In this episode, I talk about a crazy story of monkeys on the loose in Cincinnati and introduce the concept of newsjacking. I share the four questions you should ask yourself before you use newsjacking to promote your library.
Kudos in this episode go to Patchogue-Medford Library for their baby chick cam!
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.
During quarantine, my 20-year-old daughter asked me to watch a reality series with her. It features her favorite Korean boy band, Stray Kids.
I was touched that she wanted to spend time together. I couldn’t say no, especially when I know she’ll be moving out of our house soon.
So during those dreary days of lockdown, I had something to look forward to: the point in the evening when she and I would make tea and snacks, and crawl into her bed to watch the members of Stray Kids compete to see who could sled down a hill holding a pitcher of water without spilling it or who could catch the most fish.
I became a fan of their music. And because I work in marketing, I started taking note of the way the promotion for Stray Kids, and other Korean musical groups, is coordinated.
Right now, six big K-pop groups are competing in a music variety reality show called Kingdom. It’s a master class in promotion. The marketing team builds excitement in the fan base by staggering promotional content over a specific period of time before each episode airs. Fans are seeing content at different times and days as they move across various platforms.
Libraries can learn something from K-pop.
Creating a compelling message, picking images, and deciding which tactics you will use to promote your library is important. But, deciding when you’ll release those promotions is just as critical.
When I started work in library marketing, I would create a marketing campaign and intentionally release all the promotions on all channels in the same day.
On the appointed day, my team sent an email and a press release. We added a homepage graphic and posted on all our social media platforms. We changed out the digital signage in our branches and put up posters.
And it was never very effective.
Then I heard marketing expert named Andrew Davis talk about staggered distribution. The approach takes advantage of the consumer cycle of excitement to expand your reach.
When you use staggered distribution, you release one or two promotional tactics at the beginning of your promotional cycle. Maybe you put up posters and send an email to your community.
Your promotion gets some play, and excitement builds in your community. People start talking about it. They might even share your promotion with their family and friends.
When the excitement dies out, you release your promotion on a second channel. The cycle of excitement and sharing begins again.
When that ends, you release your promotion on a third channel. You cycle through your promotion like this until you’ve used all the tactics planned.
When you use the staggered approach, you get a longer promotional thread. Your promotions will be more successful because the excitement around them builds over time, not in one big burst. Everyone in your audience sees the promotions. And more people take the action you want them to take!
For decades, my library used a traditional, all-at-once promotional approach to our Summer Reading program, which ran from June 1 through July 31. We released promotions using all our available tactics on May 1. And our registration numbers and check-in numbers were never as high as we wanted.
By the time we got to June 1, our audience was already tired of hearing about Summer Adventure. We used up all their excitement before we even got to the event!
So, we switched to a staggered approach.
We released promotions on our website on May 1 and installed yard signs. On May 15, we sent an email. On May 20, we put up all the signs around the inside of the library and started promotions on social media. From May 21 until June 1, we’d post once a day on one of our social media platforms. We started our ads on May 25. We sent a second email on June 1.
Throughout the course of our summer reading program, we would stagger promotions around all channels, so the message reached everyone in our audience, wherever they were consuming our content. We kept our audience excited, engaged, and interested.
And most importantly, it was effective. The first year we tried this staggered approach to distribution, we saw an 18 percent increase in registrations and a 67 percent increase in weekly check-ins.
This approach will work for your audience for any large-scale promotion. Stagger the elements of your promotion across various channels over time. More people will see your marketing and your efforts will be more effective.
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on the “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, andLinkedIn.
Kudos in this episode go to Richmond Public Library for their Binge Bundles Bags. They were nominated by Chris Boivin of the Jacksonville Public Library.
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.
One of the hardest and most rewarding things I ever did while working for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County was to start a blog. It took me five years to get it off the ground. I wrote about that experience in this blog post.
I worked hard to get a library blog because I knew it would be a transformative and powerful communication asset.
