We love libraries!

You (presumably!) love libraries too!!!

Let’s tell people about that!

We talk say that sentence a lot, and we try to give you some specific strategies for reaching out to your community members who may need to hear from you. This week we want to give you some tips to quickly tell people about your library – and we want you to join with us in doing this as a big group!

Whaaaaattt?

Let’s break that down a little bit, so we all get it.

Step One:

We want you to get comfortable giving elevator speeches.

Okay, now: what’s that?

An elevator speech is you doing advocacy on a topic – any topic. For this project, we want you to talk about your library, your department, your collection, a cool program, your library hamster, or anything else that can sound interesting to others. Literally, anything.

So pick a topic.

Now you are going to give a 30 to 60 second speech on that topic. Why is it important? Why do you care about it? Why will someone else care about this? Is there something specific you want them to do, or are they just going to be wowed?

Write down some notes. Practice saying it a couple of times. (Teeny kids are great listeners for this kind of project, as are pets. Official Office Dog Lady Grey would be happy to listen to you practice!) Eliminate all the pesky filler-words: umm, like, uhhh… Time yourself – it’s really easy to talk too long once you get rolling!

 

Step Two:

Make a video of yourself doing your elevator speech.

Feel free to use props, cute backdrops, friends and colleagues, adorable pets, or whatever else would make you feel comfortable and confident. Feel free to just stand quietly too. It’s all up to you!

 

Step Three:

Send the video to us! It’s probably easiest to share this on Google Drive and share it with us. (Tell it you want to share with email admin @ cmle.org, and it should work out fine!)

 

Step Four: (This one for CMLE staff!)

We are going to put them all up on our YouTube channel!

Does this mean you should be nervous that you don’t look cute today? Or that you don’t have important things to say?

HECK. NO.

Instead, it means that you are going to be part of a big group of library people who all talk about libraries and library stuff. We will be actively sharing this with stakeholders across our CMLE membership (300+ libraries and archives!), and with libraries across the state.

 

The whole idea to these speeches is that they are easy to do. But if you want a few basic ideas, you can check out an article we posted about them.

You can google around for all kinds of video examples. We have a couple here to share:

This one is about pitching yourself for a job, but it’s all advocacy!

Daniel Pink, author, gives you six structures: