In this episode, I’ll answer a viewer question from Hannah at the Johnson City Public Library. She asks, “What criteria would you use to justify retiring/making ‘private’ old blog posts?”
Kudos in this episode go to the Mary Wood Weldon Memorial 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.
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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!
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It’s been a long time coming. I first pitched the idea of a blog to senior leadership in 2015. I created a document that explained the reasons why our library needed a blog. It also laid out my bare bones ideas for how the content creation process would work.
Marketing Advantages to Having a Library Blog
Easy, cheap, effective way to promote smaller, niche programs.
We no longer have to rely on traditional media to get the word out about programs and services. We have our own publishing platform for reaching our audience. Traditional media outlets will follow the blog. The posts will be more engaging than a press release and will pitch themselves as bigger story ideas.
The blog will give us something to link to for promotional posts on social media.
A blog would be a place to show our thought leadership. We are the information experts! We can demonstrate why people should care about what we say in a long-form, insightful, and meaningful way.
Easy way to keep our brand top of mind all the time.
Easy way to show the Library’s human side and let our customers get to know one another.
Partnership opportunity: We can invite partners to write posts for the library, creating great, shareable content for our users and in turn getting our posts shared by our partners.
So How Would This Work?
Marketing would be the centralized location for publication-we would manage the editorial calendar, recruit writers, copy edit, publish, and promote posts.
We would set a cadence for posts—one post per week to start—and re-evaluate at a later date.
We would recruit post writers from all branches and departments at the Library. We would also recruit Library customers, evangelists, and fellow bloggers and influencers to write guest posts. We would provide them with a simple template for writing their posts, which we would copy-edit and publish. We would ask all guest writers to share the content, once published, on their platforms, giving us instant exposure to their audience.
Editorial standards will be high: content must be written in a conversational tone, AP style usage of punctuation and grammar must be adhered to, and posts must be engaging, shareable, and interesting to our core audience.
We would also re-purpose content to use as posts, providing new/updated/additional information not seen in print from sources such as Library newsletters, and email.
We would evaluate top performing posts once per month and adjust our editorial calendar as necessarily based on data.
I also created a mock editorial calendar listing various post ideas and who might be tapped to write them. After presenting these to my boss, I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
For four long years.
Finally, in the summer of 2018, there was major leadership change at our library. Our previous director resigned and a new person took the director’s role. And a few months after that, marketing got the green light for a blog.
To say that there was much rejoicing and celebrating among my staff would be an understatement. After the confetti was cleaned up and the champagne was gone (I’m kidding–there was no confetti or champagne and I regret this immensely), we realized we had to launch this thing as we had promised. And so, we did! Here’s our beautiful finished product.
Our first blog was published on March 4, 2019. So far, we’ve published 65 posts on the blog.
It has already fulfilled all of the advantages I listed in the proposal document. Traffic to our website is up. Media are now going to our blog for story ideas about the library. Our search ranking increased. We have lots of partner organizations asking for permission to write posts for us. Our staff members are writing posts and using the blog as a way to let the public know about the important work they’re doing in their branches and departments. We haven’t spent any money creating beyond staff time. And it helps us to stay top-of-mind with our cardholders and the community at large.
We did learn some big lessons during the process and I want to share them with you now.
Lessons Learned While Launching a Library Blog
Lesson #1: The hardest part is getting started. It took forever to get buy-in on the idea. Keep advocating. Don’t give up.
Lesson #2: Building something from scratch is exciting and frustrating. It was liberating to have the freedom to do whatever we wanted. It was also terrifying. Lean into it! Be open and honest about your fears and expectations. Keep your supervisors in the loop about your observations as you work through the process.
Lesson #3: Communication with staff is vital. Get a vision and guidelines set down on paper and approved as soon as possible, then tell staff so they can begin to build excitement among cardholders. Their enthusiasm is your best marketing tool.
Lesson #4: The first year will be about experimentation. Set a posting schedule that you can keep to without having a stroke. Write all kinds of posts to see what interests your audience. Experiment with posting on different days of the week to see which is best for capturing your audience’s attention.
Lesson #5: Promotion of your blog is just as important as your blog itself. Make sure you work out a plan for how you’ll promote the blog once it’s up and running.
My big piece of advice is to actually refrain from promoting the fact that you have a blog until you have a cache of articles. Promote individual posts but wait a couple of weeks to start talking about the blog as a whole service. Once you have a variety of posts up on the blog, then you can do your big promotional push and reveal. You’ll have to do this full push campaign at least once a year to remind the public that the blog exists, and to let new cardholders and community members know that it’s there.