A blog allows your library to tell your own story, create brand awareness, and promote your library to your own audience for free, without having to deal with the rules of someone else’s platform.
If your library has a blog, you will want to make sure you are doing everything in your power to grow your audience. In this post, I want to share the best practices I’ve learned from years of blogging.
A calendar will let you see all the promotions your library is doing in one glance. It will help you schedule posts that amplify your other marketing messages.
You can use your calendar to formulate due dates and publication dates for blog posts. You can also plan the promotion of your library blog posts on other channels, like your email newsletters and social media platforms.
The three main genres of library blog posts
The best blogs are a mix of these three types of blog posts.
Promotional posts: Most library blog posts are promotional. They focus on telling readers about an event, service, or collection item available at the library.
Promotional posts tend to be shorter. They also need to be frequently updated as services and collection items change.
Example: Jacksonville Public Library uses their blog to help their community find information on their website without having to create special landing pages for events and services.
Opinion posts: These posts demonstrate what the library stands for. They center on questions people have about libraries but are afraid to ask. Opinion posts also celebrate the strengths of libraries and the opportunities for improvement.
Opinion posts are compelling and allow your library to cement your voice and your position in a way that your readers and cardholders will remember. It’s great when a library takes a stand. People will respect you for it.
Example: The Stark Library CEO and Executive Director took a clear stand against racism in this recent blog post.
Authoritative posts: These posts demonstrate your library’s expertise in a subject. For instance, a post that highlights your library’s award-winning family history department is an authoritative post.
If you’ve been asked to write a post on your library’s blog, your journey begins with what my favorite marketer Ann Handley calls The Ugly First Draft (UFD).
Your first job is to get all your ideas down in whatever format they escape from your brain. Write your draft without worrying about spelling, grammar, punctuation, or phrasing.
Open a Word document and try to keep typing until you can’t think of anything else to say on a subject. If you are a skilled typist, look away from the screen so you’re not tempted to focus on spelling or grammatical errors.
Revise to create the perfect library blog post
Write short paragraphs, not short posts. It’s a myth that short blog posts will attract more readers. If your blog post is long but compelling, you’ll have no problem holding the attention of your readers. A longer post that is well written and contains keywords will do better in Google search than a shorter post.
However, you should break up your blog post into shorter paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier to read and understand. They open white space on your blog, which makes your post more inviting.
Writing experts recommend paragraphs of no more than 150 words. I started writing shorter paragraphs about two years ago and saw a big boost in my metrics.
Be deliberate with your keywords. In the blog text, you need to include keywords for search.
You’ll notice I use the phrase “library marketing” and “library promotion” frequently in this blog. That’s because people searching for help with library marketing use those two phrases most often. Try Keywordtool.io. It does an amazing job of helping you to narrow your target phrase.
Put your keyword phrase in title, header, and body of blog post at least two times but more often if it makes sense.
Include images. Images can help you craft your message and tell your story. They also help to break up the text of your blog posts.
Use images to explain concepts or enforce the emotion you are trying to create.
Link to other content from your library. Your blog post can funnel your readers into engaging with your library. If you are talking about a specific service or a part of your library’s collection, include links embedded in your text to help readers find more information.
Make sure your links open in a new tab. There’s nothing more annoying that clicking on an embedded blog post link in the middle of a post and then having to tab backwards to read the rest of a blog post.
Create engagement opportunities for your reader. Use your blog posts to start a conversation with your readers. Ask a question and invite readers to post their answers in the comment.
Your library can also embed a social media post in your blog so readers can post a key point to their social media. This gives your post the potential to reach new readers.
Spend a lot of time on your headline. A good headline should give your readers a hint at the copy that lies ahead without giving away the whole story. It should trigger an emotional response that includes an irresistible urge to read more.
Incorporate several rounds of edits for spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors. Run your blog posts through an online editor to catch errors. Ask your co-workers to edit your blog as well.
