In this episode, I’ll answer a viewer question from Kathy at Niagra Falls Public Library. She said, ” We love our community and want to share all the great stuff that organizations have going on. In the Before Times that would be done with posters on a bulletin board. With the pandemic and the increasing rise of digital marketing – how can we share information for these organizations without throwing off the almighty algorithm?”
Kudos in this episode go to the Dayton Metro Library. Watch the video to find out why they’re being recognized.
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!
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The most powerful tool you have to reach your community is email.
I know there are some readers who don’t believe me. But here’s a fact that cannot be denied: 90 percent of Americans over the age of 15 use email. In the United Kingdom and Canada, 85 percentof people use email.
That’s a big portion of your community.
The digital divide is real but not as wide as most of us thought. The latest Pew Research Center study released in August 2021 shows:
Rural residents have seen a nine percentage point rise in home broadband adoption in the last five years.
72 percent of rural Americans have high-speed internet access.
Smartphone ownership also rose nine percentage points among rural residents in the past three years.
For most of my library friends, the percentage of people in your community who can (and should) be receiving email marketing from your library far outpaces the percentage of people who don’t have an email address.
Social media platforms do not care about your library. The press does not care about your library. Google does not care about your library.
It doesn’t matter how big or small your library is. You have the power in email marketing.
Now, I’ve learned some brand-new information about email marketing. I am not exaggerating when I say this new data has made me re-think the advice I give to my library marketing friends.
This information comes from Michael Barber, who is a brand consultant and marketing strategist. He was the featured speaker of a recent Marketing Profs webinar that frankly blew my mind.
Here are the four big things I learned from his presentation.
Your open rate does not mean what you think it means.
Remember when I said that open rates are a sign of customer loyalty?
My view has changed.
With most email services, the open rate is tracked with the help of a hidden one-pixel image placed in the body of the email message. It used to be that the email counted as being “opened” when the recipient opened the email up.
But now, the email counts as opened when it loads in a recipient’s inbox because that’s when the pixel is now being triggered. Apps like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and any Apple device with iOS 15 will preload images.
That means a human didn’t necessarily open your email.
What does this mean for your library?
Email marketing expert Jay Schwedelson says your email open rate provides direction for your strategy. It can still serve as a benchmark for testing factors like subject lines and send times.
If you work on your library’s email marketing, you’ll need to really focus on the action created by your email.
Use trackable links inside the body to see what people click on. And then measure what they do after they click.
Do they register for a program? Do they put a book on hold? Do they log into a database? Those are human-triggered actions. Those are the true measure of the effectiveness of your email.
The new iOS update isn’t as bad as it seems… for now.
In September 2021, Apple released the iOS 15 update, which includes more user protection from third-party trackers, including mail privacy protection that stops email senders from collecting data on how a person interacts with email.
The new privacy settings keep marketers from seeing who opened their emails, what time they opened them, where they opened them, and what device they used to open the email.
Michael says it’s not as bad as it seems. First, the privacy protections only apply to people who have actually downloaded the update, and who use Apple Mail.
About 72 percent of Apple users have upgraded to iOS 15. Statistics on the number of people who use Apple Mail vary according to industry and location. But most email providers say they see around 35% of their recipients use Apple Mail.
And so far, according to Michael, not everyone is opting into the privacy protections offered by iOS 15. Only about 48 percent of Apple Mail users are turning on the new privacy settings.
What does this mean for your library?
As always, be watchful of your metrics so you can spot any downward trends in engagement. But don’t panic. Focus on sending great content to your email list.
Your sender reputation is incredibly important
Email sender reputation is a score that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigns to an organization that sends email. The higher the score, the more likely an ISP will deliver emails to the inboxes of recipients on their network.
There are three positive signals of engagement that can raise your library’s sender reputation, according to Michael. They are:
Replying to your message.
Clicking on links inside the email.
Adding you to their contacts.
Conversely, there are three negative signals of engagement that can hurt your library’s sender reputation, according to Michael. You want to prevent your library email recipients from:
Moving your library’s email to their junk or spam folders.
Deleting your email without opening it.
Leaving your email unopened and sitting in their inbox. Michael says this is a stronger negative signal than unsubscribing! (WOW, right?)
What does this mean for your library?
