Advertising Library Services
Being a librarian, you need to wear a number of different hats. For the IM reference service we have now implemented I needed to do some promotion. I came up with a few advertising ideas including: flyers posted where the students are (i.e. dorms, commons), bookmarks with the URL on them, and screen savers or backgrounds on the library computers promoting the service. The web services librarian and I teamed up on designing the logo:
Advertising takes a lot of thought beforehand in order for your ads to be successful. Here are a few tips that I learned while I was creating an advertising campaign:
- Keep it simple (people have little time to read a bunch of text)
- Make it catchy (have something that gets the intended audiences attention)
- Keep your audience in mind
- Advertise where your audience is going to be (e.g. for students, put ads in common areas)
A good place to begin online with library advertising is Library Media and PR. They have a number of free logos and excellent tips to get your message out there.
