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Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion

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Four Steps to Transform Your Library’s Plain Old Newsletter into a Marketing Masterpiece (With Examples!)

Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. People in the newspaper room, circa 1900.

I love to read anything in print. The texture and smell of the paper, the actual physical weight the words have in your hands, and the ability to re-read and annotate the pages give a sense of importance to the printed piece that you can’t get when you read something online.

Digital exhaustion is a real phenomenon, and the pandemic has only made it worse. According to Statista, the average daily time spent with digital media is expected to increase from seven hours and 50 minutes in 2020 to just under eight hours in 2022.

Even though people are spending more time online, that online space is crowded. It’s harder for the library’s message to break through all the content noise.

People want a more personal connection to their marketing. A printed promotional piece appeals to the senses. It’s tangible. It occupies physical space and creates the value of possession. Your audience must physically interact with it, and that makes it authentic and reliable.  

And for members of our community who don’t have access to the internet, or who don’t have a connection strong enough to support streaming videos or high-resolution downloads, print is the key to marketing success.

Most libraries have a printed newsletter. I want to challenge your library to take that piece and transform it into a powerhouse marketing tool.

To do that, you’re going to trim down the number of events in the piece and add stories about your library and its patrons.

Here’s how you can transform your newsletter into a promotional masterpiece that people will want to read. There are examples of great library print pieces at the end of this post!

Make a plan and an outline.

Divide your publication into pages. Then, plot out what you are going to put on each page.

You’ll want to create a balance between the sections of your piece. Start by dividing your publication into thirds.

  • One third will be dedicated to promoting collection items, including booklists, streaming music and movies, your physical movie and music collection, and magazines.
  • One third will be dedicated to events and programs.
  • The final third will be stories about patrons and staff and the ways the library has impacted their lives.

Pick one big story to serve as your cover.

Some cover stories we used at my library included:

A father and son who visited all 41 branches of our library in one day.

A middle schooler who gave a speech about library funding.

A 103-year-old woman who read three books a week, thanks to the work of our outreach department.

How to use the library to determine if stories on the internet are fact or fiction.

Once you determine your cover story, place it in your outline about halfway through your publication. You want people to have to read several pages to get to it.

Here are some other ideas for stories to put in your publication.

  • Staff and patron reading recommendations, including quotes about why they love and recommend the books.
  • Stories behind the forming of a book club.
  • A profile of a teacher or a school librarian who takes advantage of services like teacher collections and support from the library.
  • How your library has helped someone find a job or earn a degree.
  • Profile of a small business that used your library to launch a successful company.
  • Behind the scenes of a certain department at your library. For example, I interviewed the manager of our Preservation Lab, which restores and preserves rare items in the library’s collection such as military uniforms, books written on palm leaves, and all kinds of historically valuable photographs. In another issue, we took people along for a ride with our Outreach Services and talked to the people whose lives were changed by the simple act of bringing books to their homes.

Make sure each page includes at least one call to action.

Calls to action are very important, even in print. Remember, if you want your cardholders to do something, you must tell them to do it explicitly!

End each article with a call to action, like, “To learn more, email us.” Or “To join this book club, visit our website.”

The whole point of your print publication is promotion. Make sure that you give your readers a way to interact with your library and take the next step.

Give yourself time to edit and review.

Typically, it took me about a month from start to finish to write, edit, and review my 12-page print publication. Specifically, my timeline looked like this:

  • Four weeks before we went to print, articles written by other staff were due.
  • Three weeks before we went to print, I thoroughly read and edited each article. I used my own punctuation and grammar skills, plus Microsoft Word’s review editor, and a Grammarly extension on my browser to perfect each article.
  • Two weeks before we went to print, I made copies of the publication and passed them around to at least five staff members inside and outside of my department. I asked them to carefully read the articles and mark any mistakes they noticed.
  • One week before we went to print, I gave copies to senior leaders for final approval.
  • I also made a copy for myself and read it out loud. This is a trick I learned from journalism school that I still use today for this blog! Your brain may automatically correct errors when you read silently in your head but if you read each word out loud, as if you are doing it for an audience, you’ll find missing words or grammar errors that you never noticed before.

Some examples of great library print promotional pieces that incorporate promotions and stories about the library (that you can read online!)

Niles-Maine District Library Newsletter

Department of Library Services Newsletter from the University of Pretoria

The Storyline from Oak Park Public Library

Next Page from Bucknell University

Source from the Howard County Library System

Between the Columns from Eastern Kentucky University Libraries

Does your library have a print publication that you’re really proud of? I’d love to see it! Please let me know where I can read it by hitting the Feedback button on the bottom left-hand side of this page.

You May Also Want to Read These Articles

How Can You Tell If People Want To Read Your Library’s Print Newsletter or Magazine? Some Not Exactly Scientific Ideas!

