Photo courtesy of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Library
Your answers will help shape the blog posts, videos, and resources I create for library marketers in 2027.
For the past 11 years, I’ve asked library staff who work on marketing and promotion to share what’s working and what isn’t working for their library. But this year, I wanted to get more granular and provide results that help libraries improve their marketing.
To do that, I crowdsourced questions from library marketers and communicators, and some of the best ideas made it into this year’s State of Library Marketing Survey.
That makes this year’s survey especially meaningful to me because these aren’t just my questions. They’re questions our library marketing community said they want answered.
If you work in library marketing, communications, outreach, social media, programming, or any other role that involves promoting your library, I’d love to have your perspective. The survey takes about 7–10 minutes, and the results will be published on January 4, 2027.
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When we think about library marketing, we usually think about patrons. But every great patron experience starts with staff who know what’s happening.
That’s why I recently spoke with Nina Kenney, Head of Communications at Lake Villa District Library in Illinois, about how her library transformed internal communication.
The project was a way to strengthen culture, improve workflows, and help every employee, from part-time shelvers to department heads, feel connected.
“This project shined a light on the importance of internal communication. You can’t underestimate it.”
-Nina Kenney
The Problem: A Bigger Building Created Bigger Communication Challenges
When Lake Villa District Library moved into a new 66,000-square-foot building in 2019 — double the size of its previous location — communication became more difficult.
The old building naturally encouraged casual conversations. The new three-floor building meant staff rarely crossed paths, making it much easier for information to stay inside departments.
At about the same time, the library welcomed a new director, launched strategic planning, and created a Learning & Development Coordinator position. That is a lot of information to be shared!
Suddenly, email became the default communication channel for everything. Staff quickly became overwhelmed. It’s no wonder that when the library surveyed employees about their biggest frustration, the answer was clear: Too many emails.
That’s a tough piece of feedback. As library marketers, many of us are tasked with communicating both internally and externally. Half of our job is to make sure all staff have the information they need to do their jobs every day.
So if you can’t send an email every time you need to communicate with staff, what do you do?
The Goal Was About Communication… and So Much More
As the team evaluated intranet platforms, they realized they wanted to:
Reduce email overload
Create a single source of truth and information
Streamline marketing and service requests
Build community across departments
Make part-time staff feel just as connected as full-time employees
That last goal became especially important.
“We really wanted everybody to feel like they were part of the team,” says Nina.
What They Built
Lake Villa eventually settled on a staff hub, which became the “one source of truth” location for staff.
Their staff hub includes:
A personalized dashboard
Marketing request forms with automated tracking
Learning & Development resources
Policy documents
Board packets
Leadership notes
Knowledge base articles
Project workspaces
Team collaboration areas
Staff recognition
Birthdays
Social groups like “What Are You Reading?” and “What Are You Watching?”
One feature Nina especially appreciates is the marketing request tracker. Instead of chasing down emails or worrying about forgotten requests, every project automatically enters a queue.
“I used to miss jobs because requests got buried in email,” laments Nina. “That doesn’t happen anymore.”
Building Community Matters to Staff
So many of us think of internal communication in a very formal, business-like way. I love that Nina’s library took staff communication to the next level, intentionally building spaces where staff could simply connect.
Employees share what they’re reading. They recommend television shows. Birthdays are celebrated. Staff can publicly recognize one another for great work.
Those little interactions help replace the spontaneous conversations that disappeared after moving into a much larger building. And they create a culture that keeps staff feeling engaged, informed, and connected to the library’s overall mission.
Did It Work?
According to Nina, yes! Staff engagement has been strong, although adoption wasn’t immediate.
The team involved employees throughout development, asked them to help name the platform, and even introduced it with a fun “infomercial” during Staff Development Day.
That investment paid off. Today, staff know where to find updates, training, forms, policies, and project information without digging through overflowing inboxes.
