There’s some exciting new advice on how to create engagement on your library’s Facebook page. The 8 new tips are in this episode of the Library Marketing Show.
Plus kudos goes to an academic librarian who recently received a huge award!
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here. And thanks for watching!
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I’m sure you’ve heard by now that U.S. President Joe Biden has signed a bill banning TikTok in the United States. What would that mean for your library marketing?
Now that the dust has settled a bit on the coverage of the ban, and speculation from experts, we’ll dive into it in this episode of The Library Marketing Show.
Plus kudos goes to a library that received a Peabody Award nomination for their short-form video content!
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here. And thanks for watching!
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:
I have a bummer of a report to share with you today. However, it’s imperative because it may impact the way you use your library’s social media accounts to promote other content offerings from your library.
Buckle up! We will dive into that in this episode of The Library Marketing Show.
Plus, kudos go to a library that uses email to show off its accomplishments and prove its value to key stakeholders.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here. And thanks for watching!
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:
I have a new trick that I use in my own workday for posting across multiple social media platforms. It helps me stay within best practices in terms of post length. And this is one of those instances in which the robots are very helpful!
I will show you exactly how I do this, in this episode.
Plus, kudos go to an academic library that uses Instagram Live to build excitement and engagement.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here. And thanks for watching!
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:
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:
Once again, Facebook remains the single most popular social media platform for libraries. In fact, the percentage of library staff who use Facebook for library marketing rose by 7 percentage points this year, to a whopping 97 percent, according to the annual Super Library Marketing Survey.
I believe part of that rise can be traced to the turmoil at X, formerly known as Twitter. I’ve talked with libraries who shifted their focus back to Facebook this year because they could no longer rely on Twitter/X for reach.
And overall Facebook organic engagement rose this year for the first time in a while. It appears that Meta took advantage of the chaos at Twitter/X by adjusting their algorithm to boost organic reach, and that’s good news for all of us.
According to Statista, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, with 2.9 billion monthly active users. 70 percent of Americans log on each day, and 74 percent of Canadians log on daily. Canada, by the way, has the highest daily log-on percentage for Facebook in the world!
How are people using Facebook right now?
Here are some statistics to consider from SocialPilot.
Facebook users spend an average of 19.42 hours a month on the platform.
Most Facebook users (nearly 82 percent) use the mobile version of the platform. But that percentage has dropped from last year. Interesting, right?
31 percent of Americans use Facebook to get their news. 🙁
And here’s the whopper stat: Facebook use among teens in the US has dropped significantly this year, by 39 percentage points, to just 32 percent. So… don’t use Facebook to try to reach teens.
However, people between the ages of 25 and 34 make up the largest audience on Facebook. That one took me by surprise!
How much success can we see on Facebook?
These engagement statistics come from Hubspot and SocialPilot.
The median engagement rate for Facebook is 0.060 percent. Ouch.
Facebook photo posts get the highest engagement rate, at 0.12 percent.
The average Facebook user likes 11 posts every month.
Live videos on Facebook get 26 percent higher engagement than live videos on other platforms.
Almost 50 percent of the time people spend on Facebook is spent watching videos.
The Margaret E. Heggan Library received high engagement from this post introducing a new staff member.
The Facebook algorithm for 2024
Here are the ranking signals Facebook uses to decide who sees your posts.
Facebook prioritizes content from friends and family members over content from business pages. For libraries, this means that it’s important to get people to comment or share your posts. When they do that, the friends and family members of your engaged users are more likely to see your content. And those engaged followers will see more of your library’s content.
Facebook prioritizes posts based on both the number and length of comments.
Facebook prioritizes posts that have a higher number of reactions and a variety of reactions.
Facebook prioritizes the type of content that people like. So for example, if your Facebook videos are the most popular type of content posted from your library’s page, Facebook will show people more of your videos and less of your other types of content like photo posts or plain text posts.
Here are four ways to get the best organic reach for your library’s Facebook posts in 2024.
Create a formula that emphasizes entertaining posts and encourages meaningful interaction.
People are coming to social media to connect with friends and for entertainment, according to data released by Oberlo earlier this year.
I heard this at the Library Marketing and Communications Conference too. Facebook users are increasingly using the platform to fill time and fight boredom. (That’s why video is such a big deal on Facebook–it’s fun to watch!)
To keep our Facebook audience engaged with our posts, we need to make them entertaining. Experiment to create a formula to balance posts that build your library’s brand and raise awareness of your library offerings. That might look like this:
Entertaining posts including memes, GIFs, fun library-centric videos, and conversation starters: 70 percent
Sharing other people’s content, including library users and partners: 20 percent
Promotional posts: 10 percent
Create a formula based on your audience and your library’s overall goals. Then experiment with it for a month. Check your insights. If your audience engagement is steady, or growing, you know you’ve hit on the right combination! If you haven’t seen any growth in engagement, you can try adjusting your formula.
Each library’s audience is unique, so your formula will be different than the formula used by the library in the neighboring town.
The reach of link posts continues to decline. According to Social Media Today, views of Facebook posts that include links have declined by as much as 50 percent in the past two years. This is because Meta is turning away from news and informative content. Now it’s more focused on entertainment.
Click on the post below to see how Champaign Public Library uses this technique.
If you are trying to drive awareness of an event or promote an item in your collection, share the link to your event calendar or catalog in the first comment after you publish the post. For those of you who use scheduling apps to manage your posts, that means you will have to go to Facebook after the post schedules and add the link. Yes, I know it’s a pain.
