Tag Archives: #LibrariesTransform

Advocacy

Advocacy Alchemy: Elevator Speech

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:

 

 

 

Advocacy

Advocacy Alchemy: Reach out to one person

It’s time for Advocacy Alchemy!!

Each week we will share one tip – usually something simple and easy to do – that will help you build your advocacy skills. Why Alchemy? Because libraries are wonderful and not enough people know about the breadth and depth of library work. When we mix together all the different small things we are doing to advocate, the result in library support will be worth its weight in gold!

To be a good member of the library profession you need to be advocating for yourself, for your organization, and for your profession. It does not matter one single bit what job you have, what your training in libraries may be, or what kind of library you are in. If you are in a library, we want to help you advocate!

You can implement each tip as it comes out, or feel free to browse back through these tips to help build up your skills and help your library!

This week we have a very simple advocacy task.

Go find someone who does not use a library – any type of library, or just your type of library. Tell them about a cool/wonderful/fun/exciting thing happening in your library. It can be a program, a service, materials – anything. Just go tell them.

It’s so simple, it feels like nothing. But literally, everything you do to help spread the word about libraries, and the cool stuff we have there, is good.

And when we all go out this week and talk to one person who doesn’t usually use the library, and tell them about a neat thing in the library? Well – that’s just going to be a wonderful bouquet of new people who know about library stuff!

Use #LibrariesTransform across social media, and share this week’s advocacy success!