Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post titled 5 Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library. Since it was so popular I decided to continue with 5 more suggestions for using this hot new social site for your library.

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6.) Showcase Educational Videos and Webcasts

Since Pinterest supports sharing YouTube videos, the library could create boards highlighting tutorials, webcasts, and instructional videos for researching different subject areas, using specialized databases, or navigating the library website.

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7.) Create an E-Books Board

Are you trying to spread the word about your new e-books program? Create a Pinterest board highlighting new and popular e-books. You can even specify which devices each e-book is compatible with and pin video tutorials for uploading to patrons’ eReaders.

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8.) Give Patrons a Library Tour

Create a Pinterest board with an annotated photo tour of your library. Show off your new renovation, computer lab, or children’s area through pins. If you’re feeling adventurous, download the mobile app and take the photos with your iPhone and add location information to them.

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9.) Market Upcoming Events

Use Pinterest to let patrons know about exciting upcoming events, workshops, and classes at your library. You might even create boards with photos of past events as well.

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10.) Highlight a Special Collection or Exhibit

The visual display of Pinterest’s boards offers an excellent opportunity for libraries to showcase their special collections. Create boards of interesting manuscripts, exhibits, and image collections.

Bonus Suggestion:

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11.) Create Boards for Staff Inspiration

Pinterest can be used to save ideas for later use, like other social bookmarking applications. Create a space where librarians can pin fun and interesting ideas for library programs, events, and services.

DJ Waldow at the Social Media Examiner suggests 9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing. This useful post provides a number of ways to amp up your marketing strategy by combining your social media efforts with email blasts. Here are the first 5 recommendations discussed:

• #1: Include Social Icons in Emails
• #2: Ask Email Subscribers to Share and Connect
• #3: Send a Dedicated Email Campaign
• #4: Provide Incentive
• #5: Promote Email Sign-up Via Social Networks

Mallory Woodrow at the Social Media Examiner offers 9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website. This helpful article includes annotated screenshots describing how different companies and organizations are making social media a part of their websites and their brand strategies. Here are her first five suggestions:

• #1: Include Visible Social Media Buttons
• #2: Integrate Social Where it Makes Sense
• #3: Include Up-to-Date Buttons
• #4: Include Share Buttons
• #5: Use Analytics

Pinterest is a digital pinboard application which started just last year but has quickly become one of the top 10 most trafficked social networking websites according to Hitwise. During the second week in December the website had over 11 million visitors. This is pretty impressive considering that the site is still in the invite-only stage.

Pinterest’s inspiration boards have a lot of potential for libraries and other organizations for creating visual displays of resources and services. All of Pinterest’s boards and posts can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Here are some ideas for how you can make the most of this popular social network for your library:

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1.) Create Recommended Book Boards

Pinterest is a great visual tool which can help you draw in your readers, so why not set up boards of book covers to engage your patrons. Create separate boards for different book categories such as: fiction, non-fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, horror, travel, most popular, recommended, etc.

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2.) Highlight Library Staff

Use Pinterest’s photo boards to spotlight your friendly and helpful library staff. Make your librarians more approachable by putting up a picture of them helping patrons in the library along with a brief bio about them.

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3.) Spread the Word About Author Talks

If you’ve got an upcoming author talk you might create a pinboard with information about that author such as the author’s book cover(s), photos of the author, links to interviews, biographical information. Or you may just have a “What’s New” or “Events” page onto which you pin their book cover.

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4.) Create Patron Contributed Boards

A great social feature of Pinterest is the ability to allow others to contribute to your boards. I can think of a million boards you may want to ask patrons to contribute to such as; photos of patrons in your library, covers of their favorite books, book covers of titles they recommend – or would like you to purchase, etc.

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5.) Have a Pinterest Board Contest

Encourage patrons to create their own boards for summer reading programs, pins of books they want to check out, research or homework topics, etc. Have them each “follow” the library’s Pinterest profile in order to enter and award the best board a prize.