📚I Was Wrong About Bookmarks! How to Use Print to Keep People Coming Back to the Library

Angela’s Latest Book Review

Couple Found Slain by Mikita Brottman

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Frustrated with Your Library Marketing Newsletter? Here’s Why You’re Not Getting the Results You Want AND How to Fix It

I hold a controversial opinion. Newsletters are an ineffective tool for library marketing.

I totally understand why libraries create them. Our customers are a wide and diverse audience and our budget is limited. Newsletters are an easy and efficient way to get information to our audience.

But many libraries are frustrated by the lack of demonstrable results from their newsletters, both the print and email versions. And there’s a reason you can’t get good results from a newsletter.

The mistake is: You’re sending the same message to all of your cardholders.

It’s understandable. It feels like the natural thing to do. Your library has great stuff and you want everyone to know about everything.

The problem with that approach is that your cardholders are individuals. One message never fits them all. The needs and interests of your cardholders vary greatly.

I’m not suggesting you ditch your newsletter. By transforming the way you approach your current print and e-newsletter, you can make it actually work! The trick is to make changes that increase your newsletter’s value by refining the message.

Tips that work for both print and e-newsletters

Give your cardholders LOTS more of what THEY want. I know you’ve been keeping track of attendance at events and holds or checkouts of books you promoted in your previous newsletters. If you notice that your newsletter audience turns out for a particular type of event or that they like a particular genre of books or collection items, put MORE of those in your newsletters.

Library marketers are often pressured to promote what their co-workers or bosses think is interesting. Or worse, what their co-workers think the audience NEEDS to hear.

I’ve actually had to gently explain to my colleagues that, while reading classic authors like Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen are good for the brain, most people are not looking for an intellectual challenge when they reach for a book. It’s like getting kids to eat their vegetables. Veggies are healthy, but if your child doesn’t like them, they’ll clamp their mouth shut and refuse to take a bite.

The newsletter audience is the same. You can’t make people attend events or read books because they’re healthy or intellectual. Library marketers sometimes have to be an advocate for their audience; you have to be persistent in your defense of what your cardholders want.

At my library, we pivoted our newsletter to focus more on our the parts of our collection that our cardholders like. We had the data to back it up. We know that our cardholders really love content about coding and coding classes. We know they love mystery books. We know they love workshops about writing and publishing their own books. We learned all of these nuanced preferences by carefully measuring our audience’s response to marketing in all areas. Patterns emerge. And now, we do a lot of promotion around these areas because we know, for a fact, that our cardholders love this kind of content.

Make your content helpful, not promotional. Your cardholders are regularly bombarded with offers, sales, and promotions, both in their inbox and in your mailbox. To get people to read your newsletter, the content needs to be interesting, useful, or helpful.

Hundreds of studies and surveys about consumer behavior show us that content that is educational or entertaining gets better results that content that is promotional. So how can you promote something while being entertaining or informative? Content marketing in the answer.

Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience–ultimately, to drive profitable consumer action.

Content marketing breaks through the noise and the clutter by providing compelling, useful information for your cardholder–any type of information. It addresses whatever pain points your cardholders have. It positions your library as the go-to place for information. It builds trust.

And through content marketing, your library gets a better and deeper understanding of your cardholders. You can use that understanding to do a better job of addressing your cardholders’ needs. It’s a constant circle of giving and it carries more weight for a longer period than a traditional newsletter promotion.

Stop thinking of your publication as a newsletter. Start creating news magazines. Most library newsletters that come to my inbox or mailbox are long and contain a ton of text and images. There isn’t much white space and scanning them is difficult, because there is so much to scan.

At my library, we increased the effectiveness of our print newsletter by transforming it into a magazine. We trimmed it from 16 to 12 pages. My graphic artists started to give the publication a magazine feel in layout, using bolder visuals and shorter, more engaging articles. We left some white space. We changed the balance of the articles from 100 percent promotional to 50 percent informational and 50 percent promotional (even I have to fight the battle with my library to be less overtly promotional!).

What happened when we made these changes? Our news magazine became a must-read. People started asking when the next issue would be out. We had to order more copies. Library staff and outside partners vie for space in the publication. The news magazine is popular!

Tips specific to e-newsletters

Keep the text short and scannable. Your e-newsletter is a touch point, not the end of a conversation. Readers should get enough to be left with the feeling of wanting to know more about a particular subject. Drive your recipients to your website or another platform where they can get more information with compelling text and enticing calls to action.

Make it easy to share your e-newsletter. Include social share buttons that link directly to your library’s social pages.