A Surprise Takeaway About Email
One insight from our conversation surprised me. Even after building an impressive employee hub, Nina doesn’t think email should disappear.
When I shared that the library where I work sends a daily staff email, I admitted I initially assumed employees would find it overwhelming. Instead, staff told us they appreciate it. Nina wasn’t surprised.
“Say what you will about email, but it does create community. If people don’t feel engaged or they don’t feel they belong, everything else becomes harder.”
-Nina Kenney
That’s an important reminder. Internal communication works best when you choose the mix of tools that works for your staff. And that’s going to be different for every library.
Final thought
If, like me, you are trying to improve internal communication, here are some questions you can ask yourself, according to Nina.
Where do staff naturally look for information?
Are we creating unnecessary email?
Can employees easily find policies and forms?
Are project requests getting lost?
How do we help part-time staff feel included?
Are we creating opportunities for staff to connect with one another?
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Photo courtesy of Cincinnati & Hamilton Public Library
For years, library staff and library marketers have worried about reaching Generation Z, the generation roughly born between 1997 and 2012. Currently, this group is between the ages of 14 and 29.
We’ve been asking ourselves the same questions (myself included): How do you reach people who have grown up with smartphones? How do you compete with TikTok, YouTube, streaming services, AI, and an endless supply of digital entertainment? Does this generation have attention spans so short that nothing we create will stick with them?
New research suggests we may have been worried about the wrong thing.
A Library Journal analysis of nationwide survey data contains encouraging news. Public library use among Gen Z has increased significantly since 2022, and many of the assumptions we’ve made about young adults simply aren’t true.
This study shows that Gen Z cares deeply about libraries. (Hooray!) They also reveal several opportunities for library staff and library marketers.
Here are the top five takeaways from the analysis.
Gen Z use of libraries is increasing
I think we should print this statistic out and put it in every staff workroom in every library!
67 percent of Gen Z respondents reported visiting a public library in the past year. That’s a dramatic increase from 54 percent just three years earlier.
That’s pretty amazing. Let it soak in for a second.
This is the first generation raised entirely in the digital age. They have instant access to entertainment and information. Yet more than two-thirds are still visiting and using the public library.
Books are still the gateway
One of my favorite findings from the research is that books remain central to the relationship between Gen Z and libraries.
Libraries ranked just behind bookstores but ahead of Amazon(!) as one of the primary ways Gen Z gets books. Librarian recommendations are also increasingly influential, with more than one-third of Gen Z saying they discover books through librarians.
For years, library marketers have felt pressure to market everything except books. But this research reminds us that books are still one of our strongest brand assets. Instead of treating books as “just another service,” we should recognize them as our biggest marketing opportunity.
Every book recommendation, staff pick, reading list, and display becomes a chance to build trust with a young audience actively looking for guidance.
Discovery doesn’t always happen where we think
The study also reinforces something I’ve written about before. People don’t simply wake up and decide to visit the library.
Discovery happens through many different touchpoints. Sometimes it’s BookTok. Sometimes it’s a friend. Sometimes it’s attending one event and falling in love with the library.
Marketing doesn’t create library users overnight. Marketing creates hundreds of small moments of awareness that eventually add up to a visit.
Gen Z users have one thing in common with older generations of library users
The report also uncovered a familiar problem. Even among Gen Z library users, awareness of other services offered by the library besides books remains surprisingly low.
That means the phrase that’s the nemesis of every library marketer, “Wait…the library has that?” may also be uttered by this young generation.
I know this can feel like a marketing failure. But here’s how I look at it: Do you know everything that your local grocery store carries? Probably not! And that’s okay.
You go to the store to buy the things you want or need. And when you want something new or different from your regular order, you likely search by asking an employee or pulling up the store’s app or website.
It’s unrealistic, in my opinion, to expect the public to know all your library’s services. So, let’s work on making the search element as good as possible.
Can folks easily find things on your website or app? Does your staff know about all the things available at your library? (The answer you get from staff might surprise you!)