Lesson #6: Your blog doesn’t have to be perfect on launch day. Pick a launch day and stick to it. It can be a work in progress. You can fix things as you go along. But if you wait for it to be exactly perfect, it’ll never get off the ground.
Lesson #7: Measure and report. Data is your friend. Evaluate what works and what doesn’t. look at the data but also gather feedback from staff and customers about what they want to see.
Don’t forget to join us for the LIVE LIBRARY MARKETING TALK ON INSTAGRAM every Tuesday at noon ET. We’ll talk about library marketing topics for about 15 minutes each week. My handle is Webmastergirl. You can email questions and topic suggestions ahead of time. Just fill out this form.
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A few months ago, I asked readers whether their library had a blog. 61 percent of respondents said no. I have to include myself in that statistic. And the more I think about it, the more that bothers me.
Blog-less libraries are missing a HUGE opportunity. A blog has a number of promotional advantages that simply cannot be replicated with any other type of tactic. And to make my case, I am going to share insights with you from a session at Content Marketing World–one that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about in the months since the conference.
Amanda Todorovich is the Director of Content Marketing at the Cleveland Clinic. She’s the 2016 winner of the Content Marketer of the Year from the Content Marketing Institute and she runs the most visited hospital blog in the United States, Health Essentials. Her session was all about the Cleveland Clinic blog and its success. And her story made me want a blog for my library.
Amanda says a blog is the best promotional tool because it creates brand awareness and relationships with current and potential customers. The goal of the Cleveland Clinic blog is to create a space in which the hospital is top of mind all the time with people looking for health information. Think about this: the hospital cannot create demand for their services. So they aim to provide credible health information at all times so that, in the unfortunate moment when someone is sick or injured, the first place they think of is the Cleveland Clinic.
That principle applies to libraries as well. There are times when a library cardholder may not need their library, but we want to stay top of mind with them so that they’ll turn to us when they do need books, or help with a struggling reader in their home, a passport, a voter registration form, help to create a resume, or whatever problem they might have. Libraries are not just about programs and books and there is a lot of value to offer your cardholders beyond those two basic services.
But Amanda also says in order for your blog to work, you have to stand strong. Your blog cannot be all things to all people. You’ll have to decide on your mission, write it down, and stick to it. This doesn’t mean that you are ignoring certain cardholders. It means that your blog has one focus, one mission and that everything you write–no matter the audience–drives at completing that mission. For example, Health Essentials mission is to engage users in daily conversation using health, wellness and clinical content that is unique to Cleveland Clinic. They’re not ignoring anyone. Rather, they are focusing all their energy on delivering on that mission to all of their potential patients and patient families. See the difference?
Blogs have a value beyond pure promotion. Using the right keywords and paying attention to metadata, tags, and links will help boost your position in search traffic. That means people will be able to find you first during a search. Some big brands pay big money for great search results placement. Can you imagine what would happen if; every time someone searches Google for a book, a DVD, or information that they land on your library’s blog? The impact would be mind-blowing.
Some library marketers are already taking this advice to heart, including Brook Savoie, who works for Lafourche Public Library in Thibodaux, Louisiana. She told me, “Our librarians take turns writing a post weekly. The purpose is to just bring more awareness to things that we do! It works well for me for social media, because I can share these blog posts weekly with our audiences without having to create any content myself.”
So, step one is convincing you, your staff, and your administration, to launch a blog. It’s worth it. You can do it. Here are Amanda’s other tips for blog success.
Focus on creating better posts, not more posts. You don’t have to post every day. Just pick a CONSISTENT schedule. Create a list of topics and then write. That’s what I do with this blog. I spend roughly three hours a week on this blog and that’s really only because I am my own editor. If I could just write and revise a draft and then hand it off to another person to edit, it wouldn’t take much time at all. I spend about ten minutes crafting and testing headlines. I spend about ten minutes making the graphic. I spend about ten minutes scheduling all the distribution. I write on the weekend and it feels like it doesn’t take much time at all.
Be willing to say no. Amanda says she doesn’t have a lot of friends outside her team because she says no to a lot of requests by other departments for blog posts. The hospital blog is focused on the needs of their readers, not on the needs of the organization and that’s why it works. When your customers are the center of your universe, you are providing them with value and they’ll keep coming back to you. You are beholden to your cardholders, and they should be your only concern.
Measure and test and test again. Never be content with the results, even when they seem good. Ask “what if” all the time–it could lead you to an extraordinary idea that takes your blog to the next level. Testing actually keeps blog writing interesting and keeps life exciting (I AGREE).
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on “Follow” button on the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on Twitter and Snapchat–it’s where I talk about library marketing! I’m @Webmastergirl. I’m also on LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Views in this post are my own and do not represent those of my employer.
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 