Print your blog post out and read through it, word for word, out loud. Doing this will force your brain to pay attention to the extra attention to what you’ve written. Your brain will often fill in or gloss over errors when you silently read. But if you read your post out loud, those errors become obvious and can be fixed before publication.
Four more tips for library blog success
Use your blog as a networking tool. Ask community leaders to write guest posts. Reach out to school administrators, policy makers, influencers, and other nonprofit organizations. Or use your blog to interview someone.
Once you publish, send a link to the contributors or interviewees. Ask them to share your post with their audience. This will amplify your message and expose your blog to a new audience of readers.
Example: The National Library of Australia interviewed fashion designer Nicky Zimmermann in this blog post that led to lots of media exposure for the library.
Post consistently. The best way to maintain web traffic to your blog is to make sure people are always waiting for an article to go live.
Decide how many posts you can create a week and which days you’ll post on. Then stick to your schedule.
Promote your blog posts on other platforms. Most of your readers will not just stumble upon your post by accident. You need to make sure they know that your library has published a post.
Promote your posts on your social media platforms, in your emails, and in patron interactions.
Your blog can also be used instead of a press release to pitch a story to a member of the media.
Evaluate your post metrics. Check in once a month and enter your metrics on a spreadsheet so you can track results over time.
Compare views, watch time, and bounce rate for your posts. You can also compare post length.
Your metrics will help you to continue to improve and update your blog based on your audience’s needs and wants.
Does your library have a blog? I’d love to see it!Share a link in the comments!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on the “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, andLinkedIn.
It’s time for our social media updates for Library Marketing! In this episode, find out about updates to Instagram Stories, YouTube shorts, and Facebook.
Kudos in this episode go to Illinois Prairie District Library for their purchase of a Short Story Cube.
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 just a few weeks, the annual summer reading program will kick off at libraries in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. And for the second year in a row, libraries are struggling to create a program that engages the community without risking their safety.
Last year’s pandemic Summer Reading program was a challenge (boy, that’s the understatement of the decade). Many libraries were physically closed. We were still learning about how the virus spread and trying to figure out how to mitigate the risk with physical materials. Staff members were doing virtual programming for the first time. We counted any participation as a success.
I think 2021 is going to be the first rebuilding year for summer reading. Attendance and participation numbers are not going to return to pre-pandemic levels this year. Many libraries are still dealing with limited service. Zoom fatigue is real. Vaccines are not widely available. It’s going to take us a couple years to get back to “normal.”
It’s okay. Do the best you can. Celebrate any growth you see this year. And use these ten tips to make your summer reading program as successful as possible.
Drop the library card requirement.
Let anyone in your community participate in summer reading, not just library cardholders.
Dropping the requirement to get a library card sounds counterintuitive. But it opens your program up to a whole population of people who don’t regularly use the library, particularly those in under-served communities. It makes your program more inclusive. It’s a goodwill gesture.
Of course, at registration and check-in, your front-line library staff should still suggest participants get a card. Doing so will grow your cardholder numbers. But don’t make it a requirement to register or get prizes.
Make participation super easy.
Don’t ask your participants to jump through complicated steps to earn a prize. Summer reading should be three-step maximum– read, log your reading, claim a prize.
If you want to push participation in programs, I suggest making that a bonus: let people earn extra prizes or points toward prizes by attending virtual programs or in-person events, if that can be done safely in your area. You can also reward people for watching a streaming video or listening to free streaming music.
Let adults participate.
It still surprises me when I see a library that limits their summer reading program to only teens and kids. Children who see the adults in their lives reading are more likely to read themselves. So why not entice parents to participate?
This year is an opportunity to get more adults engaged with your library. Plus, the adults in your community deserve to have some fun! If you can provide that for them, they will be grateful and supportive of your library.
Add experiences to your participation elements.