Segment your e-newsletters. You can segment your e-newsletter in a number of ways… by age, by interest, and by location. This means you’ll need to create more than one e-newsletter. But each one will be targeted to a specific audience, which increases effectiveness. This step will be more work for you but it’s worth it for better results.

By targeting your message, you are more likely to say something that matters significantly to your cardholders. That individualized message makes them more likely to take an action, which makes it more likely that your newsletter will be successful.

More help for library marketers

How the Best Newsletters Get-and Keep-Reader’s Attention from Content Marketing Institute

NoveList’s Guide to Best Practices for Library Newsletters

7 Tips for Creating Engaging Newsletters from Mailjet

Great examples of targeted library newsletters

Dallas Public Library’s Young Black Readers Newsletter

Indian Prairie Public Library’s DVD Preview

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How Can You Tell If People Want To Read Your Library’s Print Newsletter or Magazine? Some Not Exactly Scientific Ideas!

I love my library’s print publication, Library Links. It’s full of stories about the library, its staff, and its cardholders. It’s fun to write. It fun to watch it transform from a bunch of Word documents into a legitimate magazine. It’s satisfying to put it into the world every three months.

But for all the personal satisfaction I derive from creating it, I sometimes wonder if it’s a good use of my time. How do I know that it’s actually something people want to read? How do I know if it’s effective? It’s impossible to track the return on investment of print promotions. Or is it?

I know many library marketers face this same dilemma. Most libraries have a newsletter or magazine of some form. The strategies for each of these print pieces vary. The audience varies. The budget varies.

But we must measure the return on investment of all of our marketing, including print pieces. So how do you do that? Here are some of the ways I use to measure the effectiveness of my print magazine.

Track who actually wants to read your publication. Many libraries print thousands of copies of their publication. Then they send them out automatically to all the people living in their service area. They might also send copies home with each child in their school district. I totally understand that tactic. But my bet is that more than half of those publications end up in the trash. It’s like sending un-targeted email messages. If someone isn’t already engaged with the library, the sad truth is they aren’t going to read your newsletter. That’s a shame, because it’s a waste of money for the library and a waste of time for you and your staff.

A better approach is to ask readers to opt-in to the publication. There are a couple of ways to do this. Ask people to sign up for it, either when they sign up for a library card or through an email campaign. You could send your print publication to anyone who donates your library’s fundraising groups. You can put copies out in your branches. You can also distribute copies to partner organizations with locations that have a lot of foot traffic, like museums and theaters.

Then, quite simply, count how many copies you have to print to meet the demand of your mailing and distribution lists. If people are seeking out your publication–if they are making any kind of effort to get a copy– that’s a good sign that it’s effective.

I’ve noticed that if my library releases a great issue of Links with a compelling cover story and lots of great content, people clamor for copies. We might have to visit our partner organizations again to give them more copies for distribution. We sometimes have cardholders who approach branch staff to ask when the next issue is coming out. My goal is always to run out of copies!

It’s not entirely scientific but an opt-in approach to your print publication can give you an idea of whether the publication is effective. And why spend money and time printing something that isn’t read?

Hashtags and emails: Ask readers to post a social media comment on a story or an event in your print publication. Give them a unique hashtag to use when they post their comment. Then count how many comments you receive. You can also ask readers to send an email with their comments to a special inbox. Then you can count the number of emails you receive.

Custom URLs and sub-domains on your website: I like to create Bit.ly URLs for sub-pages on my website that allow me to track traffic to those pages that are specific to readers of my print publication. For instance, my library has a web page that explains our passport service. For our upcoming issue of Library Links, I created the URL cinlib.org/passport. I’m not using that URL in any other promotions. So once the issue is out, I can see exactly how much of the traffic driven to that page came from my Links readers.

If your marketing department is also in charge of your website, create vanity sub-domains and use those URLs only in your print publications to help you track readers. If you decide to go that route, you can use Google Analytics to watch traffic to those sites. Create a custom tracking URL (How to Track Library Marketing with Google Analytics URL Builder). This will let you sort out the traffic coming to that particular webpage and determine what percentage is directly driven there by your print publication.

Secret: This same idea can be used on all your library’s print pieces, including posters, bookmarks, and other handouts. If you feel like your library is doing too much print marketing, you can get some hard data to back up your claim by tracking it through digital means.

Re-purpose your content and track engagement. Many of the stories we publish in Links are re-purposed a month or so later for social media posts, blog posts, and other content purposes. This helps us to get more out of the stories and gives us another way to measure whether the story is interesting to our audience. Plus it gives us a way to reach new audiences and make people aware of Library Links so they’ll want a real print copy.

Ideas for More Engaging Print Content

Amazing Content Marketing Stories About Your Library Are Right Under Your Nose!

How My Library Pivoted Its Event Newsletter Into a Content Marketing Magazine

Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.  

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