I thoroughly enjoyed this week's reflective Thing and was surprised at how strongly I agreed with the various posts that Andy had put up for us to peruse. Truth is, I had never given much thought to the difference between 'advertising' and 'marketing' our services before, aside from the fact that 'marketing' seemed more active than simply 'publicising' or 'advertising' what we did. Reflecting on the new opportunities at our disposal however, I found myself vigorously nodding at various sentences.
I wholeheartedly suspect that there will be a direct link in the next few years between how well libraries manage to merge the 4 Ps of product, price, place and promotion with the 4 Cs of content, context, connections and conversations, and the value our users will continue to place on our services, how central libraries will remain in our users' lives. In short, this could well make or break library services. It's not 'Out with the old and in with the new' though, but more a case of making room for the new ways of communicating with our readers alongside the more traditional ones.
I would very much like to point my readers back to my favourite SlideShare presentation discovered when dealing with Thing 11 (slideShare):
On a different note, I had not imagined when I embarked on the 23 Things programme, that even more than the Things themselves, and the content and contexts I started to master, it would be the connections between people I would grow to value so much. I have learnt as much from colleagues' blogs as from the official site and discovered a wealth of expertise I didn't even know existed. Add to that the unexpected comradeship and the professional thrill of connecting with colleagues I hadn't yet met, and I'll have to doubly cheat on this week's task: I can't limit myself to just one Thing . Despite all my reservations, blogging - or rather reading other people's blogs for the large part - will be one of the Things I'm hoping to keep up to date with.
Our Library had already decided to implement a Library Facebook page and a Twitter account, so it would be misleading to say that these were a result of the 23 Things adventure. My choice of tool to start will therefore be SlideShare, for the immediate opportunities it offers us right now.
Oh, and by the way - LOVED the Tweeting and Facebooking that's going on in the Orkneys, and pleasantly surprised at the Library of Congress - thanks for sharing these!
Showing posts with label Library marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Library marketing. Show all posts
Monday, 30 August 2010
Saturday, 21 August 2010
Thing 7 - Twitter
Now this is one post I was actually very much looking forward to writing! Our Library had agreed a while ago that having a presence on Twitter and Facebook would be beneficial, and we had been planned to set it up this summer, so I took advantage of the 23 Things programme to kill two birds with one stone - check us out at MMLLib!
Personally I am a fan of Twitter, having been introduced to it last year by one of my colleagues who is one of the most enthusiastic Twitter fans I know. I find it an excellent professional tool and use it mainly for professional development, which inevitably involves keeping up to date with what more intelligent people (and wittier) than yours truly have to say on various issues I would probably not bother seeking a regular update on. Interestingly, I've noticed that I've become much more dependent on it since I've set it up on my shiny new BlackBerry, which tends to support Twitter much better than Facebook as I want more out of Facebook than simply the status updates. But beware, Twitter has a very addictive side to it, you won't be able to leave it alone.
One of the drawbacks of having greatly delayed my start on the 23 Things programme is that I missed out on so many interesting comments posted by fellow professionals here in Cambridge: I do find it slightly disheartening to know that the more people you follow, the more likely you are to miss useful/interesting comments due to the sheer volume of information tweeted. For example, it is seriously making me rethink the number of newspapers that I follow on Twitter. Ah, the drawbacks of our information society...
I tend to disagree with LottieMSmith's point that Twitter has more to offer libraries and their students than Facebook: my experience so far, though far less comprehensive and in-depth than hers, is that Twitter works extremely well for us librarians, however I fear that students have not embraced it with the same enthusiasm as us. Having promoted our upcoming Twitter and Facebook presence wherever possible and whenever appropriate to students and staff alike (why let a perfectly good opportunity to promote our Library services go by unattended?), I've noticed more of an interest at the mention of our Facebook page than Twitter. I am not losing hope that they'll see the benefit of it though, and we'll certainly refine our use of both tools to show off how well they complement each other rather than compete with each other. Time will tell if Twitter and Facebook will deliver on their promises for our library, or if our hopes will be cruelly (and very annoyingly) dashed.
I would be interested to know how well Twitter, and Facebook for that matter, will be received by our academics, or if its use will stay confined to the students and library world colleagues. I'll most definitely be watching this space and working hard to integrate Twitter and Facebook as important tools to communicate with the readership we support.
Personally I am a fan of Twitter, having been introduced to it last year by one of my colleagues who is one of the most enthusiastic Twitter fans I know. I find it an excellent professional tool and use it mainly for professional development, which inevitably involves keeping up to date with what more intelligent people (and wittier) than yours truly have to say on various issues I would probably not bother seeking a regular update on. Interestingly, I've noticed that I've become much more dependent on it since I've set it up on my shiny new BlackBerry, which tends to support Twitter much better than Facebook as I want more out of Facebook than simply the status updates. But beware, Twitter has a very addictive side to it, you won't be able to leave it alone.
One of the drawbacks of having greatly delayed my start on the 23 Things programme is that I missed out on so many interesting comments posted by fellow professionals here in Cambridge: I do find it slightly disheartening to know that the more people you follow, the more likely you are to miss useful/interesting comments due to the sheer volume of information tweeted. For example, it is seriously making me rethink the number of newspapers that I follow on Twitter. Ah, the drawbacks of our information society...
I tend to disagree with LottieMSmith's point that Twitter has more to offer libraries and their students than Facebook: my experience so far, though far less comprehensive and in-depth than hers, is that Twitter works extremely well for us librarians, however I fear that students have not embraced it with the same enthusiasm as us. Having promoted our upcoming Twitter and Facebook presence wherever possible and whenever appropriate to students and staff alike (why let a perfectly good opportunity to promote our Library services go by unattended?), I've noticed more of an interest at the mention of our Facebook page than Twitter. I am not losing hope that they'll see the benefit of it though, and we'll certainly refine our use of both tools to show off how well they complement each other rather than compete with each other. Time will tell if Twitter and Facebook will deliver on their promises for our library, or if our hopes will be cruelly (and very annoyingly) dashed.
I would be interested to know how well Twitter, and Facebook for that matter, will be received by our academics, or if its use will stay confined to the students and library world colleagues. I'll most definitely be watching this space and working hard to integrate Twitter and Facebook as important tools to communicate with the readership we support.
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