Create themes for each week of your summer program, like DIY, arts, nature, and sports. Make suggestions for activities people can complete to earn participation credit, like cooking a recipe from a cookbook they got at the library, going on a nature walk, visiting the zoo or a park, painting a picture or making sidewalk art, building something with LEGOs, writing a story… the possibilities are endless.
If a participant doesn’t read 20 minutes a day but still completes an experience activity, they should get credit. This is another way to make your program more inclusive and enticing to people.
Offer both print and digital tracking options.
Many libraries have an app or an online software platform that participants use to track their reading. But your under-served community members don’t have access to a computer or Wi-Fi at home. They can’t log in to track their reading and they can’t download or use an app.
In addition, many of your connected participants may find the process of downloading the app, putting in their information, and then using it to log their reading to be cumbersome. Add a paper tracking option to ensure everyone can participate.
Print copies of your tracking log and add them to your curbside pickup bags or slip them into holds. Let participants bring it back to your drive-thru or curbside window for credit.
Ask partner organizations to help you promote summer reading.
Now is the time to “call in favors” with your partner organizations. Ask them to show support and help rebuild your summer reading program.
If you don’t have partners, you can use summer reading to build partnerships! Ask local realtors and rental agencies if they can hand out a summer reading promotional piece to prospective homeowners or new renters. Give information and promotional pieces to day care providers, teachers, summer camps, recreational centers, your local zoo, your local park board, and other civic organizations. You can even ask restaurants to include a summer reading promotional piece in their takeout bags!
Use your email list to its full potential.
If your summer goal is to increase the number of readers and the amount of materials they read, then keep suggesting things for them to read! This is a great time to promote parts of your collection that don’t get a lot of use, like online graphic novels, as well as your backlist titles.
Build a template with whatever email service you use and fill in the blanks. Send two to three suggestions to your cardholders every two weeks during your summer program. It’s a great way to re-engage cardholders. You can also use email to remind your cardholders to participate in summer reading and boost your circulation numbers for the year.
Spend money on targeted social media ads.
This is the most efficient and cost-effective way to reach people and summer is the perfect time to buy social media ads. You barely need a budget to get started. $25 is all you need to get started.
Summer reading is also a great opportunity to buy ads on several platforms and compare results. The platforms will guide you through the process of picking your target audience. If you see success on one platform, you can use that data to create other small budget campaigns for your library during the year.
Incentivize user-generated content.
Hold contests to encourage people to post photos and videos of themselves using your library and participating in summer reading. Offer a chance to win a prize drawing for submitting reviews and testimonials about your library. You can use that content to further promote summer reading.
You may discover someone who is a super-fan of your library. That person could be an “influencer” for a future library promotional campaign!
Put good customer service on display.
Even with the pandemic, you’ll likely see a boost in visits to your library for curbside or holds pickup during the summer. You’ll definitely get more visitors to your website. Make sure everything is in tip-top shape, attractive, and easy-to-use.
Stress the importance of good customer service to staff, including those who work on responding to comments and questions via email, chat, and social media. Give them talking points to help them promote a few year-round services and challenge them to pick one to mention during every customer interaction.
Put your expertise on display front and center on the website. Is your staff great at readers’ advisory? Do you have an amazing e-newsletter? Are your virtual programs fun and innovative? Use summer reading to promote the best of your year-round services and collection items.
Is your library doing anything innovative this year for summer reading? What concerns do you have about the program this year? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on the “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and LinkedIn.
In this episode, I’ll answer a question from Jennifer from Lexington County Public Libraries. She writes, “Keeping in mind fair use guidelines, would it be better to post our virtual pre-recorded story times to our Facebook story rather than to our timeline. My understanding is that stories only appear for 24 hours and can be tailored somehow to only reach certain audiences. Do you have any suggestions?”
Kudos in this episode go to Pottsboro Area Library for hosting telehealth appointments at their library.
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.
I learned a skill as a journalist which has been invaluable to me as a marketer.
