Report library happenings

If the library is closing early due to weather or if a printer is down, we can communicate via Twitter, among other channels. If we are having events like an international photo contest or a chili cook off, we can let people know. It’s also helpful to let people know when new displays, art, or exhibits are put up. I like to post an update every time we put up our new book display for the month as well as post a picture of a particularly interesting cover.

Promote library resources/services

When we get new interesting resources, we let people know via Twitter. When we got Mango languages, I posted it to Twitter and people retweeted the post and asked about it a lot.  I also even simply promote our print collection at relevant times. On St. Patrick’s Day I posted this tweet promoting Oscar Wilde’s short fiction. About half an hour later a student came up from the stacks with a James Joyce title and said he was inspired by the library’s Twitter post.

Build community

Looking at the statistics for our library Twitter account, 31% of all our tweets are retweets. That means that at least third of the content, ideas, and events we’re promoting are not our own. Last week we relayed a message from a student about the Vagina Monologues production that was going to be happening on campus. We also have posted information about the human versus zombies game that occurs every fall (for more info about this fairly awesome game, go here). Libraries are hearts of the community, so of course we want to promote what other people are doing. One of our strategic goals at the library is “foster a sense of campus community” and Twitter helps us to do that.

Engage our users

We don’t simply use twitter as a bullhorn though either. We try to engage members of our community. I post news articles of relevance and ask questions. I also noticed when people are working on papers or projects and do what I can to encourage them or help them. Below is an interaction where a student was writing a business paper on virtual teams, and it was an opportunity for the library to help.

Monitor library related tweets

People are likely saying things about your library or things that are related to your library. The reason I am able to find questions or tweets like the one above is because I monitor our Champlain College hashtag and because I have some tweet alerts set up for specific word related to libraries, research, and papers. Through this monitoring, we can address user concerns and answer their questions.

Solicit feedback

This is something that we are not doing quite as well, and I hope that we can improve. But Twitter is a perfect tool to ask for feedback on some service you are thinking about adding or some initiative you recently implemented. Twitter is great for informally asking questions. When designing resources or services for users, it’s important to actually ask them. Twitter is one tool that could facilitate that.

Create greater awareness of the library

Doing all the aforementioned things creates a greater awareness of the library and what it has to offer. Being active on social networking sites like Twitter makes the library more visible. Not every post gets noticed. And some that you think go unnoticed are actually effective. With the St. Patrick’s Day post I mentioned before, no one tweeted back saying what a good post it was. It seemed like it may have fallen on deaf ears. But not long after a student came in, mentioned he saw the post, and checked out a book because of it.

Facebook, email, and print are all important too and should be used accordingly depending on your community. But Twitter is great tool to have in your communication toolbox. It can be powerful in furthering your library’s mission.

Laura, a London law librarian, asked in the comments of the post how this idea was working out. So, I figured I would share my experiences.

So far, things have been fairly positive. If I find someone from our college is doing a paper I may send them a link to a possible useful resource, or even just wish them good luck. Sometimes I don’t hear anything back, sometimes I do.

Erik Qualman said in his viral video Social Media Revolution “in the near future we will no longer search for products and services. They will find us via social media.” That’s what’s going on here. Social media, powerful search capabilities, and RSS make it possible to have a form of ESP. We can deliver value to our patrons when they are not even expecting it and maybe even make them say “wow” like in the example above.

Like I said, not everything has been a success. Sometimes I don’t hear back from folks, but hopefully they find the support useful. But the alerts I’ve set up also give me a lot of insight into the research and study habits of students. There’s a lot of talk of procrastination, and a number of late night posts or posts about the rigors of writing papers. Some students post multiple tweets about the paper they’re working on, and you can see that their being  pretty diligent about it.

The value of Twitter, and social media in general, is not just delivering services but also listening and learning more about your users. These alerts are doing both.

image cc on Flickr via brunkfordbraun

You have a library website. People go there, learn about your library, get help, and access your resources. But that’s not the only place where people should be able to do those things. The library website should be thought of as a larger critter, with tentacles that stretch out in lot of different directions, trying to scoop in unsuspecting patrons.

