Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

There have been quite a few library technology stories since my last roundup in late February. Here are 30 stories/articles/blog posts that you won’t want to miss!! And please list any other recent library tech stories in the comments.

Social Media

1. 3 Ways College Libraries Are Exploring Pinterest
2. 5 Educational YouTube Channels for Librarians
3. 10 Resources for Using Pinterest in Your Library
4. NYPL’s Movie Trailer-Style Library Video
5. 20 Great Ways Libraries Are Using Pinterest

Mobile

6. 10 Kindle Cases That Look Like Books
7. Libraries Loaning iPads
8. Reinvent the Book Club: How To Host Your Own Audiobook Gathering

e-Books

9. Evaluating e-Books in Law Libraries
10. Ebooks 101: DRM (Digital Rights Management)
11. Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business?

QR Codes

12. QR Codes Extend Library Programming
13. What are some uses for QR codes in public and academic libraries?
14. QR Code Quest Scavenger Hunt- Part Deux!

Library Marketing

15. 21 Resources for Library Marketing with Social Media
16. Stop Branding Your Library!!
17. How to Use Webinars to Create Great Relationships with Library Patrons
18. Create Your Own Library Social Media Monitoring Dashboard

Preservation

19. Archiving Cell Phone Text Messages
20. Pinterest and the New Meaning of Curation

ERM

21. Implementing an ERM System in Your Library
22. Managing Electronic Resources

Misc

23. Ten Things I Didn’t Learn in Library School
24. 20 Everyday Ways To Escape The Library Echo Chamber
25. Alternative Uses for the Pesky eBook Budget
26. Poll Results: What Technologies will impact libraries in 2-5 years?
27. Card Sorting from A–Z iLibrarian Series
28. 7 Stellar Library Conference Presentations
29. 7 Things You Should Know About™ the Evolution of the Textbook
30. Vintage Photos of Librarians

Nick DeSantis writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog about 3 Ways College Libraries Are Exploring Pinterest. Based on an ACRL webinar last week, this concise article reports on 3 libraries which are effectively utilizing the popular image-based social network.

Mallory Woodrow at the Social Media Examiner talks about 4 Ways to Measure Social Media Success With Free Tools. This excellent post discusses ways to gain insight into your social media marketing efforts through free tools that can be used to track and evaluate your campaigns. These are the points discussed:

• #1: Track Actions Visitors Take
• #2: Identify Social Actions Generating the Most Traffic
• #3: Find Out if Your Social Promotion Grew Legs
• #4: Get Real-Time Alerts

Matt Petronzio at Mashable puts together a stellar list of 44 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed. Categorized into Editor’s Picks, Social Media, Business & Marketing, Tech & Mobile sections, these are stories you won’t want to miss. Here are just a few:

• 10 Apps to Keep Your Business Organized
• 8 Hot Media Trends You Need to Know
• How to Use Facebook Timeline Without Reworking Your Brand Strategy
• Facebook Meets Instagram: What It Means for Your Brand

Lisa Peyton at the Social Media Examiner discusses 5 Top Google+ Tools and Apps for Marketing Pros. This quick primer outlines five categories of tools and apps you can employ to greatly enhance your Google+ marketing efforts. Here are the sections discussed:

• #1: Google+ Widgets
• #2: Google+ Statistics
• #3: Google+ Directories
• #4: Browser Extensions
• #5: Management Platforms

Stephanie Buck at Mashable suggests 13 Creative Google+ Cover Photo Hacks. This is a very timely article as I’ve seen many such blog posts on how to create stunning Facebook cover photos, but not one so far on Google+.

Pinterest, the digital pinboarding website that exploded onto the scene just last year, has quickly become one of the top 10 most trafficked social networking websites on the Internet according to Hitwise. Cutting-edge libraries are already exploring ways the social app can be used to engage patrons and build community. Here are ten top-notch resources that will help you better leverage this new social tool.