Gen Z wants authenticity, not perfection
While the survey focused on library use, it aligns with broader trends we’ve seen in digital marketing.
Gen Z responds to authenticity. They value recommendations from real people. They appreciate transparency. They trust creators more than institutions.
Fortunately, libraries have something most brands would love to have: Humans who genuinely love helping others. That’s your competitive advantage.
Instead of relying exclusively on polished graphics and promotional language, show off your staff.
Film a librarian recommending their favorite mystery novel. Record someone unpacking new books. Capture genuine moments during programs. Introduce the faces behind your services.
People connect with people. Libraries just happen to employ a lot of wonderful ones.
What library marketers should do now
Reading this research, it’s clear that to win with this generation, we should double down on what already works.
That means:
Keep marketing books. They’re still one of your strongest draws.
Make librarian expertise visible through videos, blogs, newsletters, and social media.
Look for opportunities to explain your other services and don’t worry if library users can’t name everything you offer.
Show real staff interacting with real patrons.
Remember that one promotional piece rarely changes behavior. Consistent storytelling does.
Final thought
Every generation wants to belong somewhere. Every generation wants recommendations they can trust. Every generation wants spaces that feel welcoming
Marketing is constantly evolving, but human behavior doesn’t change nearly as much as we think.
That’s why I think this study is so encouraging. It reminds us that libraries remain incredibly relevant even to the generation that grew up with the internet in their pocket. And that’s something we can build on.
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I had a list of things I thought needed attention. I had ideas. I had opinions. I had years of experience.
But I also knew I was walking into an organization that existed long before me, had been through a tumultuous six years, and will face tough challenges in the not-so-distant future.
So I made a decision. For the first few weeks, I just listened.
And looking back, it was probably the most important thing I did.
Start With People, Not Projects
The temptation in a new leadership role is to make your mark immediately. You want to launch something. Reorganize something. Fix something.
Resist the urge.
Before I touched processes or strategy, I sat down with every member of my team and with every member of senior leadership for one-on-one conversations. I asked questions like:
What do you spend most of your time doing?
What part of your job do you enjoy most?
What are you exceptionally good at?
What drains your energy?
What skills do you wish you had more opportunities to use?
What gets in the way of doing great work?
I wasn’t looking for complaints. I was looking for opportunities, gaps, and patterns. And those things started emerging quickly.
Some people were doing work they loved. Others had talents that weren’t being fully utilized. Some responsibilities seemed to belong to multiple people. Other responsibilities didn’t seem to belong to anyone.
That information was incredibly valuable. It became a roadmap to set up a foundation for success.
Build a Team Map
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that organizational charts don’t tell you much.
A job description tells you what someone is supposed to do. A conversation tells you what they actually do.
As I talked with my staff, I started mapping the team. I asked myself:
Who are the strongest writers?
Who can manage projects?
Who understands data?
Who has strong design skills?
Who is great at relationships and collaboration?
Just as importantly, I looked for gaps. Specifically, I pinpointed the skills that were missing, areas that seemed underdeveloped, and places where work was getting bogged down or stopped altogether.
I wasn’t trying to evaluate people. I was trying to understand the system.
Before you can build a stronger team, you have to understand the team you actually have.
Define the Real Problems
As I observed the department and reviewed existing work, I noticed something that I’ve seen in other organizations too.
People were working incredibly hard. But they were often operating without shared expectations, messaging, or processes.
Projects moved through different review paths depending on who was involved. Marketing requests arrived in different formats. Staff made decisions based on their own understanding of priorities.
Nobody was doing anything wrong. The team simply lacked some foundational systems. That realization shaped my plan for moving forward.
Map Out Your Priorities
Once I had a clear picture of my team and the larger organization they worked in, I worked on identifying and prioritizing what I needed to do. I created what I call my “Post-It Pyramid of Priorities.”