What do I mean by tentacles? Tentacles are other places, spread out on the web, where people can connect with the library. This could mean customizing your library Facebook page, to add a chat widget or links to library resources. It could also mean having notes on pictures in Flickr that link to a catalog record. It could mean a lot of things:

• Library resources in your LMS (Angel, Blackboard, Moodle, etc)
• Creating search alerts in Twitter to snag patrons who didn’t even know the library could help
• Library blogs
• Library videos on Youtube or Vimeo

Your official library website should be a sort of home base where people can learn everything about your library and what you have to offer. But having tentacles can be very useful in showing the value of the library and catching users who may never go to your website.

An LMS is a good example of a tentacle. Some users (especially distance users) may never even think about the library. But if you have a section or page in an LMS then the library may become more visible and get additional use. The same goes with Twitter. Users may not be following you library account, but if you set up alerts for a few library related words, you can contact them and make them realize that they have access to a library and that it could be of value to them.

Get bits of your content out to numerous places on the web. Don’t think of these things as watered down versions of your website. Think of them as tentacles stretching out across the web, extending your services and resources to unexplored nooks and crannies.

This got me thinking though. There are likely a lot of potential library related questions on Twitter from our patrons that we miss because they might not be asking us or thinking of the library when they tweet. Patrons may be talking about proper citation or research though not @replying or DMing the library.

So, to remedy this and catch some of these questions I set up several alerts using Twitter’s advanced search. You can take advantage of the Boolean nature of the advanced search to make your searches very specific. I set up searches for:

• Tweets containing the word library
• Tweets containing the word cite
• Tweets containing the word research
• Tweets containing the word paper
• Tweets containing the word need AND book OR article OR books OR articles

All of these alerts I set up were within a 10-25 mile radius of the college to keep it targeted locally and keep hits managable. I keep these alerts in a folder in Google Reader.

Different libraries might run different searches. For example a public library around this time may run a search having to do with “tax help” or “taxes.” The searches can be tailored to your specific community, and they can be modified over time. I may find that some of the searches I’m running never return any useful hits. But something like the word “cite” or “citation” is not used that often. When it is, there’s a decent chance it’s something a library can help with.

What do other folks think? Are there other searches you would run? Is this just going out and looking for more work?

Photo by Fozzman on Flickr

People are talking about your library in both the physical and virtual world. It is difficult to know what is being said in private conversations without being omnipresent, but it’s easy to discover what’s being said online. You just need to work on your listening skills. Using tools like RSS, alerts, and saved searches it is possible to hear most of what is being said about your library online.

Twitter Alerts

To find out what users are saying about your library on Twitter, first go to Twitter advanced search. From there you can run any number of searches for your library using either exact phrases or including certain words. Use your librarian chops to run searches that might be about your library. For example at my institution our building is called the Miller Information Commons, but people may just refer to it as the Champlain Library. So some searches may include: “miller information commons,” “mic,” “champlain college library,” and “champlain library.” After you run each of these searches you’ll see a link on the right that says “feed for this query.”

You can then grab this feed and save it to Google Reader or your feedreader of choice as a saved search. Whenever someone says something using those words you’ll be notified.

You can also set up searches by location. For example, I have set up a search for the word “library” within 25 miles of my city. I get some unrelated hits (which are still pretty interesting), but I also get many that I may have missed otherwise.

Google Alerts

Another useful tool to know what is being said is Google Alerts. This tool gives you “updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.” Once again, you can set up variations of searches for your library. These alerts can be delivered once a week, once a day, or as they happen. You can then get them sent either to your email or again create a feed for them and have them go to your feedreader. I actually have a folder in Google Reader that is all saved searches and alerts for my library.

Blog Alerts

It’s also possible to set up alerts for what is being said in the blogosphere about your library. If you go to Google Blog Search you can run the same searches as above and find blog posts about your library. After you run a search there is once again the option on the left side of the results screen to subscribe either via email or feed.

Social Search

In addition to these searches, both Bing and Google will be adding social searching capabilities within the coming weeks. This will make it even easier to find out what people are saying on Twitter, Facebook and possibly other social networks. Once these features are rolled out try setting up alerts on these services as well. I know I’ll try it.

Once you know what is being said you can address people’s concerns, respond to compliments, and ultimately understand your users better.

Kelly Dallen and Chris Brogan both have good information on this topic as well.