The alternative option is to use visual elements or video to explain the action you wish the public to take, rather than adding the link to the comments. In other words, create a graphic carousel with words that convey the action you wish your followers to take. Just be sure to add alt text to your images so viewers with visual impairments can also interact with your posts.
Try simple text-only posts in the feed.
Katie Bulloff of the Indianapolis Public Library uses this method to great results. She usually asks a question or posts a prompt to get the conversation going.
Just be careful with the backgrounds and text provided by Facebook. They’re not always accessible. Use a color contrast checker to make sure you’re in compliance with accessibility standards.
Clermont County Public Library also uses this technique.
Post videos to Facebook, including Reels and Stories.
The ability to cross-post your Instagram Reels to Facebook makes it a no-brainer to use this feature. Meta is highly focused on video content and continues to add more features including A/B testing, creating Reels from existing clips, and more.
And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Here is a Reel that Plainville Public Library created from a series of static photos. As of this writing, it’s gotten more than 300 views. Their service population is less than 17,000 residents!
Facebook (and other platforms) are focused on video because that’s the kind of content that increasingly gets attention from followers. It’s entertaining. So, here’s the plan.
Post to Reels.
Share your Reel to your Stories.
Share your regular Facebook Feed posts to Stories.
Post original content directly to Stories.
Stories are extremely popular with users. My Gen Z daughters never look at the Feed. They only look at Stories. So it makes sense to devote library marketing energy to that feature.
Maybe also try…
Facebook Groups: I’ve heard libraries talk about the varying degrees of success using the Groups feature. I really think it depends on your specific community. But certainly, if you haven’t experimented with Groups, now might be a good time to do that!
Groups are not for promotion: rather, they’re a community-building tool. However, if you can build an engaged Facebook Group, it goes to reason that the members of that group will see more of your regular Feed, Story, and Reel posts!
Messaging your followers: Social Media Today says many Facebook pages are switching to private messaging groups to share their latest updates, as opposed to posting publicly. Your messages would be outside the influence of the algorithm. It’s worth experimenting with!
When to post on Facebook
Post once a day on the Facebook feed, either early in the morning, around lunchtime, or around 8 p.m.
Post at least one slide to Facebook Stories every day.
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:
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Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library
Francesca Castro has been visiting libraries for as long as she can remember.
“My mother took me to children’s programs at the public library when I was very young,” recalled Francesca. “Then, in elementary and middle school, I begged my parents for cash to spend at the annual book fair. In college, I was pulling all-nighters and made some of my best memories of my academic career in the library.”
Now, not even a year after graduating from Arkansas State University with a degree in communications, Francesca is working her first professional job at a library. And her success, particularly around TikTok, is inspiring library marketers twice her age, myself included.
Francesca is a Marketing Coordinator for the Saline County Library in Benton, Arkansas. The library has a service population of about 85,000 residents.
Francesca’s interest in managing the library’s TikTok began during her interview. “I remember asking if Saline County Library (SCL) had a TikTok account,” she said. “Their response was no. So I told them if they hired me, I would make a Saline County Library TikTok account and that I had gone viral a few times on my personal account and would want to do the same for SCL.”
“I understand that it is hard to grab the attention of teens and tweens these days and a lot of them are already on TikTok, so why not bring the library content to them, ” continued Francesca. “I also use the platform to show that libraries are more than what people assume that they are. I have made videos about what working in the library is like versus what people probably think it is like, and I make sure to post content that shows you can check out items other than books.”
Francesca has created more than 40 posts on TikTok since she launched the Saline County Library account, which has nearly 500 followers. One of the most popular posts is a simple, short slideshow of storytime set to music.
She’s quick to jump on trends, like this one featuring the Titanic theme. Francesca also appears in some of the posts, which adds a personal touch to the account and adds a face that library patrons may recognize when they walk into the building.
Francesca does have a secret formula for TikTok success based on her experience and research.
“I have learned to almost spam posts on TikTok,” she revealed. “The algorithm on TikTok is like an endless loop, and videos from weeks ago are still floating on the surface. Unlike other platforms, your post would not be the first to pop up on the screen after a few days. The reason I say spam post is because the more videos you post, the more content you have going through that endless loop.”
“Another tip I have figured out is to keep the content short and relatable. The key to success on TikTok is to be short, entertaining, and straight to the point.”
And even though consistency is key, Francesca admits she is not always consistent when it comes to posting TikToks. “I usually post them when I have an idea, and I get inspiration from other library TikTok accounts. I try to post 3-5 times a week.”
Many library marketers are also intimated by the process of editing videos for TikTok. But Francesca says you don’t need fancy editing software or third-party apps. Simplicity is key.
“When it comes to editing the videos, I usually just edit them on TikTok, which only takes a few minutes,” she advised. “I will say I am consistent with the hashtags I use. I like to use #Librarytok #librarymarketing, and #booktalk.”
And although she’s only six months into her new role, Francesca has advice for other libraries looking to use TikTok to reach new audiences.
“If you are unsure about starting a TikTok page, I suggest you have a person or a team of people who are outgoing and not shy to run the page,” she said. “The advice I would give any Library would be to beware of trends and KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!”
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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 176: A marketing agency has done the research and is unveiling the best days and times to post on social media. But is this the advice your library has been searching for? Or will you end up being less successful on social media if you take it?
We’ll unpack the results and how to interpret them in this episode.
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 weekly video tip for libraries.
Thanks for watching!
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.
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 