It’s time for social media updates for libraries! We’ll highlight three headlines and talk a bit about their impact on library social media.
Kudos in this episode go to the Columbus Library for their help with Operation Backpack.
Special note
I'm hosting a live Twitter chat next Tuesday, August 31 at 12 p.m. ET. It's on changing public perception through storytelling. To join, follow #CMWorld on Twitter. We'll ask five questions during the chat. You can answer using the hashtag. I want to make sure libraries are represented in this chat. See you there, friends!
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.
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Instagram is super popular right now, especially with people under the age of 34. That’s a key demographic for library marketers.
According to Web Hosting Rating, 60 percent of users log in daily, and more than half of those people log in more than once a day. Best of all, the average U.S.-based Instagram user spends a whopping 53 minutes a day on the app. (That’s me! 🙋)
If your library posts to Instagram, it’s time to take it up a notch. To drive your engagement stats, there are two things you can do.
Instagram takeovers and Instagram highlights are an easy way to get more reach on your Instagram account.
Instagram takeover
An Instagram takeover is when you arrange for a partner organization, library department, senior leader, or fan to take over your account for a day or during a special event.
A takeover will expose your library to a new audience of potential followers. It will also give your library external credibility.
A takeover can be done without giving your takeover partner the password to your account.
Ask your takeover partner to save each individual story slide to their camera roll.
Next, they’ll email the slides to your library.
Then, you’ll upload them, one by one, to your Instagram story.
Before you agree to a takeover, be sure to establish some guidelines.
Be specific about what you want in terms of content and number of slides.
Set a deadline.
Put all of that in writing.
Here’s a template you can use to set up the guidelines for your own library’s Instagram takeover.
My former library did an Instagram takeover with a nearby library system, with whom we had a reciprocal lending agreement. It gave each participating library access to a new audience. And people loved it! Each story got an average of 605 views.
Patrick Kinsella, Library Communications Coordinator for the library at the University of Salford in Manchester had even more success with his Instagram takeover success story.
He said, “As our Library is in the final stage of a £6.2 million redevelopment, we decided to run a campaign to promote our study spaces outside our main library. We have five main study spaces outside of Clifford Whitworth, our main library, that could give students a place to study and help make up for the reduction in space in Clifford Whitworth.”
“We also decided to take over our university’s main Instagram account to give their followers a tour of what lies beyond Clifford Whitworth. Followers were also invited to send pictures of themselves studying outside Clifford Whitworth in exchange for £5 worth of printer credits.”
“The Instagram story was viewed over 1,200 times and 14 students sent us pictures of themselves studying outside Clifford Whitworth. The cross-promotion of our Instagram account @salfordunilibrary through the story also gained us more than 20 new followers. The user-generated content that we received also allowed us to build a Twitter campaign displaying their images.”
Instagram highlights
Highlights are custom containers for similarly themed Instagram stories. After you add content to your story, you can choose to highlight that content by saving it to one of these containers.
Unlike regular Instagram stories, which disappear after 24 hours, highlights live on your Instagram profile forever, or until you delete them.
Highlights showcase the best of your previous Instagram content to new followers. And they create an archive of content, especially those stories that contain “evergreen” content that never expires and is always relevant. Instagram highlights are a great place to save library FAQs, book reviews, tutorials, and other wide-ranging topics.
To create a highlight from an active Instagram story:
View the story.
Click on “Highlight” in the bottom tool bar.
Click on the plus icon to create a new highlight container or add to a highlight container you have already created.
Click on “Add”. You’re done!
You can add photos or videos to each of your highlight containers any time you want. There is no limit to how many photos and videos each highlight container can hold.
Springville Library uses highlights, and they’ve created icon-based covers for each container.
You can change the title of your highlights containers at any time. Just open the highlight, and then tap on the name of the highlight container in the upper left-hand corner. You’ll be given the option to edit.
Share your tips for library Instagram success! Click on the Feedback button to tell me about what you’re doing on Instagram. I’ll share your tips with others on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!
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In this episode, I share two social media updates that are relevant for libraries. I’ll tell you about YouTube’s “New to You” feature and Facebook explained how its algorithm works!
Kudos in this episode go to the ten libraries in the UK who participated in the “Creating Space for Kindness” Project.
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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In this episode, I answer a viewer question from Natasha Buran of Thousand Oaks Library. She asked, “I was curious if you’ve seen other libraries use ‘Revue’ – Twitter’s newsletter tool for writers and publishers. I thought it would be interesting to add monthly programs or resources and pin it to our profile. I haven’t seen libraries use this feature before and thought I’d ask.”
I gave my answer in the video. This is just my opinion of course!
Kudos in this episode go to the Topeka-Shawnee County Public Library. They recently opened a resource center for community members without a computer or internet access.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know by clicking on the feedback button. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
In this episode, I’ll address a post I saw recently on the Libraries and Social Media Facebook page. A library staffer shared their plans to pull back on the amount of posts they are doing on Twitter. There was a bit of debate among the members about whether that was a good idea.
Kudos go to the San Marcos Public Library for their Breakfast Club inspired photo shoot.
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.
In this episode, we’ll go through the latest updates for social media platforms and what they mean for libraries.
This month’s headlines include a change in Twitter’s image cropping policy, a new report on Instagram use, and another new report that lays out the “alleged” best times to post on each social media platform. Watch the video to find out why I believe libraries should take this third report with a grain of salt!
Kudos go to the Coralville Public Library. Watch the video to find out why a fellow viewer nominated them for mention in this episode.
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.
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.
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 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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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.
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.
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 