Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.

Today’s episode is part of our series on Library Basics. We are working through some of the skills people need in every library. Not everyone is going to school for a Master’s degree in Library Science, and that’s fine. We want to be sure everyone has the skills to be comfortable in a library and to be successful for the community you are serving.

Social media of all sorts can be great for helping you to connect your materials, services, and programs with your community members. You probably get a number of them coming into the library already, and that’s great. But there are probably more people who never make it into your library, and you need a good strategy to connect your great stuff with them. Social media can be that tool for you.

But, how do you use social media? Where should you start? What should you say? We are going to walk you through some basic tips today, to help you get started. In the end, the most important thing is just to give it a try, be yourself, and don’t get too worried about making it perfect. Like any conversation you have with anyone, things will sometimes be a little imperfect. Just keep going, keep sharing, and keep talking with people.

So, where do you start? There are a lot of social media platforms, and it’s probably not possible to be on all of them. And there is not really a right answer for where you should be when you talk with your community. First, go where you are comfortable. If long strings of text are not for you right now, maybe Facebook is not a great place to start. If images confound you, then Instagram is not where you should put your time and energy. If you want to be brief, and share snippets of information, Twitter may be for you. It’s okay, there isn’t a perfect social media tool to use. Ask around, see what people in your community are using. Go there. Get comfortable with it. Start sharing ideas. Talk with people. Work on building relationships.

Next, figure out how you are going to use social media. Is it to share library information and announcements? Will you also include material from your parent organization – your school, hospital, City Hall, or another one? Have some sort of plan that you want to accomplish. It’s a good idea to write this down, so you are sure you are thinking through all the things you want to say. It does not have to be long or complex – just get through the ideas and goals you have for your communication strategy. You can check out the American Library Association’s Social Media Guidelines for Public and Academic Libraries to get ideas, and to make sure you are covering all the important areas in your procedure or policy writeup. 

You may want to reach out to your administrators for permission here. Some organizations do not want a bunch of stray social media accounts floating around out there, especially if it’s not clear what kind of content you are going to cover. That document you assembled with your goals, some initial ideas, and the mission of your social media account will help them to see that you are working toward a useful flow of information, not just having fun on the latest online fad.

And now, where do you start? Let’s say it’s Day One with your new social media account. What do you say first? We have suggestions! Taylor and Francis, a UK library support vendor, did focus groups in the UK, the US, and India, to see how libraries are using their social media accounts these are some of their findings:

• 1. Collection usage & discovery Social media platforms are useful for promoting books and collections, as well as obtaining information on what are popular or unpopular with users.
• 2. Customer service Students tend to be very active on social media, and librarians have embraced popular platforms as a way of communicating with users to provide customer service, as well as networking with other libraries for this purpose.
• 3. Teaching & learning Websites such as Youtube are great for gathering new information, to educate yourself as well as educating users. Libraries can use social media platforms to post insights into specific materials and collections, to educate as well as promote what is available.
• 4. Outreach Sharing pictures and other content is a good way of letting users know what the library is up to. This can be for specific events, new developments or simply for the purpose of showing users what it can be possible in your library.

We will wrap up today with a few tips to help keep your social media accounts humming right along:

• Keep your name as consistent as possible across all your social media accounts. Don’t make it hard for people to find you.
• Duplicate messages across your social media accounts. Most people will only look at one platform, so may miss something you say on another.
• If you have a blog or newsletter or other content resources, be sure that material goes onto your social media.
• Don’t spend hours on it! Social media is designed to be sticky for your attention span, even when you are contributing content to it. Set up a certain time to post, and stay with that.
• Share all the good stuff in your library! News, programs, materials – everything is good.
• Patron privacy is still important! Only post pictures of people who have consented to being on your social media. Kids need a parent to consent.
• Talk with people, not just to people. Social media done well is a conversation! Keep it flowing by asking questions, sharing things from other accounts, and commenting on other people’s material.
• We suggest keeping it positive. Social media, justly, has a reputation for being a sewer of the internet. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Be thoughtful in who you follow, to keep your input focused on issues relevant to your library. 
• Be cautious about responding to topics when you are mad, overly sad, or even really happy. It’s good to show that there is a real person doing the account, but you don’t want to say something in the heat of a moment that you would regret later.
• Keep up the content! It’s kind of sad to see a library account that posts once every couple of months. More good stuff has happened than that. Even if you just post a quick note about a book in your collection, that is fine. Try to post at least weekly, and don’t stress out about trying to make it perfect. Just talk.

Books Read

Now, let’s get to the part of every episode that we love: sharing a book we are reading. We will link to these books on our shownotes pages, and the link will take you to Amazon. You probably know this, but when you click one of our links and then buy anything at all from Amazon, they give us a small percentage of their profits. That support really helps us, and although it’s anonymous so we won’t know it was you – we appreciate you taking the time to help us!

Watch Over Me, by Nina LaCour

Lowcountry Boneyard (A Liz Talbot Mystery Book 3), by Susan Boyer

Overview

This was a quick overview of the foundations of library social media. We hope you feel like you are part of the larger community of library people! Here are a few takeaways for you:

• It is probably a good idea to be on social media, so you can have a quick way to communicate with your community. But you don’t have to be on ALL the social media!
• Before you start, have a set of goals and a plan for your social media work. Chatting with people is good, but you want to be focused on sharing your information with everyone.
• Build relationships. It is more than just shouting your news into a void; you have the opportunity to meet people, talk with people who may not have visited your library, and to interact with library people across the country. Have fun doing this!

Thanks for spending time with us today. It is always great to have this time to chat with you about libraries and the skills we need to be successful. Come back next week, because we have more information to share about libraries! It is always better when you are here with us, as we work through our journey across library skills. Visibility