I wrote down the foundational tasks I needed to tackle, one on each Post-It. Then I arranged them in a pyramid, with the tasks I needed to complete at the top. (Groundbreaking, right?)
I put tasks that were interrelated into a line to signal to myself that I needed to work on them simultaneously.
Post-It Pyramid of Priorities
Using Post-Its makes it easy for me to move and change my priorities as conditions change.
Establish Your Messaging Foundation
One of the biggest priorities during those first 90 days was working through messaging.
What exactly were we trying to say about the library? More importantly, were we all saying the same thing?
Libraries are wonderful at promoting programs, events, and services. We are less consistent when it comes to communicating our larger value.
Ask staff members why the library matters and you might get a bunch of different answers.
Some will talk about books.
Some will talk about literacy.
Some will talk about technology.
Some will talk about community.
None of those answers are wrong.
But if your organization wants to build trust, recognition, and support, there needs to be some shared understanding of the bigger story you’re telling.
In my next post on July 27, I’ll go more in-depth to show you how our library determined a messaging focus and how we’re executing it.
Create a Strategy People Can Actually Use
The word “strategy” seems to scare people. I think it’s because most strategies are created by senior leadership, who then pass them down to the staff without taking the time to get buy-in. (This happens at for-profit companies too!)
I wasn’t interested in creating a document that nobody would read. I wanted a framework that would help people make decisions.
Who are we trying to reach?
What behavior are we trying to influence?
What organizational goals are we supporting?
How do our messages connect to those goals?
How should different channels work together?
Once you have the answers to those questions, you can create a simple strategic framework that you and your staff can follow for the next year.
Standardize the Review Process
When organizations don’t have a clear review process, everyone creates their own.
One project gets five rounds of edits. Another gets none. One person is included in decisions. Another is surprised at the last minute.
Over time, that creates frustration for everyone!
So we built a standard review structure. It helps me and my marketing manager to, well, manage projects!
We worked together to decide:
Who reviews what.
When they review it.
What kind of feedback they’re responsible for providing.
What final approval looks like.
The result is more consistency, fewer surprises, and much less confusion.
Focus on Culture, Not Just Process
The systems matter. The strategy matters. The messaging matters. But the biggest adjustment we need to make is cultural.
Instead of asking, “Can we promote this?” I’m prompting my staff to start asking, “What are we trying to accomplish?”
Instead of thinking about outputs, we are thinking about outcomes. Instead of automatically saying yes to every request, we started discussing priorities. (That is a biggie!)
It definitely is a mindset change. It won’t happen overnight, and you’ll face some bumps and pushback along the way. But getting yourself and your team to work these questions into your daily thought process will lead to better results.
What I Didn’t Do
Here’s what I did not do in my first 90 days!
I didn’t reorganize the team.
I didn’t launch a huge new campaign.
I didn’t overhaul every process.
I didn’t try to solve every problem.
New leaders sometimes feel pressure to demonstrate value immediately.
Ironically, one of the most valuable things you can do is slow down. Ask questions. Gather information. Build trust.
What If You’re Not New?
You don’t have to start a new job to use this approach.
In fact, if you’ve been at your library for years and feel like you’re stuck, this mindset can be even more valuable.
One of the advantages of being new is that you notice things everyone else has stopped seeing. You ask questions because you genuinely don’t know the answers. You challenge assumptions because you haven’t inherited them yet.
After you’ve been somewhere for a while, it’s easy to accept the way things are simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
So borrow a trick from your first-day self.
Schedule listening meetings with colleagues you don’t work with regularly. Ask people what gets in the way of doing great work. Map your team’s strengths and gaps again. Follow a marketing request from start to finish as if you’ve never seen the process before.
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from looking at familiar problems with fresh eyes.
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Photo courtesy Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
In this post, I walked you through what branding really means in a library: It’s the consistent experience people have every time they interact with you.
