means you can use the works for personal, education, and commercial purposes without attribution.

Vecteezy: This website contains free vectors, photos, and videos. There are premium pieces for purchase, but their selection of free art is great. I like the modern feel of the work on this site. You can search by orientation, image style, number of people or age of people in the photo, and the composition of the photo (head shots, full body, etc.). Attribution is required and there are limits to the ways in which you can use the art under the free license.

Unsplash: An amazing site with a huge selection of high-resolution photos. Their license allows you to download and use the photos for free for commercial and non-commercial purposes. No permission is needed, although attribution is appreciation.

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May 24, 2021 6

Why NOW Is the Time To Experiment With Your Library Marketing and Promotions!

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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 95

In this episode, I want to inspire you to experiment with your library marketing and promotions this summer. I’ll give you some ideas to help you do this, and I’ll explain why right now is the perfect time to try things you’ve never tried before.

Kudos go to the Iowa Library for the Blind and Print Disabled. They were honored by the Library of Congress for their work during the pandemic.

Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.

Thanks for watching!

May 19, 2021 1

Listen To This! How To Use Social Listening To Gain New Insight and Catch Promotional Opportunities for Your Library

Photo courtesy The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Main library, 1920.

In 2016, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County caught wind of a fantastic promotional opportunity.

I don’t remember the exact quote, but this is a paraphrase of a Tweet our library saw that revealed a local man’s big plan.

“My son and I are planning a big adventure. We’re going to try to visit all 41 Cincinnati library branches in one day. We’ll take a picture at each branch. Wish us luck!”

The father didn’t tag our library. Still, our social media manager found out about the plan by practicing social listening.

What is social listening?

Your library already tracks mentions, shares, comments, and hashtags related to your library. They record and analyze those engagement metrics to figure out the effectiveness of your library’s promotions on social media.

Social listening is a step beyond that.

Social listening is the purposeful search for conversations about your library on social media platforms, both the ones you are using to promote your library and the ones you are not using.

It’s not looking to see how your library’s marketing is landing. Rather, it’s looking to see the conversations that happen about your library between people who may or may not use your library or who may or may not see any marketing from your library.

Imagine if you could eavesdrop on the conversations people are having about your library when you’re not around. What do you think your community would say?

“That children’s librarian is a hoot. His storytimes are fun, even for the adults.”

“I cannot believe I have to create a separate login and password to use some of the library’s free stuff. It’s so frustrating and time-consuming.”

“Big interview on Monday. I could really use some help figuring out what kinds of questions they’ll ask and practicing my answers. There ought to be a service like that at the library.”

These three made-up examples illustrate the valuable information your library can uncover when it practices social listening.

Social listening will give you a clearer picture of how people feel about your library. You may be able to spot problems before they happen. And you will certainly spot promotional opportunities which you can amplify to connect to more users.

In the case of the father and son Cincinnati Library branch adventure, our marketing staff reached out to the dad. We told him we loved his plan and wanted to follow along. We ended up turning their marathon day-long quest to visit all our branches into a memorable cover story for our quarterly content marketing magazine, Library Links.

Read the story about the Grand Library Adventure

Free social media listening tools

If your library uses a social media scheduling platform, it will have the ability to integrate social listening into your dashboard in some form. Check the help section of the platform for instructions.

There are also free tools to help you with social listening.

Boardreader: This site searches forums, websites, blogs, and messaging boards. Type the name of your library into the search bar to find all the posts mentioning your library.

TweetDeck.com: This tool is run by Twitter and lets you monitor live feeds across the platform.

Also, read this post to see how to use Google alerts for social listening as well as catch media mentions of your library. If your library gets media coverage, you may find conversations about your library in the comment section of the story and on the social media pages of the media outlet.