Michael says replies are a “super strong signal of engagement.” He encourages email marketers to stop using the “no-reply” return email address in their emails. Use a real email address for replies.
And you’ll want to go a step further by directly asking recipients to reply to your emails. You could ask for their feedback on a service. Or ask recipients to reply with the name of a book they think should be included in your next booklist or book display. This is a chance for you to be creative! You don’t have to respond to every email reply. But this is an opportunity to improve your sender reputation while gathering information that will help you to better serve your community.
You’ll also want to focus on raising your email click rate. Here are five ideas.
Finally, include great content in your email so your recipients will never let it sit in their inbox unopened.
We need to start thinking about how “dark mode” affects design.
Dark Mode inverts the colors on your device to decrease the amount of light on your screen. Dark mode turns the default white background with black text to a black background with white text.
Dark Mode eases the strain on your eyes, especially at night or in dark conditions. It also helps preserve battery power.
What does this mean for your library?
The way our emails are designed will need to change. Michael recommends that, if your email provider has this data, you may want to start tracking how many of your email recipients look at your emails in dark mode.
You’ll also want to test your emails using dark mode to determine if your library’s brand colors work with the darker background.
Finally, make sure your email provider is mobile responsive. This will ensure your emails will be converted properly.
Next week: 6 super-easy tricks to make your library emails stand out in the inbox and get results!
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In this episode, I’ll answer a question from Dianne at the Pottsboro Area Public Library. She has been trying to drive attendance to her library events using Facebook events. It’s not working. So she wondered what else she can do?
Kudos in this episode go to the Nashua Public Library. Watch the video to find out why they’re being recognized.
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!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
“Language is one of the most important parts of any culture. It is the way by which people communicate with one another, build relationships, and create a sense of community.”
Kelsey Holmes, Greenheart Club Program Assistant.
One of the ways we can best make all our community members feel welcome and safe is to use inclusive language in our library marketing and promotions.
What is inclusive language?
The University of Oregon has the best definition of inclusive language that I’ve found. In their editorial guidelines, they say “For communication to be effective, it needs to appropriately address all audiences for which it is intended. Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equitable opportunities.”
Why inclusive language is important to your library
When your library uses inclusive language in print and digital marketing materials, on your website, and in conversation at the front desk, you are fulfilling the library’s core mission. You are giving people the signal that your library is a safe space.
A lack of inclusivity reflects negatively on your library and values. It affects library staff morale. Worst of all, it can hurt the community’s perception of your library, affecting donations and fundraising efforts.
You must make time to check all your promotions for inclusive language. Every email, social media post, blog post, digital sign, bookmark, and brochure must be examined. You must make sure you aren’t excluding someone in your patron base.
The latest on inclusive language
Inclusive language changes and evolves. Since this post was originally published, I’ve written an update on the NoveList blog which you can read here.
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In this episode, I’ll share the latest social media updates for January 2022, including a new way to filter analytics on YouTube and a new way to share video clips from Facebook to your stories. We’ll talk about what all of this means for libraries. Plus a study that may make you rethink the way you spent ad $$ for Summer Reading and other big library programs.
Kudos in this episode go to the ten winners of a huge award given by the American Library Association! Watch the video to see why they’re being recognized.
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!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
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!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
I’m 100 percent certain that everyone who reads this blog has heard of the book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. Written in 1989, this self-help book has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.
Covey’s approach to attaining goals is to follow what he calls “true north” principles. Those principles are based on seven character ethics that he says are universal and timeless.
It’s a great book. But, because I’m a weirdo, I read it and thought, “There needs to be a list like this specifically for people who work in library promotion.” No joke. My internal monologue is strange.
We need some true north principles for library marketing now more than ever. We face uncertainty in every corner. Algorithms and budget shortfalls and virus variants can make our job seem impossible.
It may feel like the whole world is working against you and your library. So here are my true north principles for doing your best and most effective work.
Be good to yourself.
This is first on my list because it’s the most important and frankly, most library staffers could use a little morale boost. This year, I want you to celebrate the work you do. Every. Single. Week.
By the way, my boss gets full credit for this idea.
It’s pretty simple: At the end of the week, write down all the things you did. Then, pick a “gold star moment“: one thing that you did that stands out for some extra recognition.