Now comes the harder question: How do you actually make that happen across an entire library system? Believe me, I know what a struggle this can be!
The Real Problem Isn’t Branding. It’s Alignment.
Most library marketers I work with tell me they struggle with branding because the library system is very siloed. Libraries are collaborative by nature but decentralized in structure.
Staff with different backgrounds and comfort levels with marketing
So people do what they think is best in the moment. And over time, that creates inconsistency.
Each department and branch creates its own promotional materials
Messaging varies depending on who writes it
Tone and style vary depending on who writes it
No one is intentionally trying to dilute the brand. But no one is working from the same playbook, either.
The Fix: Give Staff Clarity, Not Control
Here’s where many branding efforts go off track. Leadership tries to “fix” inconsistency by:
Locking down templates
Requiring approvals for everything
Centralizing all marketing decisions
That might create consistency. But it also creates bottlenecks, frustration, and disengagement. It also lowers staff morale, because it appears that leaders don’t trust branch or department staff to do their jobs.
Instead, what staff really need is clarity.
The 2 Things Every Staff Member Needs to Know
If you want your entire library to create promotion using one brand, every staff member, regardless of their role, should be able to answer these two questions:
1. Who Are We?
I’m not talking about reciting your mission statement. I’m talking about your library’s personality, tone, and voice.
Are you:
Friendly and conversational?
Educational and authoritative?
Playful and creative?
If staff don’t understand this, they’ll default to their own voice.
2. Who Are We Talking To?
Your audience is not everyone. I know that’s so hard to understand when you’re working in an organization that aims to serve everyone.
But when you are working on promotions, you have to target a specific audience. So, your staff must be trained to think in specifics.
Who are they hoping to see come through the door as a result of their promotion? Are they looking for:
Parents of young children?
Job seekers?
Lifelong learners?
Teens looking for a place to belong?
Some other target audience?
When staff can identify the specific people they are trying to reach, their messaging becomes more consistent — naturally
How to Communicate Your Brand to Staff
Your library doesn’t need a 40-page brand guide. Most libraries only need a simpledocument that includes:
1. Voice Traits (3–5 words)
These are the personality descriptors that guide how your library “sounds” in writing. For example:
For example, if your library decides its personality descriptor is “helpful, clear, approachable, and trustworthy,” you can tell staff that instead of saying, “Patrons must return materials by the due date“, you’ll say, “Just a heads up… return your items by the due date to avoid any fees.”
2. Visual Guidelines (colors, fonts, image style)
These define how your library looks visually across every tactic and channel, including social media, flyers, signage, and your website.
For example, your library might have three colors in your brand palette. Each color likely represents a feeling or emotion that you want your community to experience when they encounter materials from your library.
Let your staff know about the intentionality of your color palette by explaining each color’s associated emotion, like this:
Primary: Deep blue (trust, stability). We use this color for promotions about our hours and policies.
Secondary: Bright orange (energy, engagement). We use this color for promotions that include a call to action, like signing up or registering for a program.
Neutral: Light gray or cream. This color provides us with a clean background for promotions.
Set guidelines for font use. Be sure to lay out which font staff should use for headlines, body text, or as an accent font for special promotions for kids’ programming, summer reading, or other big programs.
Finally, give staff clear direction about the use of photos in your promotions. You may want to indicate that all photos must depict real patrons in one of your branches. (Check out this post about how to do a “stock photo day” to build your library’s cache of photos.)
If photos of real community members are not an option, let staff know what kind of stock photos they may use. For example, you may set guidelines that all staff photos must include:
Warm, candid, natural lighting
Diverse, inclusive representation
Focus on interaction (reading, attending programs, using spaces)
Coming Next
Now that you know how to align your team, there’s one more big challenge.
How do you create a consistent voice and look without making everything feel rigid and templated?
Your job is not to control every piece of marketing. Your job is to:
Set the direction
Define the brand clearly
Equip your team to execute
That’s what we’ll tackle in Part 3, which will publish on May 11.