1. 5 Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library
2. 5 More Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library
3. Pinterest and the New Meaning of Curation
4. Pinterest: A New Social Media Opportunity for Libraries
5. 20 Great Ways Libraries Are Using Pinterest
6. Pinterest for Libraries
7. 10 Pinterest Boards For eBook Fans
8. 26 Tips for Using Pinterest for Business
9. Is Pinterest the Next Game Changer: Infographic
10. 56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest

Trevor Jonas, director of social media at Access Communications writes for Mashable suggesting 6 Ways Social Media Can Bring Your Next Event to Life. These are some very intriguing ideas that are sure to engage your attendees before, during, and after the event. Here are the recommendations discussed:

1. Create an Online Hub For Social Content
2. Hash Out the Hashtag Strategy
3. Prominently Display the Discussion
4. Curate and Share the Best Content
5. Surprise Attendees by Going Retro
6. Consider a Good Comic

According to Jon Mitchell at ReadWriteWeb, the big news this week is Facebook’s acquisition of the popular mobile photo sharing app Instagram for a cool $1 billion. In Facebook Buying Instagram Makes Perfect Sense Mitchell outlines the details and concerns of the recent sale.

I’ve been looking into various social media monitoring tools which are available but haven’t found one that completely fits the bill for our library so I decided to create one from scratch. I wanted something free, so I first looked into aggregated search tools such as SocialMention and IceRocket, which are great for searching a lot of different types of social media sites, but not all of them. And the biggest drawback of these tools is that they don’t let you combine searches and/or use boolean operators in your searches. So, for example, my library is The New York Law Institute, but we couldn’t get that name on Twitter so we’re the NYLawInstitute on that social network. We also often use the acronym NYLI so I’d want that included in searches as well, especially of the blogosphere.

So I decided to use a free start page which allows you to create private pages as I wanted to limit viewing to staff. I chose Protopage since I’m a big fan of their start pages. I used their Widgets tool to quickly add RSS Feeds of searches I did on various sites and ended up with a great dashboard that is going to let us watch and participate in conversations that are happening across the Web.

Create Your Own Social Media Monitoring Dashboard

1. Go to Protopage.com and sign up for a free start page.
2. Select the “Add Widgets” option at the top and see the section to “Add a News Feed Directly” and/or “Add a Twitter Feed” that pops up on the left.



3. Start by adding the Twitter Feed by typing in a search term for your library and dragging the widget to your dashboard. If your library uses an acronym or other name, also create a widget for that term.
4. Go to your preferred social media and social search sites and enter your library’s name. Run the search and then grab the RSS feed and create a widget on your start page. Here’s a list of suggested sites to start with and where to find the RSS feed for each.

Websites to Search and Monitor

• Google Blog Search – You’ll want to keep track of what people are saying about your library in blog posts so this site is essential to search. Once you’ve run a successful search for your organization, scroll all the way down to the bottom and you’ll see the RSS feed linked there.



• IceRocket Blog Search – Google’s Blog Search will not include posts from what it determines as “Homepages” in the RSS feed for their search, many of which I’ve noticed were actually blogs such as this one. In order to get results from those sites as well, you’ll want to run an IceRocket Blog Search. The RSS feed is located on the bottom left sidebar of the results page for a blog search.
• Google Alerts – It seems the only way to get an RSS Feed of a Google Search is to create a Google Alert for a search term and then select the delivery method as “Feed”. This will then give you the link to the RSS Feed which you can use to create a widget on your start page. This will only give you the most recent results.
• Bing Search – You can easily grab an RSS Feed for a Bing Web search for your library by conducting it in Internet Explorer and then selecting the orange RSS Feed icon that’s built into the top toolbar.
• WordPress.com Search – If you want to be really thorough, you can also do a search of all WP blogs here. The RSS feed is located on the right sidebar of the search results page.
• Social Mention – This is an excellent aggregated search of about 75 different social media channels. You can run a search here and then grab an RSS feed which is made available on the top right of the search results page.
• FriendFeed - FriendFeed lets users aggregate their content from many different social channels and they offer a public search of everyone’s posts. You can conduct a search for your library’s name and then grab the RSS feed by scrolling all the way down the search results page.
• MonitorThis - This search engine searches 25 different search engines across the Web for results and aggregates them on one page. The don’t offer an RSS Feed, however if you can run the search in IE and then select the orange RSS Feed icon that’s built into the top toolbar.
• BoardReader - This search tool monitors 50,000 forums and message boards for who’s saying what. They don’t offer an RSS Feed, so you’ll want to run the search in IE and then select the orange RSS Feed icon that’s built into the top toolbar.



• Facebook Search – You can now search what everyone is saying in their updates, not just your friends, by selecting the “Public Posts” filter on the left sidebar of Facebook search. You do need to be logged into Facebook to access FB Search, however, so you may want to create a “Bookmarks” widget linking to this and other similar sites that you need to be logged into, with specific instructions.



• LinkedIn – You can search what people are saying in their updates about your library on the popular professional network LinkedIn, by logging in and selecting the “Updates” search filter.

Jackie Cohen at All Facebook creates a quick guide to What To Pin To The Top Of Your Facebook Timeline. Organizations with Facebook Pages can spotlight important posts by pinning them, or making them stick to the top of your page’s timeline. This helpful article gives several suggestions for what you might want to pin on behalf of your organization, and also gives a primer on Pinning Versus Highlighting. Here are the recommendations discussed:

• What People Need To Know
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Wall Moderation Policy
• Your Latest Sale Or Promotion
• Who Won The Contest
• Urgent Information

The folks at CenturyLinkQuote.com have put together an exciting infographic illustrating The Rise and Fall of Online Empires such as AOL, AltaVista, MySpace, Facebook, etc. ranging from 1991 to the present. (Click for larger image).

via Guy Kawasaki

Elijah Daniel puts together an excellent list of 4 Hot Apps for Microvideo Blogging. Social media users are now creating video status updates by shooting short videos on their smartphones. These free apps allow you to record short video clips and share them instantly on social networks like Facebook and Twitter or email or text them to friends.

Cindy King at the Social Media Examiner offers 9 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros. If you’re wondering how you can better leverage social platforms on behalf of your organization you won’t want to miss this post. Here are the top five recommendations:

• #1: Draw Attention to Your Custom Tabs in the New Facebook Timelines
• #2: Add the LinkedIn Company Follow Button to Your Site
• #3: Use Bufferapp to Manage Your Social Media Marketing
• #4: Get YouTube Subscribers Just by Asking
• #5: Create a Facebook Plan You Can Stick With

There are so many good (and free!) marketing opportunities on social media channels. Here are some articles and blog posts which offer advice for making the most of these.

Pinterest

1. 5 Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library
2. 5 More Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library
3. Pinterest: A New Social Media Opportunity for Libraries
4. 56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest

Facebook

5. How Facebook Can Help Market Your Library
6. 7 Ways Universities Are Using Facebook as a Marketing Tool
7. 4 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Page Visibility
8. 11 Inspiring Nonprofit Facebook Timelines

Social Media Marketing

9. 9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website
10. 10 Ways Non-Profits Can Benefit From Social Media
11. The 7 Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing
12. 5 Ways to Brand Your New YouTube Profile
13. 9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing
14. 5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages
15. 6 Best Practices for Universities Embracing Social Media
16. 10 Tips and Tricks for Better Google+ Brand Pages

Events Marketing

17. 10 Tips for Promoting Your Events With the New LinkedIn Events Tool
18. 15 Ways to Bring Social Media to Events

Mobile Social Marketing

19. 9 Resources for Marketing on Mobile Social Networks
20. Mobile Marketing With QR Codes and MS Tags
21. 7 Things You Need to Do Now for Social Media and Mobile Marketing