Why does my library use social media?

July 6, 2011, 8:40 pm

ALA in New Orleans was a blast. The city has a great vibe—glad I finally got to experience it. Despite the humidity, it made me miss the South.

I gave a talk for LLAMA about managing social media. The theme I built upon was “from pioneer to policy-maker” – which sums up my early work on the fringes experimenting with 2.0 tools, to where I am now as an admin overseeing the social media program. But I also envision this as an analogy for social media in general— as a profession, we’re past the “dabbling” stages and are moving into something more concrete.

While preparing I looked around for social media guidelines, policies, procedures, strategies, etc from others. I found a great article Protection, Not Barriers outlining the state of affairs of policies in academic libraries. The authors found that 82% of their survey respondents operated without a social media policy. And that 74% indicated little or no concern regarding potential legal problems.

This was eye opening to me. Of course, back in the day I was totally that person. Why do we need a policy when we don’t exactly even know the full potential of these tools yet? We were all just experimenting and it was changing every month… but things seemed to have leveled off now with Facebook and Twitter emerging as the standards.

I decided to collect some information to update their research and conducted a very informal, unscientific, non-generalizable study. I emailed a handful of librarians who I know actively use social media in their organizations and asked if they had a policy or procedures. I heard back from twenty. It broke down like this:

40% no policy
40% are currently working on a policy or have one in draft form
20% have a policy in place

This suggests a noticeable shift. My small sample suggests that many of the libraries operating without a policy are now moving toward writing or implementing one. I predict that by ALA 2012 (or maybe 2013) we’ll see a total swing in which 80% of academic libraries will have a policy in place and only 20% will be without one.

The bigger picture though… this talk forced me to reflect on the past and future of social media. And there was one question that I kept emerging.

WHY?
When you ask most librarians why they have a social media presence they will likely say things like:

To promote library services, workshops, and events.
To provide better access to information.
To be where the users are.
To enhance instruction.
To collect feedback from patrons.

These are all fine actions— but they are what we are doing, not why we are doing it.

I’ve been very influenced by Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why and especially his TED Talk. (Read Steven Bell’s column on this too ) And I keep coming back to that question of why bother with social media at all? If we deleted all of our accounts today would it really matter? Would anyone notice? What impact would it have (or does it have) on our operations? The phrase I used was during the talk was “potential, but not essential.”

As I reviewed the social media sites of many academic libraries I felt somewhat disappointed. On paper (and on twitter) we talk about “opening conversations” but the reality is that most of us just use these tools to push out information. We’re building online billboards, not centers for engagement. And I’m pointing the finger at my own library (especially myself) too. We could be doing so much more, but bottom line is priority—my librarians are so busy that social media becomes an afterthought, perhaps even a chore, rather than a major interaction channel. It’s easy to just push out information, but it takes a much larger time investment to really manage a social media program to it’s full potential. That’s why I’m using this summer to not only relaunch but to rethink our intentions.

I’ve been pondering why we do this and here is my current thinking:

Our purpose—the reason why we use the social web is to find people who “like” the library and give them a way to express it. We will use this platform to nurture that bond and move them from like to love. [Develop their passion.] We also want to enable them to share this experience and help bring others into this relationship.

Granted it’s still a little rough, but this is what I’m bringing to my team to brainstorm and wordsmith. Do you see the difference? It’s not about promoting the library, this is about building brand loyalty. It’s not about posting library news for students, but about building an ambassadors program, a network of friends and allies. The goal is a transition patrons from being library users to library advocates.

This approach isn’t about reaching a mass audience or being where students are necessarily—instead it’s about reaching a small focused niche audience. What I want to do is change the mindset of how we operate: we treat our “fans” or “followers” like VIPs. They are not just people interested in learning more about the library, but rather, people who we want to keep interested in using, thinking about, and telling others about the library, and moving them along the engagement process.

Some recent hotel experiences may be influencing me. One hotel treated me as a customer and it was a fine satisfactory time. While another hotel, with which I have a loyalty card and many points, treated me very well and gave me what felt like special perks because of our established relationship. This is the type of thinking I want to explore via our online experience as well. Giving our interested patrons a peek at our new website, or inviting them to a “fans-only” focus group, or giving them a special tour of our renovation plans, or giving them free water bottles and other swag with the library logo. When you take away the pressure of using social media to reach everyone and instead refocus on enhancing the relationship with your core users it because a totally different agenda.