Additional Resources

• Ultimate Guide to Pinterest
• 3 Ways to Use Pinterest for Book Publicity
• HOW TO: Get Your Nonprofit Started on Pinterest
• 12 ways to use Pinterest for your nonprofit
• Pinterest: A Tool To Curate Relevant Visual Content for Your Audience
• Steal these 42 Creative Pinterest Ideas for Nonprofits
• 5 Ways Journalists Can Use Pinterest

Phillip Davis at the Social Media Examiner offers 5 Tips for Making Your Brand More Social. This is a great post about determining how to best convey your brand’s image to Web users through social media channels. Here are the five recommendations discussed:

• #1: Determine your brand personality
• #2: Identify your true audience
• #3: Develop a consistent tone
• #4: Timing is everything
• #5: Practice makes perfect

The folks at the Tampa Bay Library Consortium have put together a guide to How Facebook Can Help Market Your Library. This helpful article not only discusses the perks of having a Library Facebook page, it provides a quick list of ideas to effectively leverage the social network to benefit your library.

Scott Gerber writes for Mashable about 10 Easy Customer Engagement Ideas for Small Business. After reading these suggestions, I can see most of them being easily adapted for use in libraries. There are some great ideas here:

1. Our Customers Are Our Models
2. Hold a Virtual Party
3. Put the Spotlight on Customers
4. Put Money In Your Clients’ Pockets
5. Call Your Customers
6. Geocache Scavenger Hunt
7. Use YouTube
8. Solicit Participation With Contests
9. Make Yourself Accessible
10. Show Your Fans Some Facebook Love

With over 135,000,000 members, Linked in is a powerful professional tool. Learn about the recent changes and improvements to The LinkedIn Events Tool and check out some tips for using it effectively in Stephanie Sammons’ 10 Tips for Promoting Your Events With the New LinkedIn Events Tool at The Social Media Examiner. Here are her first 5 suggestions:

1. Upload an event logo
2. Get creative with your event title
3. Include a short but powerful event description with a strong call to action
4. Consider using an offsite registration page to capture attendee information
5. Don’t forget the details

Ekaterina Walter at the Social Media Examiner suggests 15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events. There are some excellent recommendations here for leveraging social media apps for your next library event. Here are just 7 of her suggestions:

• #1: Registration Buzz
• #2: Sharing Buzz
• #3: Event-Shaping Buzz
• #4: Rumor Buzz
• #5: Use QR Codes for Ad-Hoc Presentations
• #6: Collect All of Your Speakers’ Blogs in One Place
• #7: Twitter Backchannels

Stephanie Sammons at the Social Media Examiner offers 5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages. If your library or organization doesn’t yet have a presence on LinkedIn, you won’t want to miss this informative post about LinkedIn for business. These are the tips discussed:

• #1: Update/create and complete your company page
• #2: Build followers for your LinkedIn company page
• #3: Provide interesting and value-added company page updates
• #4: Engage and network with people from companies you follow
• #5: Monitor and focus your efforts

New location-aware mobile social networks are some of the hottest properties on the Web today. Savvy businesses and organizations are claiming their venues and leveraging these networks for building their brands and engaging their patrons and customers. If you’re wondering how to get started marketing on these popular channels, take a look at some of these resources.

1. 6 Ways to Socially Reward Your Customers

   

   Corina Mackay at the Social Media Examiner discusses 6 Ways to Socially Reward Your Customers, each of which is easily adaptable to a library context. One of the best ways to engage your patrons online is to offer them rewards. These are six excellent ideas for how to do just that.

 

2. 6 Successful Foursquare Marketing Campaigns to Learn From

   

   Lauren Drell at Mashable writes about 6 Successful Foursquare Marketing Campaigns to Learn From. With over half a million businesses already on the location-aware social network, organizations must do their best to stand out from the crowd. Here are several excellent campaigns to offer you inspiration. I particularly like what the History Channel is doing – they are offering Tips for all sorts of locations, so that when users follow them and then check in to one of those locations (like the Tower of London), they receive background information on their history.

