Online Outreach: Marketing for Libraries

Fantastic, and highly practical discussion of methods for marketing the library’s services to the online community.  Their suggestions included free and for a fee methods.

General Tidbits

• Need to be marketing things that are worthwhile to customers
• Interaction needs to be on your library’s web site–the rest of the web is like this
• Library jurisdictions are blurred–in the online community, everyone is your library’s customer

Marketing Methods

Findability

Search Engines

• Search for variations of your library’s name
• Ensure that your library’s name is always at the top of search engine results
• Get beyond the major search engines, to include the smaller and metasearch engines
• Buy “AdWords” from Google (costs money)–for example for town searches, travel information searches, etc.
•  Buy search engine optimization (SEO) (costs money)–consultant does the work

Library Directories on the Web

• List your library on sites such as:  Libdex, MapMuse, Libraries411

Blog Search Engines, And Others

• List your library’s web site with (for example):  technorati, Feed Submitter, Robin Good’s List, RSS Specifications
• List your library’s web site on Wikipedia [NOTE:  SDCL is already there!]
• List your library with wikimapia (add locations for your library branches)
• Add library events to Eventful.com

Participating in the Online Community

Blogs and Forums

 The speakers stressed as a caveat that this isn’t participating specifically to market your library, but to become a part of the online community this blog/site/forum represents.  Be careful not to be heavy-handed in your participation.  [Polly:  Example:  constantly jumping in..."did you know our library has..."  But basically, as you become known in the online community, then, sharing what the library has.  Know, too, that this will take a while to nurture.  This really is no different that when you're beginning to make connections in the offline world at schools, community centers, etc.] 

Also, the speakers mentioned that libraries should shift their resources in the virtual community as needed to where people are.  For example, the trend now seems to be people moving from myspace to using facebook more.  [Polly:  again, this isn't that different from what we do in the off-line community; people's interests and where they "meet" changes.]

• Join and participate on local blogs, technology blogs, Blogdigger, etc.:  meet up with the virtual community on Flickr; add tags to others’ Flickr postings for your local zip code, town, create a library Flickr account
• Be present where it’s warranted (e.g. high schools, cultural institutions, etc.)

What Are People “Saying About Your Library”

• Links to Your Web Site:  in Google, TYPE:  link:www.sdcl.org; this shows who’s linking to your site
• Social Review Web Sites:  what are your customers saying when you’re not around
  • yelp.com, citysearch.com, judysbook.com
• Find mentions of your library in: Google News and Yahoo News; Icerocket.com; feedster.com (for example)

Your Virtual Presence

• Create library profiles on:  myspace, facebook, Flickr, Ning
• Post your library’s best practices on:  librarysuccess.org

Examples of Library Sites/Services to Model

• Contra Costa Teen Page:  something new is featured all of the time on this web page
• Hennepin Library Book Space:  reader’s advisory page
• Tutt Library:  creates Facebook flyers announcing things such as the library’s hours (for teens/others in the virtual community) [Polly:  kind of like an online bulletin board]

Touting the Library’s services in other ways

• Librarians participating in online question/answer services to promote/educate the role of and expertise of library professionals:
  • askmetafilter.com, allexperts.com, ziki
  • Slam-the-boards movement:  librarians volutarily responding to questions as experts, identifying themselves as librarians, so customers know what expertise and services are available to them for free from their local library; this event happens every 10th of the month
• Newsletters:
  • Invest in newsletter software (costs money)
  • Get email addresses from your library’s ILS (i.e. online library catalog system); send emails periodically to your customers–but don’t overdue so becomes spam.
    • Having paper sign-ups for customers interested in receiving electronic newsletters tends to be more effective than general electronic emailings to all customers
    • Accompany electronic mailings with a more personalized “Hi this is [your name] from [your library]….”

Wifi Directories on the Web

• List your library on directories listing wi-fi services such as:  wififreespot.com, wifihotspotlist.com, wifi411
• Have a fun message as your default message when customers logon to your library’s wi-fi service

Geographical Search Engines, Phone Directories

• List your library locations on sites such as:  frapper.com, feedmap.com

Is your library listed in the online phone directories?

• Check sites such as:  askcity.com, yahoo!local, googlemaps

Other Suggestions

• Is your library participating in SecondLife.com?
• Is your library’s web address friendly and human?  [Polly:  seems like at this point, the speakers mentioned something about web addresses more meaningful such as:  wegotbooks.com, booksandmagazines.com (my examples, can't remember specifically what they suggested)]
• Is your library doing Instant Messaging reference service?  This type of service is free, and easy to do.
• Is your library doing text messaging?  Examples:  for holds, overdues
• Make your dvds, CDs, podcasts, streaming video, etc. findable
  • List on:  YouTube, Google video, Singing Fish, Digitalpodcast, podcast alley
• Transcribe your audio content into text on:  podzinger.com