Next
I mentioned in a previous post that I hired a student consultant to draft a strategy document. And I have another student writing a policy/procedure/strategy plan for us this summer. Then my plan in the Fall is to have a handful of students who already work for us (ILL, Circulation, Reference, Special Collections , etc) work an additional hour or two each week contributing to our social media streams. I want to build around the concept of students engaging other students, but now with a focus of revealing the personality of the library. The other 20% will be managed by librarians and staff providing value-added perks.

This is obviously an ongoing project and I’ll post an update later in the summer once things are more defined, but I’m guessing that your team might also be thinking (rethinking) your social media effort and so I just wanted to put my evolving ideas out there. The question you should start with is why does your library need to use social media?

This entry was posted in SocialMedia&Learning. Bookmark the permalink.

E-mail

http://andyburkhardt.com Andy Burkhardt

Brian, I really like the idea of not necessarily thinking about how can we get everyone to become a “fan” of us, but instead treating fans and followers as insiders and VIPs. The people who engage with the library on social media could really be vocal library ambassadors if we don’t just push information at them. They clearly have some reason why they “liked” the library. Making them feel special on social media could definitely keep them coming back. I always want to return to places where I have great experiences and those are the places that are foremost in my mind. I think you are onto something for us to start thinking of social media users as a key niche market.
blendedlibrarian

Good post Brian. I was hoping you’d share some of what you discussed in your ALA presentation. I hope more folks will be thinking about the WHY behind their use of social media – and our other services and programs. What you are saying about focusing on the fans gets back to many of the posts at Designing Better Libraries (that other blog you post at). This is largely about designing an experience aimed at creating passionate users who appreciate the unique and memorable experience – and then become loyal community members. They are the ones who tell others about the great library user experience. The WHY statement should extend to social media since that it is another important touchpoint for the community. For those interested in this focus on building relationships, rather than just creating more users – here is a related DBL post:http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/2009/05/08/three-ways-libraries-can-be-different/
http://twitter.com/olinj Jessica Olin

Definite food for thought here. I’ve not pursued social networking for the library where I work because my members have expressed a preference for hearing about new library stuff through email & posters & word of mouth. I figured why waste my time on marketing through Twitter & Facebook when it’s not what they want anyway. But the brand loyalty thing… Guess I’ve got something else to add to my “Talk to the Director About” list. Thanks!
missoularedhead

Now take all of that full-time disillusionment and add being an adjunct. Seriously considering a job at Taco Bell.
dumbledog1992

You may be dean, chair, director, whatever — but they are not “your” faculty.

tjfarrel

If I don’t think of them as “my faculty” I cannot do my job as their advocate; I can only advocate for myself.

Most striking in the other comments is that fact that chairs have only sticks, no carrots. I’d be embarrassed to give someone an 8:00, or a class in a building across the street, in an effort to make them shape up; I also find it hard to believe that such measures would work.

The problem is familiar: too many chairs have been disempowered even while they have been asked to do more to advance somebody else’s agenda.

Gregory_Sadler

This essay really rings true for me. I used to be one of those faculty routinely “stepping into the breach” at my former institution, but eventually found it unsustainable. Some may see this as a sign of moral weakness, or lack of real commitment or solidarity, on my part in these tough times, but I chose to leave my institution

After three years of developing and providing a number of faculty development workshops, coordinating a shift in institutional assessment from CBASE to use of the CLA (including faculty-developed and graded performance tasks), starting an Ethics in Business Education Project, running a Writing Across the Curriculum pilot study, and then both writing portions of my institution’s Quality Enhancement Plan and then explaining it to faculty, students, and accreditors (here’s a bit of that: http://youtu.be/zGIQvNx-vPQ ) — much of which I did for free, some just for lunches, a few for relatively small stipends — and all of this on top of teaching a 4-4 load, committee work, and scholarship — I realized the truth to what other people had been telling me: that course couldn’t be kept up

I’d been doing several people’s jobs, for the same salary of one prof — which, due to the budget situation, remained at the same relatively low level my entire time at that institution. I’d been contributing considerable value to my university, usually putting in about 60-80 hour work weeks. Although I was at times acknowledged for the level of service I was providing to the institution, faculty, and students, there was really little compensation, and little likely to come in the future — certainly nothing commensurate to the value added.