• Pictures – Posts can get stale if all you are giving your audience is text or links to more text. Set up an account through a Twitter enabled photo-sharing service like TwitPic or Yfrog. Services like these allow you to easily upload photos from anywhere and share them to your library’s Twitter account.
• Retweet other people’s stuff – An easy way to make friends is to promote content that other folks are sharing. Perhaps one of your friends just shared an interesting fact or video or article. By retweeting that piece of content you’re complimenting the friend that shared it because it shows them that you think they share good things. You’re also passing on interesting information to your followers. Retweeting is win-win and really easy to do.
• Community Info – Going along with retweeting, you can also pass along information of significance to your community. When there are events going on on campus, even if they have nothing to do with the library, I’ll post about them. Libraries are community centers and central hubs. It’s only fitting that you share information of interest to your community.
• Encouragement – People are often trying to accomplish something at your library. Let them know that you’re on their side and ready to help. It’s important to include the personal touch when you’re tweeting.

• Announcements – Keep your followers informed of anything that comes up. If your website crashes, post a quick tweet about it letting people know you’re aware of the problem and working on it. Snowstorm? Alert people of sudden library closings. Twitter is where people go for real-time information. Make sure that they can get it.
• Links to cool library content – You’re doing other cool things besides Twitter, right? Maybe you have an awesome Flickr stream, or perhaps you just shot a really fun video about ninjas and laptop lending. Twitter is a great way to link to and promote the other content that your library is creating.
• Respond to criticism – I can’t stress the importance of this one enough. People are saying things about your library whether you like it or not. If they’re talking about the library online, you should definitely be addressing their concerns in a positive manner. You have power online to influence conversations about your library, and the worst thing you can do is ignore people.

Figuring out the problem of what to post as a library is easier if you think about what interests you as a consumer of social media. What kind of tweets do you read or click through? What are interesting tweets? Not all of your tweets have to be related to the library. The measure of your tweets should be, “Is this interesting or useful to my specific community?” If you think it would be, then post away.

Are there other thoughts? I’m always trying to come up with good ideas. Tell me about some of your favorite library tweets.

Social media is no different. Your success needs to be measured just like anything else, so you can either improve what you’re doing or reveal that your efforts are paying off. Social media is a little difficult to measure, but there are still things you can track, such as fans and followers or interactions.

Tracking Twitter

Twitter Counter – The best tool I’ve found to easily track your Twitter follower count is Twitter Counter. It graphs your followers each day going back three months. You can track back even further if you pay for a Pro account. This is great for seeing is specific marketing initiatives are working. If you put up fliers and your follower count shoots up around the time you do so, there might be a relationship between the two.

TweetStats – TweetStats allows you to see your information about how you’re posting. It gives you information about the frequency of your posts, what times you most often post, and even what tools you use. It’s another helpful tool to understand how you’re using Twitter.

Tracking Facebook

Facebook makes it easier on their fan pages. They give you all the stats you can handle on their “Insights” page. They show you how many comments, wall posts, and “likes” you’re getting on your content, giving you a good understanding of how people are interacting with your page. They also measure your fans. They give you a graph over time and also a demographic breakdown by gender, age, or location.

When you look at these statistics over time a picture begins to emerge. You can examine weeks when you had a lot of interactions and see what sort of posts received the most attention. This will improve your post quality and ultimately help you develop a better relationship and understanding of your audience.

What other tracking tools do you use to understand the effectiveness of your social media efforts?

So you’ve already figured out good things to post to your social media of choice and you have great content up there. Now where is everybody? A friend asked me a couple weeks ago “How do you market your web presence? Basically – how do you gain fans and followers?” I’ve been thinking about that a lot myself lately, so I figured I would share the strategies that I came up with.

• Link everywhere you can -  Have a link to your social media pages on your library homepage. If you’re on multiple social networks mention one on the other. Put links to them in your email signature. Links are good. Use them generously.
• Print advertising – Post fliers around your library, community or school, especially next to computers (see above picture). You could even take out an ad in your local or school newspaper. There’s still a place for print.
• Instruction sessions – When you’re in the classroom feel free to mention your social media presence to students. Let them know that you’re trying to make it as easy as possible to connect with the library. They just might appreciate it.
• Talk to people – Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, so mention it to friends, people at the reference desk, and people in your community. If you tell two friends, and they tell two friends…
• Build a contingent of friends – There are probably people already in your community who you are friends with on a social network. On Facebook you can “suggest a page to friends.” Ask people who are your friends to follow/fan the library. They want to help you out because they’re your friend, and they’re getting interesting content and conversation as a bonus.
• Follow and be followed in return - This one is simply the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Find people in your community and start following them. Chances are, most of them will follow you back. I like this one a lot because the goal of social media is not simply to gain followers (that’s the goal of cults). Social media is about sharing, learning, conversations and giving.
• Web Ads – I haven’t tried this one yet, but I hear that targeted ads on Facebook are pretty inexpensive and can be effective. Stanford library has utilized ads in the past and they may be the most popular college library Facebook page out there.
• Give it time – Set small goals for yourself and meet them. Then set larger goals. This post is called “Grow Your Library’s Social Media Presence” not “Explode Your Library’s Social Media Presence.” That’s what it takes. It’s like a garden that needs nurturing. Give every user interaction proper attention. Eventually with care and diligence you’ll have a blossoming and fruitful social media presence.