As a journalist, I was an expert at knowing when to let go of a piece of content and send it out into space, even though it was imperfect.
It’s the nature of the news business. You have a deadline and when the deadline arrives, you go to air or to print with as much information as you have. You know that you can revisit the story later to add new details. And that must be enough.
One of the hardest adjustments I had to make when I left the newsroom and went to the library was the constant reshaping of promotional messages and campaigns.
The good and bad of the revision process
When I worked in a library, each blog post, print piece, email, social media post, or video would go through rounds of review by several departments. The record was held by our content marketing magazine, which sometimes went through upwards of 15 edits per issue.
All the scrutiny had its advantages. More edits meant grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors were found and fixed. The revision process also gave me the chance to see how each message was perceived by different people with different perspectives.
I purposefully chose reviewers who worked with different target cardholder audiences. They told me whether they thought their patron base would respond to the message. I trusted their opinions and took their advice when they told me a phrasing or image change would increase my message’s effectiveness.
But there were also pitfalls to revision process. The message was sometimes reshaped by people who pressured me to add words or phrases that weren’t customer friendly. They might also wish to dilute or change the message altogether, depending on their department’s own goals or agenda.
The point at which your library’s revision process goes from helpful to over-examined is the space I want to focus on in this post.
It’s very easy to start over-thinking text, images, and graphics. The message you’ve carefully crafted may not connect with your audience because it disappears in the search for perfection. It can be crippling.
There is a very thin line between authenticity and perfection. It takes practice to walk that line. Here’s the advice I have for you.
Constant improvement is better than perfection
The best content isn’t perfect. That is what makes it good.
Imperfection shows your library’s human side. When you write from the heart, your message feels more authentic.
Don’t sabotage your own marketing efforts by waiting for the moment when every single detail is right. Give yourself permission to release a piece of marketing content when the time is right, not when it’s perfect.
Creative, honest messaging will be the doorway for your library to connect with consumers in the moment when they are genuinely searching for answers from your library.
I’m a fan of author, speaker, and showrunner Jay Acunzo. I highly recommend his newsletter. His niche is creativity. He inspires others by talking about how creativity intersects with work in the real world.
In this blog post, Jay makes a great point that I think about all the time. He says, “How can we aspire to perfection (even if it’s never something we reach) while still moving forward without delay (even if we aren’t creating amazing work yet)? Well, I think the key is to place perfection where it belongs: away in the distance. Then, we can busy ourselves with marching towards it.”
In the library, that means we must do the work and ship it when it needs to be shipped. But we also must commit to revising it, molding it, and realizing that it is a work in progress.
In your library promotional work, your goal must not be perfection. It must be constant improvement.
But I have a deadline!
You work in a real library with real goals and strategies. And the quest for perfection will sometimes seem like a lofty goal that you don’t have the luxury of achieving.
So how do you know when a piece of content is ready for release, even if it’s not perfect? Ask yourself these three questions.
1. Is your promotion as compelling and authentic as it can be in this moment?
2. Is your promotional piece free of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors?
3. Is the information in your promotional piece correct?
If the answer is yet to these three questions, it’s time to let go.
Marketing is one giant experiment. Even when you release a promotion that isn’t perfect, you will still learn plenty from it. Measure and record the results of your promotion. Then use that data to adjust and reconfigure your attempts on the next go-around.
Don’t get bogged down in the quest for perfection. Be human. Be authentic. Be true to your library voice.
And get the message out there! Your imperfect message may lead to some perfect insight into your community.
Do you have an example of a time when an imperfect message brought you some perfect insight into your customers? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on the “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and LinkedIn.
In this episode, I’ll share some ideas for promoting the work of your library during National Library Week (April 4-10). These are suggestions you can use even though we’re in the middle of a pandemic.
Kudos in this episode go to the Jackson County Library System for their new animated series, “Lost in a Book.”
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 