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Photo courtesy Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
When most libraries talk about branding, they’re really talking about logos, colors, and templates.
But branding isn’t only what your materials look like.
It’s how your library feels to the people you serve.
And that experience doesn’t center only on the work that your communications staff does. It comes from every single staff member. This is especially true for small or rural libraries and for large metro libraries.
A solid library brand will define your library in a crowded world. It’s the thing that makes people say, “I love my library.”
But many libraries struggle with branding. When I asked, “What do you need help with?” in the State of Library Marketing survey, one of the most common answers was “branding.”
So, we’re going to tackle that! This is the first in a three-part series all about library branding.
Branding Is Not a Logo
We’ll begin with this concept, because it’s the root of the problem.
Branding is often confused with:
Your logo
Your color palette
Your graphic templates
Those things matter. But they are expressions of your brand, not the brand itself.
In fact, research into library branding shows that a library’s brand encompasses multiple dimensions tied to user experience, perception, and emotional connection — not just visuals.
That means your library’s brand is shaped just as much by a storytime experience, a conversation at the circulation desk, the tone of a Facebook post, or signage in your building as it is by your logo.
Here’s the truth: Your library already has a brand! People in your community have an existing impression of your library. This is true even if you’ve never written a brand guide, your graphics are inconsistent, and your co-workers all seem to do their own thing when it comes to library promotion.
So, you’re not starting this journey from scratch.
Real Library Examples: When Branding Becomes Part of the Library Experience
One of the best examples of true library branding is the transformation of Rangeview Library District into Anythink Libraries.
Here’s what happened: The Rangeview Library District was considered by its community to be old-fashioned, small, and unappealing. In 2009, as part of its renewed branding efforts, the District changed the names of its libraries to Anythink libraries.
But the library did more than a name and logo change. They renamed every branch. The changed staff job titles to include “Concierge” and “Guide.” They reframed the entire library experience around creativity and curiosity.
It was a complete alignment of experience, language, and culture. And it worked.
The rebranding led to higher circulation and visitor numbers. The system was able to connect with users and pass a levy, which helped them build or renovate libraries. And they were awarded a national Medal for Museum and Library Service.
My own library, the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library, also went through a rebrand in the last five years. While our name change is not as significant (previously, we were The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County), we are transforming our connection to the community.
Yes, we created a completely new visual palette. But the core of our new branding is focused on our beliefs, which every library staff member is committed to living out through their work. Our beliefs are:
Empathy: We believe in everyone’s innate value and potential.
Enjoyment: We believe there is no prescribed path to knowledge, so why not make the journey fun?
Connection: We believe we got farther, together.
Community: We believe libraries are incubators of community.
That defined focus on those four beliefs is strengthening the connection our library has to the community, elected officials, and donors. That’s the power of branding.
Many libraries have also leaned into branding through physical experience and design. In fact, studies show that libraries are increasingly positioned as community hubs and cultural spaces, with branding tied to how people use and feel in the space, not just what they see.
Branding encompasses everything. The building, the programming, the atmosphere — all of it contributes to the brand.
Where Most Libraries Go Wrong
Most libraries don’t have a branding problem. They have a disconnect problem.
It usually looks like this:
Marketing creates one type of message
Youth services create another
Branches design their own flyers
Social media has a completely different tone
This creates a fragmented experience. And from a patron’s perspective, it feels like interacting with multiple different organizations instead of one library system.
So What Is Library Branding?
Here’s the simplest, most useful definition I can give you:
Your library’s brand is the consistent experience people have every time they interact with you.
Branding is not owned by the marketing department. Branding is created by the entire staff.
That means every flyer, every conversation, every program description, every social media post is either strengthening your brand or weakening it.
Coming Next
In the next post on April 27, we’re going to tackle the biggest challenge libraries face when it comes to branding:
How do you actually get an entire library system to act like one brand?