Has anyone been trying other ways of promoting their social networks? Any great successes in getting the word out? I’d really love to hear about them.

Tweetup at ACRL 2009 by srharris on Flickr

In my last post I talked about how libraries can be using Twitter to connect with their users. But Twitter also allows librarians and library enthusiasts to connect with each other. I’ve been seeing a lot of great Twitter conversations going on between people in the library community. These are a few:

• #followalibrarian – I love this hash tag. It’s like #followfriday but for librarians. On Friday’s you simply tweet recommendations of librarians on Twitter and tag it with #followalibrarian. I’ve connected with a lot of cool librarians by searching for this tag.
• #librarydayinthelife – The Library Day in the Life Project was the brainchild of Bobbi Newman. She created it to promote awareness of “the joys and challenges of working in a library.” People blog or tweet about what a typical day is like for them where they work.
• Sharing Articles and News – I find that Twitter is often doing a better job than my RSS reader at getting me good articles related to libraries and social media. Good content on Twitter seems to bubble up to the top through people retweeting and discussing articles. I also find new and different stuff instead of getting updates from the same blogs over and over. It’s a way to broaden the scope of your reading.
• Tweetups – Twitter isn’t just online, people meet up in person. I went a tweetup at ACRL in March that was a lot of fun. I’ve been to a couple locally in the Burlington community. And I just saw a Massachusetts tweetup get planned via Twitter. Social media is great, but meeting in real life can’t be beat.
• Causes – Twitter is being used very well by librarians to promote library related causes. A recent one that come to mind is the movement to get a library themed Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor. Another is the Save Ohio Libraries movement that is spreading the word about the massive library budget cuts going on in Ohio.
• Conferences – Twitter is great for connecting with other librarians at conferences.You’ve likely heard the old adage that the most helpful part of conferences are the impromptu chats in the hall between sessions. Twitter’s the virtual version of that. It adds a whole other dimension to conferences and makes them a richer experience. I followed the recent Handheld Librarian online conference hashtag (which was even a trending topic) and got some great info. It’s great to be able to learn about what’s going on at a conference even if you can’t make it.

I’m really loving this community of librarians on Twitter and feel much more connected to librarians from New England to New Zealand. Are there other ways you’re using Twitter to connect with your colleagues?

• Library events – Let people know what’s going on. Having a movie night in the library? Let people know. Having a chili cookoff? Get the word out!
• Links to articles, videos, etc. – If you come across web content that would be relevant or helpful to your patrons, tweet it. You can even tweet things marginally related if you think your patrons would respond favorably. Twitter is great for sending links. And don’t forget to use a link shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.
• Solicit feedback – Twitter is made for conversations, so feel free to ask questions of your followers. Ask things that you actually want to know about and that you are prepared to act upon though. Don’t ask, “should the library stay open until midnight?” unless you’re prepared to do something with their responses.
• New additions to your collection - Got some new books? Added a database recently? Tweet it up! People might not know about your additions unless you tell them. Twitter can be helpful for informing patrons about new resources.
• Marketing - get the word out about how great your library is! Libraries and librarians do some pretty awesome stuff, but people don’t always see it. Let people know you just created a new tutorial or that you had over 150,000 visits last year. Don’t worry about tooting your own horn a little bit, just not all the time.
• Answer questions - in the example below I noticed someone was working on a paper and simply sent them a link, you’d be surprised how powerful that can be.

Don’t forget to be human and be social. Being human means not only sending out the same links to events or new books over and over, but sending out fun things like librarians dancing to Thriller. Don’t be an automaton. And being social means having conversations with patrons. Answer @replies, ask questions, socialize. Don’t simply broadcast like you have a megaphone. It is social networking after all.

This list is by no means comprehensive, just some ideas to get people thinking. Please leave any other ideas you have in the comments.