What to monitor with social listening

You’ll want to set up your social listening tools to monitor:

Your library’s name and social media handle
Common misspellings of your library’s name and social media handle
Names of your services, especially branded names, like the name of your bookmobile, your Library of Things, your summer reading program, your storytimes, etc.
Common terms associated with libraries like reading, librarian, book drop, etc.
The names of senior leaders like your director and board members
The names of your branches and locations

Opportunities to gain from social listening

Social listening means you can interact more with your community. Cardholders (and non-cardholders) may talk about your library but not directly tag you. If you are doing social listening, you will still spot those interactions.

You might consider responding. This can create those surprise and delight moments that show that your library cares about its users.

You can also spot problems and trends. If you notice that a lot of community members are posting negative comments about a service, you can elevate that to senior leadership.

Social listening also means you’ll know more about your competitors. If you are “competing” with other organizations in your community or with for-profit companies that provide services similar to your library, you can use social listening to look for opportunities to position your library as a free and better alternative to those competitors.

Finally, social listening can also help you identify library advocates. They might be vocal about their support of the library. You want to connect with these people who already love your library and ask them to speak out for you.

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May 17, 2021 2

Try These Two Fun Tests To Improve the Effectiveness of Your Library Promotional Emails!

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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 94

In this episode, I’m sharing two fun tests you can do that may lead to more effective email marketing messages for your libraries.

Kudos go to the Chicago Public Library for their initiative to include affordable housing units in the renovations of their library buildings. Check out the video for links to read more about this work.

Thanks for watching!

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May 12, 2021 3

Two New Tools That Will Help You Write Better Library Promotional Copy!

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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 93

In this episode, I’m sharing two tools that will help you when you’re writing any kind of library promotional copy for any type of marketing tactic.

Kudos go to the Elizabeth Public Library in New Jersey for their great work with their immigrant population and with job seekers.

Thanks for watching!

May 5, 2021 1

Your Summer Reading Challenge: How Your Library Can Use Big Events To Gather Compelling Content for Promotions During the Rest of the Year

Group of women at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, circa 1947. Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

“The only way we can differentiate ourselves is in how we communicate.”

I heard this quote at a conference six years ago and it’s never left me. I can’t remember who said it, but I remember that it changed the entire way I thought about library marketing.

We do a lot of push promotions in the library world. We try to inform our communities about what our library has to offer. We tell them why they should support the library.

Honestly, we do a lot of talking at people. And we end up sounding like every other advertiser.

When is the last time you asked yourself: how can I differentiate my library from the crowd of competitors?

Content marketing is a good place to start. It is, according to Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi, “a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience–ultimately, to drive profitable consumer action.”

But what does that mean for a library?

It means we can’t rely on disruptive marketing to capture the attention of our cardholders. If we want to attract and retain people who will use the library and support the library and convince others of the value of the library, we have to be more strategic.

Think about how you go about interacting with signs, ads, and social media. Do you give every message your full attention… or half of your attention… or even a glance?

Unless something is seriously compelling, you filter it out. So do our cardholders.

Content marketing sticks with your audience because it’s not an ad. It doesn’t push.

It is stories about your library, your staff, or your community. Your cardholders will remember these kinds of promotions because stories make us feel emotions. And emotions are memorable.

Summer Reading, or any large library event or initiative, is the best time to be purposeful about using content marketing to promote your library. It’s also the best time to gather stories for promotion later in the year.

Here’s what I want you to do.

Gather stories about how cardholders are using the library. How is your library improving their lives? How is your library helping people get back on their feet or back to normal in this phase of the pandemic? Ask your library workers to be on the lookout for great story ideas.
Gather stories about your staff–who are they? What do they like to do in their spare time? What do they love about interacting with cardholders? How their approach to work changed during the pandemic?
Gather information about your cardholders. Survey your users or use social listening to create a list of the problems they are facing. Ask your cardholders specific questions like “Tell us about a time when your library helped you find some information you thought you’d never be able to uncover.” Or “Tell us your favorite library memory from your childhood.”
Set up a form on your website and solicit cardholder stories on social media, in your email, and printed newsletters. That list will be the basis for further content marketing your library can create down the road that answers those problems.

