The 10-Minute Digital Librarian #4: Develop a Plan for Social Media

In the first round of 10-Minute Digital Librarian posts, we’ve been focusing on how you can use digital tools in order to raise awareness about your library and its services.

We’ve looked at how to improve your discoverability through Wikipedia and mapping tools, as well as working on how easily you can be found via search engines. In the latter, we mentioned the value of thinking, also, about search engines within social media platforms.

Of course, social media presence is about more than just being found. When used well, it can be a great way of engaging users, and bringing them either into your building, or at least onto your site.

Our 4th 10-Minute Digital Librarian exercise therefore focuses on taking the time to develop a plan for social media.

Planning is important, given that your time is valuable, and of course it is possible to spend far too much time on social media!

Key questions you may want to think about include:

  • Think about who you want to reach? Are you focused on communicating with your existing users – who are they? Or do you want to reach out to additional groups? If you are starting, it makes sense to begin with existing users.
  • Linked to this, think about what you want to achieve through your social media presence.
  • Which channel or channels make most sense for you? This is likely to be steered by the type of audience you want to reach? If it’s professionals, LinkedIn may be best. Facebook users tend to be older, while younger ones use Instagram. Think also about networks such as Telegram, Signal or WhatsApp where these are used to share news and information.
  • Play around with the analytical tools available on the platform. These can offer you interesting lessons about which posts achieve most impact. Factors such as the theme of the post, the style, use of images, and even time of day can play a role.
  • Plan for regular content, but keep it sustainable for yourself in terms of time and effort. With experience, you will learn more about what works or not. Try to maintain a consistent brand as far as possible, and use images to make things attractive.
  • Be ready to interact with those who follow you – it can be a great way of building up links. You can also proactively follow others, including with others who can spread the word about your work.
  • Don’t forget to lead people to your site! While social media sites themselves seek to capture attention, your goal should be to get people engaging with library resources and services!

There are fortunately many good resources, not least papers presented at sessions organised by our Management and Marketing Section at previous World Library and Information Congresses.

There are also lots of resources online that you can take a look at of course – we’ve drawn on a selection of these in putting together this post, for example Super Library Marketing, bookriot.com, the Open Education Database,  or this example from a non-library source. Look around and see if there are a set of tips that work for you.

Good luck!

 

If you are interested in library marketing more broadly, you should take a look at the work of IFLA’s Management and Marketing Section, which provides a platform to share expertise and experience.

Discover our series of 10-Minute Digital Librarian posts as it grows.

5 thoughts on “The 10-Minute Digital Librarian #4: Develop a Plan for Social Media

  1. Jodi-Ann Sadler

    Being that I am now apart of the team responsible for the library’s social media sites I found this blog to be very informative towards my duties. Thank you

  2. Albina Krymskaya

    Very interesting post! I am going to share it with my LIS students as well. I am wondering if there are any other professional social media besides LinkedIn (i.e. in some countries LinkedIn is restricted).

    Thank you for this post!

  3. Mulugeta W/oldetsadik

    It is an interesting and informative post particularly for the librarians of developing countries so that they get out of their box in order to fit 21st-century Library and Information Science trends.

    1. Mulugeta W/oldetsadik

      The forum which is going on this blog is worthy that is why I follow your blog in order to exchange ideas, experiences and knowledge with professional colleagues worldwide.
      Thank you for making public my comment
      Mulugeta W/Tsadik, Librarian@Hawassa University, Ethiopia

  4. Pingback: The 10-Minute Digital Librarian #4: Develop a Plan for Social Media – [MULUGETA]: Library & Information Service – Professional Blog/Website

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