Meanwhile, if your library has worked on branding, I’d love to hear what worked, what didn’t, and where your staff struggled. You can let me know by commenting below or by emailing me.
Subscribe to this blog, and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
Photo courtesy Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library
Lauren Tolman learned to read when she was just three years old.
“Books have been part of my life since I was little,” she explains. “My family made weekly trips to our local public library. I tore through Arthur,The Baby-sitters Club, Little House (on the Prairie), and any series I could get my hands on.”
“As a kid, my dream job swung between ‘mermaid’ and ‘librarian.’ The librarians at my local branch sat at this big wooden desk surrounded by paperback spinner racks, and they’d read to kids on carpeted risers. I visited the library again thirty years later… the same desk, the same brown carpet, the same happy library noise.”
Lauren’s first library job was as a shelver. In her 20+ year career, she’s been a page, a story time performer, a clerk, a children’s librarian, and a supervisor. Now, she’s the Communications Specialist in the Marketing Department at Utah Valley University’s Fulton Library.
Lauren and two other staff members market the library to the school’s 47,000 students. Lauren supervises the department full-time and handles project management, social media, and campus outreach. Her work is complemented by a part-time graphic designer and a part-time copywriter.
Lauren says the most effective channel for reaching her audience is Instagram. The library appears to have a formula down that works well for their audience. All the videos are short-form with a healthy dose of humor.
The library is also really, really good at putting its own, unique twist on trends, as they did for this video. (You will remember when this song was all the rage on Instagram and TikTok videos!)
But beyond social media, Lauren and her staff have other ways to reach students on campus.
“Our staff is our best ‘channel,’” shares Lauren. “They talk with students constantly through instruction sessions, resource fairs, research help, circulation desk interactions, etc.”
“Students love seeing other students in marketing. We also work with peer mentors, ambassadors, and other student leaders who help share our posts or pass along information to their programs.”
Recently, Lauren and her team worked through a library campaign refresh with new branding, colors, iconography, and more, called “Find It at the Fulton Library.”
“We aim for a new brand campaign every 3-4 years to keep our image fresh and current for our students,” explains Lauren. “The process can take 6-9 months, as we work with our campus marketing, communications, and photography departments to produce all the materials.”
“They help us with concepts and developing a brand kit with colors, fonts, and more to help maintain a consistent look among all of our deliverables. They also help us with student lifestyle photoshoots, giving us a high-quality photo library to use throughout the next couple of years.”
As you can see, this new brand has a vintage feel, while being fresh and colorful.
But not everything is all fun and games for an academic library looking for promotional success. Like most library marketers, there have been times when the strategiesy Lauren has tried just didn’t land with her audience.
“I will say I’ve had many disappointments where social media posts or Reels get low engagement,” explains Lauren. “It always seems to be the ones that are really informative or take forever to make that turn out to have the lowest interactions. That can be frustrating, but I try to learn from it. If even one student is helped by the content, that’s great. And there are always other channels to try to share that information!”
To that end, Lauren has some advice for libraries of all sizes and types when it comes to marketing.
“Get to know your audience, what they care about, where they hang out, what they struggle with. Lead with approachability and benefits. Our audience likes to feel seen and have their problems solved.”
“Track your results, even informally. This will help you figure out your strengths and weaknesses, and the direction your content should go. And don’t be afraid to experiment with types of content, even the casual kind. While we keep our language kind and professional, students love it when we go a little unhinged or use pop culture references in our content.”
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Creating short-form videos is one of the best ways to reach your community. But… convincing colleagues to step in front of the camera is difficult!
If you’re running into resistance — or just quiet reluctance — this episode is for you. I break down how to reframe video participation, build buy-in internally, and help staff feel confident instead of self-conscious on camera.
Plus, I’m giving kudos to a library that created a hilarious parody video with staff in the midst of a snowstorm!
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode’s topic? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here.
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.”
Subscribe to this blog, and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 