And then, tell those stories using the platforms you have available. Write them up for your blog. Create social media posts. Add them to your newsletters. Start a landing page on your website. Make videos.

There are three key pieces to look for in a good content marketing library story.

Emotion. The joy of finding a book, the fear of not getting a job, the frustration of another night of homework without any help… these are all emotions felt by our library’s customers. Other people can relate to these experiences and empathize.

A good emotional story activates many portions of the brain, including sensory, memory, and empathy sectors. The more active the brain is while reading, the more likely it is that the listener/reader will remember the story.

Emotion is the most important criteria of a good story. If it makes you feel something, it’s worth pursuing.

Conflict and a resolution. A good story includes some conflict, whether minor or major, and a problem or situation that is resolved. Without conflict, a story is flat and unmemorable.

Look for stories with a beginning, middle, and end including a story arc that leads to a resolution.

Simplicity. A story that’s direct, with less adjectives and more heartfelt and straightforward language is more likely to be remembered by the listener than a complex story with a long, winding narrative and lots of details and unnecessary description.

When writing content for marketing purposes, draw a straight line from beginning, middle, and end. Keep the story moving forward with clear language.

Content marketing gives you a chance to tell your library’s story without making a direct pitch. It increases brand awareness and affinity and improves your library’s image. And stories are fun to tell!

We cannot rely on this old disruptive marketing policy to be the driving force behind our library marketing efforts anymore. We’re better than that.

We work with stories every day. Let’s start telling them.

Do you use content marketing in your library promotions? Do you have some great stories that you’ve gathered about your library and cardholders? Do you have questions about storytelling and how it works for libraries? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

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May 3, 2021 5

New Research on Social Media Use Plus Updates on YouTube and Facebook for Libraries!

Angela Hursh episode of the Library Marketing Snow on social media.

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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 92

In this episode, we’ll go through the three big new stories on social media that impact your library work. This includes new Pew Research on social media use, YouTube’s overview on how it recommends videos to viewers, and a new feature for Facebook posts.

Kudos in this episode go to the Siouxland Libraries for their new library card designs.

Thanks for watching!

April 28, 2021 2

The Library’s Guide to TikTok: The Pros and Cons of Joining One of the Hottest Social Media Platforms

Two librarians in the Bond Hill branch. Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Every night before bed, I watch TikTok for about 20 minutes. The videos in my “For You” feed consist of funny animals doing hilarious things, fashion and makeup (I really miss dressing up!) and books.

I’m outside of the platform’s average demographic in terms of age, but I love the original and creative content. I find it inspiring.

I have only created a few TikToks to share. It takes a lot of effort and time. And that is why I usually hesitate when I am asked if libraries should be posting on TikTok.

Consuming TikTok content is easy. Making it is harder.

But in the past year, TikTok has really taken off. As of March 2021, the app has 689 million active users worldwide. By comparison, Facebook has 2.8 billion users and Twitter has 192 million active daily users (Twitter doesn’t report monthly use).

TikTok says it’s users are roughly 60 percent female and 40 percent male. Most of the global users are under the age of 34 years.

But here’s the kicker. The average user spends about 52 minutes a day on TikTok. By comparison, the average user spends 53 minutes a day on Instagram, 33 minutes a day on Facebook, and six minutes a day on Twitter.

It took Twitter and Facebook years to get to the same level of use that TikTok enjoys now, so clearly people love TikTok. But does that mean that your library should spent time and energy posting to TikTok? And if you do, will you see any measurable marketing results?

Here are some things to consider as you make that decision.

The TikTok algorithm is kinder to libraries.

TikTok’s algorithm offers more organic growth potential than any other major social platform.

TikTok shows a new post to a small group of people (both followers and non-followers) who are likely to be interested in the content. It shows up on a user’s “For You” page. If that content gets a lot of engagement on the “For You” page, TikTok will then expose the post to more people. As the content continues to drive engagement, the algorithm keeps adjusting to show it to a wider and wider audience.

