A black‑and‑white photograph of an ornate, multi‑level library filled with towering bookshelves and balconies. In the upper left corner, a translucent teal box contains the text “Social Media Incentive:” and below it, in white, “Lessons Learned.”
Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library

Key Takeaways:

1. Hyper‑local social media works but only with empowered staff. By giving staff autonomy to create content tailored to each branch’s unique audience, the library sees more meaningful engagement than a one‑size‑fits‑all strategy could ever provide.

2. Incentives can spark huge engagement if the program is simple. Josh’s initial point‑based contest led to dramatic increases in reach, interactions, and followers at participating branches. But it also revealed the importance of designing challenges that align with staff capacity.

3. Start small, collaborate early, and refine as you go. Josh’s biggest lesson: don’t skip the research stage. Understanding staff time, motivations, and manager buy‑in is essential.

Josh Mosey lives in the same town where he grew up: Middleville, Michigan.

“My older brother and I used to ride our bikes to the library in the summer when we were kids and take part in the summer reading program,” remembers Josh. “I wasn’t as big a reader then, but I did enjoy the books on cassette tape that came with the physical books attached. When nothing new was available in that form, I’d pick a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book, which I would read until one or two endings and call it good.”

“I was a notorious cheater when it came to counting books for the summer reading challenge back then. I’m making up for it now by reading voraciously as a grownup.”

Josh can get plenty of books, thanks to his current job as part of the six-person Library Marketing and Communications team and the Kent District Library. KDL serves 440,000 residents in Kent County, MI, excluding the city of Grand Rapids and a couple of smaller municipalities on the north end of the county. The library consists of twenty branches, one express library, and a bookmobile.

Josh is responsible for email and social media marketing for KDL. And the social media part of his job involves working with 20 “social media branch champions”. These are staff members appointed to create content and list events on their branch’s Facebook page.

“The social media branch champions have been around for as long as each branch has had its own Facebook page,” explains Josh. “They are chosen by that location’s manager as someone who either has time, interest, or expertise in that area. While I oversee the group, give tips, and create content they can use, the social media branch champions don’t take orders from me.”

Josh says the goal of our social media branch champions is to engage with their community, cultivate relationships with community members who might come to their events in person, and reflect the things that make their communities unique.

“Since the patrons at each branch can vary widely in interests and socioeconomic makeup, a one-size-fits-all mentality doesn’t work for our branch pages,” he says.

But this system has its challenges.

“Skills and interests vary widely from branch to branch,” explains Josh. “My graphic design background is borne out of the fact that my roommate in college was a graphic design major, and he let me play around on his computer with Photoshop. I’ve been able to do a lot with that over the years, but I’m a rarity among library staff members. Most folks have backgrounds in library science, literature, or education.”

“And while we have a comprehensive brand guideline and I’ve given the team examples of what a well-designed image should look like, some folks just don’t have the time, interest, or expertise to create on-brand, engaging content.”

And because this job likely falls under the “other duties as assigned” for many of the social media branch champions, they may not want to take on the frustrating job of posting to social media. So, Josh decided to incentivize social media work for this library.

“The incentives are based on best practices like consistent posting, interacting with local groups, sharing posts from the main KDL page, promoting branch events, and so on,” explains Josh. “Each of those activities is awarded a specific point value, and the points are calculated quarterly. At the end of each quarter, the branch with the most points wins a pizza party for their branch, a bookstore gift card for themselves, and temporary ownership of a goat trophy that says, ‘You’re the G.O.A.T.’”

Josh says the incentives worked well… at first.

“While some branches simply didn’t have time to put their numbers in (or participate, really), the branches that took the competition seriously saw massive increases in followers, interaction, and post views and likes.”

For example, Josh says the first branch to win was the Alto Branch of KDL. The results were as follows:

  • Views increased by more than 356 percent.
  • Reach increased by 811 percent.
  • Content interactions increased 334 percent.
  • Link clicks increased by 1,400 percent.
  • Visits to the Alto Facebook page increased 51 percent.
  • Follows increased by nearly 191 percent.

That sounds like a great leap. But when Josh solicited feedback from the branch champions on the incentive program, he discovered that most felt participation was just one more thing they needed to squeeze into their already busy routines, especially in the summer and fall. So Josh is making some changes.

“The program is going to change from a cumbersome Excel spreadsheet into a simple, physical Bingo sheet with twenty-five challenges that a branch can do monthly,” says Josh. “The more bingos a champion earns, the more chances they’ll have to win a prize. This should still get at the heart of what motivated the ones who participated while addressing the complexity of the previous version of the challenge for those who didn’t do much with it.”

Josh has some candid advice for anyone considering a similar incentive program for staff.

“I was too quick to go from the ideation phase into implementation,” confesses Josh. “I should have done a little more research into what my champions had time for and what exactly would motivate them.”

“I would encourage libraries that want to do this to sit down with the folks who manage their library’s social media presences, along with those folks’ managers, to increase the level of buy-in at the beginning.”

“Also, simpler is better. I was trying to get my people to do all the right things from the beginning, but I probably should have started smaller by focusing on two or three things each month until everyone had some momentum going for a bigger training and competition event.”

And Josh has one more, unrelated piece of social media advice for libraries.

“Don’t give up on social media posts that use words,” advises Josh. “Photos and videos are great, but it’s okay to make basic, nice-looking posts with nothing but words on them. It’s been working for us since I started in my role four years ago, across all our platforms.”

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When Should Libraries Jump on Social Media Trends?

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