The “weary and wary” jibes with my experience — both as a faculty member, and as someone who occupied a semi-administrative position and thus had to try to get other faculty to go the extra mile — but also from my time interacting with and discussing these sorts of issues with administrators.

Eventually, I resigned, relocated to where my partner lives, and started a consulting company which does many of the same sorts of things I’d previously been doing. There came a point where I just could not see continuing on a course of high performance for low rewards in an institution where that simply couldn’t change — mainly due to factors admittedly beyond their control. I would guess that there are many other profs getting close to similar “tipping points”

lesboprof

Gregory:

I appreciated your comments (see my “like”), and your video and work on your school’s QEP provided some inspiration for my next post about assessment. I am sorry you are not working in academe any longer, but I am glad you and your partner are reunited. I have lived far from my partner several times, and we have agreed never to do that again.

Best, LP

Gregory_Sadler

I’m glad the QEP material spurred a post about assessment, which I’m reading through right now — I’ll comment on that one there, rather than here. I’ve been meaning to write a piece specifically on why we ought to assess for some time, and it seems that your views on it and my own are quite close — a kind of convergence which is good to see, on my part.

I am actually still in academe, but working in a different function, and without a tenure-track job. I’ve got two classes this semester as an adjunct, and the consulting I’ve started to do is still — at least for the moment — in higher ed. I’ve got three academic conference presentations this semester, two of them basically SOTL,but still involving my discipline of Philosophy, and one specifically doing regular discipline-centered work. Once I’ve got settled in, with the additional free time and reduced stress, the idea is that I’m to start researching and writing some of those books I’ve been meaning to get to for the last several years.

Yep, long distance in a relationship is very tough, perhaps even more so for academics who tend to have their work on their mind most of the time. Being able to count on being in the same place — just as a matter of course, rather than on the occasions we could travel – as my partner, is certainly a great good which can’t be compensated for by other goods, as I’m sure it was the case for you and yours as well.

I also have to credit my partner for my decision to leave FSU and head north, a decision that was the fruit of many discussions. She was the one really encouraging me to take the risks involved and supporting me when I began to understandably second-guess its logic

minervacheevy

This is another test.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=611830649 Stephen Reimann

Although the Erudient Facebook app is interesting it seems to be no more than a Beta product. There are University faculties singled out as being separate to the overall University Facebook page and the slight spelling changes, such as “The University of Melbourne, Australia” and “University of Melbourne, Australia” appear as separate entities. Most importantlyI fail to see how it differentiates between international and domestic students.
lesboprof

Historiann: I like your suggestion about scheduling, though there are some challenges to that in my new, smaller program. With fewer sections and a scripted, tight list of courses, it is a little harder to mess with schedules. Committee work is a larger problem, especially from my viewpoint, because the lack of follow through winds up on my desk. I am willing to let some things fall, and to embarrass those who don’t do their share, but bad committee members make life hell for everyone.

Thinking along your lines, though, classroom space is another issue that makes a difference. Good performers could get space in house, while slackers could have to walk to a different building in the rain. Having a student assistant is also another privilege that could be shared or withheld.

Another possibility for those who are money-motivated and seeking to get consulting money is to refuse to approve external income. That makes sense, too, because if you aren’t doing your real job (like advising and committee work), you obviously aren’t in a place to do extra work outside of the job.

My problem with a lot of these methods is that they are so punitive (rooted in behaviorism, this isn’t all that surprising). The bad faculty will feel chastised, and I don’t really know that that will improve morale or team spirit in anyone, even those who get the good stuff. And it encourages the us and them thinking in a department, which is something I want to decrease, rather than increase.

Ah, well, I’m not ready for Taco Bell just yet. Hang in there, Missoularedhead.