By contrast, other platforms like Facebook and Instagram filter content in feeds. Facebook and Instagram have lots of rules in place that make it unlikely that your content will ever be seen by all your followers. And getting Facebook and Instagram posts in front of non-followers is nearly impossible unless your library is willing to pay to boost a post or buy an ad.

There isn’t as much content about libraries and reading.

Although TikTok has a lot of users, the competition levels in the feed for the kind of content your library would likely create is very low. There are really only a handful of libraries posting to the platform right now.

That means your content has more of an opportunity to catch attention and gain popularity on TikTok than on other platforms.

TikTok only lets you add links in your bio.

As is the case with Instagram, you can’t embed a directly clickable link in your TikToks. If you have a call to action that requires a link, you’ll have to add it to your bio.

Great content on TikTok doesn’t equal effective marketing.

The TikTok algorithm does not take the location of your library into account when it shows your content to followers. That means many of your most engaged followers may live outside your service area. Your library may have a huge, highly engaged TikTok following without any measurable marketing results.

It takes time to learn to create TikTok content.

I found creating my own TikToks to be time-consuming and a little confusing. And I think I’m adept at social media, plus I have video editing experience!

That said, if you have staff who are driven to post on TikTok, there are lots of great tutorials on YouTube about how to use the various creative tools. Some of the best are this one by Katie Steckly and this one from Social Media Examiner.

You can get super creative on TikTok.

TikTok has more tools to create unique videos than most other social platforms.

For example, the duet feature lets you make reaction videos in response to what other users post. You can also add music and special effects to posts.

Each of these tools adds a layer of difficulty and a measure of time in creating content. But they also increase the chances that your TikToks will be engaging and impact more people.

Advertising on TikTok is expensive.

Right now, the cost of buying an ad on TikTok is $10 per 1000 views, which doesn’t seem like much. But the platform requires you to spend a minimum of $500 per campaign, which immediately prices it out of the range of most libraries.

What to do if you decide to try TikTok

Set an experimental period of one to two months.
Decide on a consistent posting pattern, like once a week or every Monday and Friday. Then stick to it for the entirety of your experimental period.
Keep a record so you can track how your posts are doing. Start a spreadsheet and record the type of post you create, when you post it, how long your video is, what affects you use, and how much engagement you get. If you are using your videos to drive attendance at an event or drive circulation, be sure to track that.

At the end of your experimental period, you’ll have enough data to determine if it’s worth your library to continue to post on TikTok.

I also suggest you read this article by Kelsey Bogan, a library media specialist at Great Valley High School, for the perspective of a library staffer who is using TikTok. Scroll to the bottom for a great list of libraries and book accounts to follow on TikTok for inspiration.

What to do if you decide NOT to try TikTok

Get on the platform and claim you library’s name anyway, in case you change your mind later. This is especially important if you use the same handle for all of your library’s social media accounts. Save the name and password you create.

Libraries, librarians, and book-related accounts to follow on TikTok.

Sierra Madre Public Library (@sierramadrepubliclibrary)
Vancouver Public Library (@vancouverpubliclibrary)
Dover Public Library (@doverpubliclibrary)
Iowa City Public Library (@iowacitypubliclibrary)
Courtney (@libraryladylife)
Calgary Public Library (@calgarylibrary)
Jaysen Headley (@ezeekat)
Penguin Teen (@penguin_teen)

Is your library on TikTok? Do you have a library TikTok account to recommend? Leave your comments below!

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April 26, 2021 18

How Authors and Libraries Can Work Together to Promote Book Talks!

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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 91

In this episode, I take a question from an author, who asked about how she can work with libraries to promote her appearances and book talks at the library.

Kudos in this episode go to the Vancouver Island Regional Library for their innovative e-sports competition.

Thanks for watching!

April 21, 2021 0

Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion

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