Send your list to your boss or keep it for yourself. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you take the time to acknowledge all the work you’ve done in the last week.
And, rather than focusing on what you didn’t get done from your to-do list, recognize all the work you did do.
You’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll feel at the end of a workweek. And you’ll be motivated or excited about the work coming in the following week.
Be constantly learning.
I know that most library staffers are incredibly overworked. You’re promoting your library in addition to 100 other tasks, including cleaning the restrooms and acting as security. The idea of spending any time learning more about marketing feels overwhelming.
How does someone fit personal professional development into their schedule?
Set a learning appointment for yourself every single day. All you need is five minutes. Spend that very short but important block of time reading a blog, a book on marketing, or an email newsletter on marketing. If you’re a visual learner, watch a YouTube tutorial on marketing or work on a self-paced marketing course online.
For the typical, full-time library staffer working five days a week with two weeks of vacation, that will add up to 1,150 minutes or 19 hours of learning in a year! That’s plenty of time to stay on top of marketing and social media trends and learn new ways to engage your audience more effectively on all channels.
Best of all, at the end of that year of learning, you’ll feel more confident in your work and of course, your library’s promotional efforts will improve.
Need help finding places to learn about marketing in a short amount of time? Here’s a great list.
Be hyper-focused on your library’s overall goals.
What is your library trying to accomplish right now? Are you hoping to increase your circulation to pre-pandemic numbers? Are you helping to bridge the pandemic educational gap for elementary school students? Are you implementing a step-by-step plan to ensure your library is truly accessible to everyone? Are you undergoing a facilities improvement project?
Your promotions should be centered on whatever your library is trying to accomplish this year.
When you focus your marketing with precision on your library’s strategy, your marketing will be more effective. You will avoid spreading your message thin. You’ll be using your precious time and energy more efficiently.
Every piece of marketing you do needs to be in service of reaching your library’s strategic goals. They are the reason you come to work every morning. Make certain there is a solid connection between your promotional efforts and your library’s overall strategy.
Be a fan of data.
Block off five minutes in every workday to gather or analyze the metrics of your marketing and promotions. Just like with the professional development appointment you’re making each day, schedule this into your calendar.
This simple step will give you a very clear sense of what is working and what isn’t. You’ll have the numbers to back yourself up when you make decisions about which promotions to do and which ones to drop.
Be constantly experimenting.
One of my favorite parts of working in marketing is experimentation. There are so many ways we can test promotions to find the most effective means of communicating with our audiences.
I want you to think of yourself as a kind of scientist. Your experiments don’t have to be complicated.
For example, when you send emails, try sending on different days of the week and different times of the day.
When you want to promote an item in your collection or a service provided by your library, post on all your library’s social media channels. Then look at the insights to see where you get the highest engagement.
When you write blog posts, try experimenting with the length of the post, the length of the title, or the number of images you insert in the piece. Then look at views to see if your metrics are impacted by changing any of those factors.
Experimenting is fun. And it can lead you to create more effective promotions. Need some ideas about where to experiment with your promotions? Here’s a list of things to try.
Be open to change.
How many times have you heard someone say, “But we’ve always done it that way” in your library? Reject this phrase.
I think many times we get stuck promoting our library the same way we always have. Don’t be afraid to look at the data and say to your boss or co-workers, “This isn’t working. Let’s try this instead.”
In library marketing, change isn’t a bad thing. It means you are being responsive to your community’s needs and meeting them where they are as their lives are changing.
Sometimes it takes a while for fellow co-workers, senior staff, and your community members to respond to your ideas.
Effective library marketers set a timeline for how long they think it will take to increase engagement or reach a certain target audience with a message across multiple channels. A good rule of thumb is to give any new promotion about three months to catch on. If it’s not working by then, experiment with something else.
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In this episode, I’ll answer a viewer question from Victoria at the West Bloomfield Township Public Library. She asked, “Aside from the obvious budgetary considerations if public libraries use themes from a national Summer Reading organization (CSLP, iRead, etc.), is it better for us to (1) create a unique set of graphics for our library’s use that differ from year-to-year, (2) create a unique and on-brand set of graphics for our library to reuse each year, or (3) rely on the national organization’s original themed artwork as part of a unified national library marketing campaign?”