 

3. How To: Claim Your Business On Facebook Places

   

   Sarah Kessler at Mashable writes a brief tutorial for How To: Claim Your Business On Facebook Places. These four simple steps will walk you through how to claim your organization’s venue on Facebook Places and start leveraging this mobile social networking marketing tool for your library.

 

4. How To: Start Marketing on SCVNGR

   

   Lauren Drell at Mashable writes a quick guide to How To: Start Marketing on SCVNGR. SVNGR is a location-based social game similar to Foursqure through which organizations can place challenges at venues for users who earn points and rewards.

 

5. How To: Start Marketing on Gowalla

   Erica Swallow at Mashable kicks off a Social Media 101 Series with this blog entry on How To: Start Marketing on Gowalla. The article discusses 7 ways To engage your users and market your brand on Gowalla.

 

6. How to Use Geolocation in Your Marketing Initiatives

   

   Jamie Beckland at the Social Media Examiner writes a quick guide to How to Use Geolocation in Your Marketing Initiatives. This useful guide discusses how marketers should approach new and emerging technologies such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

 

7. How To: Start Marketing on Foursquare

   Lauren Drell at Mashable writes:

   “There are more than 8 million users on Foursquare — up from just 1 million a year ago. This explosive growth means one thing — you might want to get your business on Foursquare. After all, Radio Shack reported that the average Foursquare user spends 3.5 times more at its retail shops than the average customer.”

   This is a one-stop guide to How To: Start Marketing on Foursquare.

 

8. How To: Set Up a Foursquare Special

   

   Lauren Drell at Mashable creates a quick tutorial for How To: Set Up a Foursquare Special. If you’ve been thinking about engaging your library patrons on this location-aware mobile social network, you won’t want to miss this post.

 

9. How To: Gamify Your Marketing

   Adam Kleinberg, co-founder and CEO at interactive agency Traction writes for Mashable about How To: Gamify Your Marketing. This quick guide outlines the reasons why incorporating game theory into your marketing efforts could prove effective as well as provides practical examples of successful campaigns.

Amy-Mae Elliott at Mashable shares 10 Tips and Tricks for Better Google+ Brand Pages. If you’re wondering how you can improve your organization’s presence on Google+, you won’t want to miss this post. Here are her top 5 recommendations:

• 1. Access Your Brand Page
• 2. Adding People to Circles
• 3. Your Brand Page Google+ URL
• 4. Remove Unwanted Tabs
• 5. Connect Your Site to Google+

Phil Mershon at the Social Media Examiner rounds up 26 Promising Social Media Stats for Small Businesses. While many small-medium sized organizations are already realizing the benefits of having a presence on social media sites, some have yet to be convinced. Here are some stats that should do just that:

• Over 80% of all Americans use a social network.
• Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other U.S.website.
• There are now more than 800 million active Facebook users, with over 200 million added in 2011.
• Approximately 40% of social media users access their accounts through mobile devices.
• Social media users are more active and influential offline.

Jonathan Goldford at Mashable shares 4 Essential Facebook Page Apps to Improve Communication With Fans. This focused list spotlights the top four applications which will help your organization communicate with your audience on Facebook.

Jason Miller at the Social Media Examiner creates a list of 10 Ways Non-Profits Can Benefit From Social Media. These helpful tips illustrate ways that not-for-profit organizations can use new social platforms to drive awareness, share their story, cultivate donor relationships and open up two-way communication with advocates in ways never before possible. Here are the first 5 recommendations:

• #1: Evangelize your organization’s mission with an interactive presentation
• #2: Get organized with a social CRM tool
• #3: Leverage the power of video to advance your cause
• #4: Get to know your donors, volunteers, partners and clients/beneficiaries on a deeper level
• #5: Get to know the new kid on the block