PR Forum: Next Practices in Communication @ Your Library
(slides soon available here.)
Stephen Abram
Focusing, defending, making sure we'll survive & thrive, now easy to communicate with people. Brochures & bookmarks vs. what we are able to do now, via Twitter Facebook, etc.
They need specialists in information during the information age. Just like how they needed engineers during teh industrial age. We need to promote this. Shutting down school libraries in CA led to a 30% drop in grades. Every dollar iinvested in public libraries is $6.50 returned (really $20.) Need to get this message out, sell ourselves, services, what we're doing, the social bloom we cause, the difference we make both in finding information and helping kids continue to read.
People form their opinions of a librarian when they are 8.
People need to know to come to us for life-changing answers. Google answers as many questions in 30 min as all librarians do together in 20 years.
Need to promote messages besides "we've got books." Our competitive advantage is our people; we need a page describing our experts: geneology, medical, facebook page, goodreads, history, RA, etc. Need to be more extroverted about it.
Need to not be anonymous. Is our doctor anonymous?
Is our Library an Event? People Make This!
Our circ clerks elicit comments, greet people. Pass along a bookmark on how to use Goodreads, etc.
Need to describe the experience (storytime) versus the books. No one hugs Google, librarians get them. How about a stroytime how-to where we teach them how to get Goodnight Moon across?
The People We See Aren't Our Only Patrons
Patrons aren't "one size." We see the people who need our help the most. The majority of use comes through "virtual branch." Very different users.
Inertia is the Problem
Don't study to death; death is not our original goal. We form committees rather than learning by doing. We already do this with face-out collections.
Selection is Our Forte
You pick what "sells" per your patrons and region; not just what's big on Amazon at the moment. Gardening books that work in our climate, etc. No one wants to see our inventory management system. 50% of all OPAC use comes from Amazon first. Bibliocomments, LibraryThing, GoodReads can change this. We need to create a local experience that matters; where people can start sharing things. We know our users, they sign in, create a community.
We Let Everybody Have What They Want
We care about everybody as an individual; helping people learn, self-actualize.
"The dark ages began with closing a library." Lots of quotes like this.
New Thinking
We have access to 18 million journals vs. the 100 of the old days!
18 PR Tools for Libraries from 2007
YouTube -- No 2 search engine next to Google.
Second Life -- How relevant is this to users? Maybe not any more. Too soon to tell.
MySpace -- Facebook is taking over.
Facebook -- Get here, use this.
Flickr
Podcasts/iTunes
Wikipedia -- No 1 influencer of what Google finds. Make sure it's right.
Ning -- Social network, doesn't charge educational organizations.
WebEx/LiveMeeting -- Costs $85/yr. Extends our reach. We can heal frustration long distance. Information literacy, storytelling, footnotes. How to do these things.
Twitter -- The no. 1 job-finding tool in the US, Sears puts up a bunch. Multiple Twitter accounts per area of expertise!
Blogging
Tagging, Scanning, RSS
Search Engine Optimization Free Gale App helps patrons find nearest library, information on them. How do you break a person's fingers, hit their phone...
LinkedIn/Plaxo We should all be in LinkedIn. Free, takes no time to write a profile.
SurveytMonkey/Zoomerang Ask what users are actually using, so we can respond to that need. Especially virtual users.
Mozes, NowPublic, MyBlogLog all useless.
Connect People with Your Library
Learning at Your Library
7 different ways. Gene sets also determine this--musicians, politicians, etc. all absorb information effectively in different ways. Why we're influencing politicians in-person Tuesday. Most learn experientially, from surgeons to mechanics. Auditory beats text. Visual is huge.
Understand Why They Read
What psych impact do they get from working with us, recommendations, etc. We need to data mine circulation records beyond the top 20. Bestsellers are bought, not neccessarily borrowed.
Social Glue
We train moms to tell stories; the best place to learn. A real benefit. Helps moms not go batshit by meeting people as well.
What is More Important for Value-Based Funding?
What Tugs at the Heartstrings:
6% annual increase in circ......100% incr in ILL....500% in website hits......1000% in database results
OR 50% increases in customer satisfaction. How do we mine the well of users? What stories can we tell? How do we collect them? We need to blog stories about people preventing suicide, preventing cancer, improving lives VERSUS plain, boring stats. Videos of people who didn't make it through highschool whose lives would be damaged without us. We can make these videos viral!
7 Tricks You Can Do Right Away
1.) What are our top reference questions?
2.) Promote your staff. FB, Tweets, Web pages, photos. None of the truly "private" things. Connect genealogy librarian to genealogy professional, etc.
3.) Do a signage audit and walk through (watch out for "no.") Use a newbie to get an outside perspective. "Check your skateboard at the desk" vs. "No skateboards!" Make sure librarians are facing out as people approach.