I’ll share my opinion and the 3 reasons why I came to that decision.
Kudos in this episode go to the Geauga County Public Library. Watch the video to find out why!
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!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
A librarian from Sweden is celebrating a victory after her library’s Facebook page was disabled, without warning, by Meta. Isabelle, a communications librarian, fought for months to get her library’s Facebook page back online after it was taken down by the platform.
Isabelle began working as a librarian in 2006 and took on a communications role in August of 2021. The lengths her library had to go through in order to get their page back are pretty mind-boggling.
Isabelle was kind enough to share the saga, in hopes that she might help other libraries.
How was your library was using Facebook for promotion before your account was disabled?
We mostly used it as a platform for promoting events, exhibitions, storytime sessions, and reading recommendations. It was also used for crucial information that had to be communicated to the public, like if our system was down and how it would impact the service we could provide to them. In short: it was used for both important and entertaining content. It was also a bit of measurement for what our patrons were satisfied with.
When was the account disabled and how did you first realize what had happened?
The first page got disabled before my time, on inexplicable grounds. It had been so for almost six months. I launched a brand-new page that also got disabled after two weeks in October 2021. I got notified by email from the “Facebook team” in a no-reply email. The email also contained the message “If you think your page was wrongly disabled, click here”, providing a broken link.
Tell me about the process of trying to get your account re-enabled.
At first, I tried to get in touch with the Swedish branch of Meta by writing an explanatory public post on LinkedIn. I tagged the Swedish country director Sam Rihani and the corporate communications manager, Lukasz Lindell. None of them replied although people of course reacted to my post. Our library wasn’t the only one whose Facebook page had been disabled by Meta.
After many fruitless attempts to get in touch with Facebook and some of its employees, I turned to the communications team at the council house in my municipality. It was obvious that we needed to take this case to another level.
Two communication specialists were consulted and one of them had a Facebook Business account. It was the only way to get in touch with some kind of non-automated customer support (i.e., an actual human being.) I made one communication specialist an admin of the disabled Facebook page, and a couple of months later, our Facebook page was finally re-enabled.
During the process, Meta wanted us to give them specific information about why the previous Facebook page was shut down. This was information that I didn’t have because nobody knew the circumstances even when it happened, and I wasn’t employed by the library at the time. If pages and accounts get disabled with no more specific information than “violation of community standards”, that’s all the information we can give.
How did being disabled from Facebook impact your library’s ability to reach your community?
It was a bit of a blow, considering that we had invested so much time in promoting the page to our patrons. Some of them wondered where we had gone when the page was disabled.
On top of that, it happened the day before we were to release the much-awaited news about our printer/copy machine being re-installed. People who needed help applying for jobs, residential permits, and other urgent matters had been asking us for months. I had promised them that I would break the news on our Facebook page as soon as it was possible to print again.
But we still had Instagram and our website. I thought that if Meta didn’t want us on Facebook, I would downgrade its importance to being an optional channel more than something essential. I invested a lot of work in upgrading our library website so that all the information that the public needed was to be found there.
Even though not all our patrons have access to the internet, it was still a bit reassuring for them to know that all the information they needed about the library, events, and more could be found in that one place. That’s where we channeled everything that also should have been posted on our Facebook page. No information was lost, but it was a bit scattered instead of concentrated on the Facebook page.
I also make posters and flyers that are popular amongst people with limited access to the internet. When Facebook re-enabled our Facebook page, I was like: “Oh? OK. Let me just get this thing out on the library website first.”
What lessons or advice do you have for other libraries, having been through this tumultuous process?
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, especially not when it comes to social media. Your content never really exclusively belongs to you and can be taken down by external agents who have no clue about your job.
I would advise librarians to invest time, money, and energy into building up their own websites where they can control and own their content. Direct patrons to that one website primarily for important news.
Also, don’t underestimate the usefulness of analog information like posters and flyers. They are essential for many patrons who lack the ability to search the web. It’s way too easy to believe that “everyone’s on the internet” or “everyone’s on Facebook” but that isn’t true.
Use social media for lighter content: info bites, book recommendations, humorous posts, and the like. I think that’s what people expect to find on Facebook anyway.
Libraries are the epitome of quality content and should not bow to corporations that choose to disable them.
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Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 