4.) Get some widgets (Hint: API.) WHat would you like to do today? Top 20 reference questions? Consumer product reviews.
5.) Work with GIS. Geotag search engine optimization. Look at geographic information systems. Map and put information on it. Find out where most intense use happens. Can be surprising. Trailer park in Washington, DC.
6.) Go beyond statistics: Google Analytics, etc.
What we (Gale) Never Knew Before:
27% of users under 18. 59% are female. 29% are college students. 5% professors, 6% teachers. On any given day, 35% of users are there for the first time. 29% found products via the library website. 59% found what they were looking for on 1st search. 72% trusted the content more than what they found on Google. 81% still use Google.
Gale(tm) Driving User to the Library Swallowing the Information World!
Encyclopedia.com, HighBeam, WorldCat, iPhone App (then Drone, Blackberry, etc.), Questia, Geo-IP Measures, Etc. Watch for more.
7.) Develop a STORY collection strategy.
Read The Springboard.
Success is NOT About Things
We need to be socially-connected to our user population. Sustainably connect yourself with everyone you know. The number 1 place people go for information is friends and colleagues. We need to connect to these people or we will be disconnected.
News Should Be Top on the Website
Weather should be on the front page.
Clients are Buying "Dream Deck"
They are not buying your hammer and boards, they are buying the deck of their dreams. Help them build it. What feeling do we want them to have when they come in to read the paper, market something that connects to their dreams. Help immigrants get citizenship. We can do amazing things.
This Month is the Tipping Point
Internet has now progressed to its infancy. We are about to enter real change. The kind of change grandparents saw. 20 yrs brought phone, interstate, etc. No whining. We must be flexible, change in phases, take risks. Why it's the most exciting time to be in libraries.
Google Books Settlement
Libraries can compete. Need to teach people to research, not forage. We will soon be at paragraph-level rather than article-level. Think beyond the book. Promote specialists! We will be drowning in information! Google Editions opens next week: 14000 publishers, 20000 books open source, works on most readers. 2 million books. $1.99 each! SEO! SMO!
We need to battle special interest groups who propagate racist, sexist info and make it the 1st hit.
GEO-IP
Can have an instant message sent to user walking through the door: "Welcome to the most awesome and innovative library in the world."
Top 10 Ways to Drive People to the Library Using Social Media
1. Find the influencers
2. Connect with the influencers
3. Motivate the influencers
4. Build Buzz and Interest
5. Kodak moments
6. Flip camera crazy
7. Tweet and be tweeted
8. Emails -- they still work, for older people.
9. Survey
10. Measure and refine
PROVIDE TESTIMONIALS
Transmogrifying Containers
Get ebook readers. We should all have them to know how they work. Most books that matter to us will be on readers in the next 5 years. Not ready for libraries yet. If we don't participate, Google and Amazon will control. 2002 ($5.7m) 2010 ($9.1.) It's a giant mess. We should play with some of it.
Broadband
Google has been lobbying to get white space between 2-13. Google wants over-air broadband connectivity.
We Compete
The cloud: printing, software, storage. $199 printers can print to an email address. LA is all cloud vs. Microsoft.
Yahoo!/Bing, iPhone, Facebook Migration
Only Google and Bing are search engines.
Devices
iPads, Kobo, Kindles, eDGe, and Mobile. Steve Jobs can't tell us what to read and what to say. Offensive to our value system. We need to be more vical about our value system.
Mobile
Dominant device in North America this year. We're 7 yrs behind the rest of the world, even Namibia. We need to play with the devices on our lunch hours. Text, use apps.
Experience
1. Google 2. Bing 3. Us. WERE products and place (Philadelphia Free Library) THEN intentional experience (reference, etc.) NOW Designed Experience (differentiate based on patron-based design--auto worker learns this way...building self-esteem and confidence) WILL BE Experience on Demand (People co-create on platforms WE provide.) How do we build with them?! Medline tells you how you're going to die as well as prevention and curing. We want to help navigate these things. Questions to ask your physician. Context is king, NOT content.
Database of Intentions...?
The core of our profession is conversation. Talented human beings with decades of excellent experience that need to reframe that. New techies coming in need to help as they get helped with the patina of experience.
Future
Choose between achieving a dynamic future and dwelling in a nostalgic past--well within our power.
Chips in people. Credit card size phones that only use touch screens.
Tell stories, have conversations, create relationships (even ones we're not comfortable with.) Connect with social life so we are the center of the social life of information. More touchpoints than bookmarks & brochures. Permission Marketing. 90% of users will use in the next 90 days. Upgrade every user. Offer this to people. They choose their privacy level, trust us, and can always unfriend us.
Self Check #405 (image.)
Trans-literacy Move Beyond Reading & PC Skills...?
Great website: Wyoming Libraries (maybe prototype? Not findable, looked like cowboy stuff.)
No comments:
Post a Comment