Video storytelling

I think this video is too long (would like to see it cut into segments) but I love it because it it effectively tells the emotional story about the value of the Universal Employee Fund (UEF).

BTW, they explain their organization this way: UEF is an internal fundraising campaign where hospital employees contribute funds through the LMC Foundation that are available to assist fellow employees when needed. Funds are also designated for departments that request items or services to serve patients in need along with nursing scholarships and the Cancer Care Fund to name a few.

Doesn't the video tell that story so much better?

Five Dumbest Social Media Mistakes Revealed?

I just saw this post by Priya Ramesh over at Ragan. Priya breaks down the five dumbest mistakes marketers are making with social media. I liked it because he also suggests some solutions. It may be a great post to share with any staff members that are still a bit "stiff" with their posts.

1. Repurposing press releases for Facebook and Twitter. As PR pros we think that social media integration is taking a boring press release and converting the headline into a tweet or Facebook update. Please stop. It’s a sure way to turn your friends and followers off.

Instead draw your target audience to the announcement by asking them a question on the topic or pull out a stat or text bite that’s sure to get people to click on your URL.

2. Maintaining a formal, businesslike tone on social networks. Realize that those in your target audience have an attention span of 10 seconds, and then craft your Twitter, Facebook, or blog content accordingly. The voice you maintain in an annual report, during a board meeting or quarterly stockholders’ call is not going to cut it in the social sphere.

I am not asking you to sound like a hipster if you represent a financial services company. Yes, you need to maintain your brand image but come on, engage.

Step away from that “push” mechanism of sending tweets and updates. and instead “pull” your customers into a conversation by asking them what’s on their minds. It’s OK to show a little personality.

3. Using social media to broadcast and not to get feedback. The beauty of social media lies in feeling your customers’ pulse in real time and using that valuable feedback to define your future steps. Features like the Facebook poll can be used weekly to ask a question or get your community’s reaction to a future product release. A tweet chat with your customers can result in ways to improve your customer service on Twitter.

Let’s get away from the “I am a PR manager, so my role is only to send messages” mindset. Instead, let’s get our hands dirty asking some tough questions to our online audience. You spent all that money and resources to get people to follow you online, now leverage their feedback to deliver what they truly care about.

**My note- Wow! Tough questions- how many of you are there with your social media? I'm hearing that so many of you have fought just to be able to post to Facebook or Twitter that you may feel a bit afraid to push topics. Are you?

4. Treating social media as a one-person job within PR/marketing. If you still think social media is a job for your junior executive who happens to love new technology, you have totally missed a social media opportunity. Moving forward, every PR and marketing professional will be expected to have a basic knowledge and understanding of how social media functions.

I am not saying the VP of communications must take the time to tweet every few hours a day, but you need to encourage every member of your team to practice social media. I am startled at how just one person is tasked with engagement activities across multiple levels for an organization that has the capacity to spend millions of dollars on advertising!

My note- Right? Many libraries are still in the mindset that their webmaster should be updating web content and PR people should be updating Facebook! I'd love to hear from those of you are have knocked down the solos and have lots of staff participating. Send us the links so everyone can see how fabulous you are!

5. Joining the shiny-object bandwagon without a strategy. Scott Stratten of “Unmarketing” fame summarized it well: “Let’s just get Web 1.0 right first, and then we can talk about Web 2.0.” Have you put enough time and resources on the three most essential social tools: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? Have you increased SEO with your blog? Do you see an incremental increase in your following and engagement activities (comments, shares, likes)?

My note- Have you? I know some of you are because I'm following you. But then there are also increases in followers that have little to do with your target audience at all. It drives me crazy the way some people are following my tweets just because of some "keyword" that matched their search list!

Do You Know How Your Faculty Members Use Info?

Stephen Abram (left, moderator) and Terry Huwe 

Here are more great thoughts from the Computers in Libraries Conference. I'm not much for live blogging because I like to digest info and think about how to frame it. But I want to share a few key points quickly between sessions here... 

Terry Huwe from the University of Calif-Berkeley did a wonderful session on Faculty Information-Using Behavior. If you never studied how your faculty think about, use, and recommend information, you're missing out on essential data. When you consider that faculty greatly influence the way their students study and research, you realize that they're an important market to understand and influence. 

Faculty are also important because "We can engage in a dialog with them to affect the academic library." Huwe cited one study statistic that said that measured professors' belief that "Libraries are less important because of online information." Only 14% of faculty "strongly agreed" in 2010 (and I think even that's too high a percentage), and that was up from just 8% in 2006. So even the very learned are falling for the myth. These influential people need to be one of the markets you target with your messages about why, in fact, libraries matter now more than ever.

Huwe also highly recommended studying ACRL's "Value of Academic Libraries Report." When he asked the large audience how many had read it, only Stephen Abram & I raised our hands. This is scary! This is data that you need to know if you work in this environment! At the report's site, you can listen to a podcast about it, download the Executive Summary or full report for free, or order print copies from Amazon or B&N. It's important. It has a pretty cover. Please look at it!

Finally, Huwe recommended that listeners publish and speak in higher-ed venues other than those related to libraries. (In other words, get out of the "echo chamber.") 

All good stuff that matter if you want to convince stakeholders that academic libraries still have great value today. 

Marketing Sessions at CIL 11, Day One

Here are some brief notes I took at the sessions I attended this afternoon at the Computers in Libraries Conference in Washington, DC. Both were in the "Marketing & Measuring" track.


Nancy Allmang and Stacy Bruss from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (an agency of the U.S. Commerce Dept) discussed things they did to promote their government. They've done podcasts and vodcasts, and posted photos and posters on a corkboard in a busy hallway. They also have an LED digital display board in a hallway that can run a short message, which they change easily and often. Bruss said it could be hard to distill a worthwhile message to about 120 characters, which is all this LED display has room for -- less space than a tweet! The duo said it was important to repeat messages often and in various media in order to get a majority of employees to notice it.


The last session of the day was from Rebecca Jones of Dysart & Jones Associates. She made lots of good points about performance measurement that match up with my Cycle of True Marketing. First, she stressed that "Measurements begin and end with conversations." And you need to ask yourself, "If what we're doing isn't working, why is that?" in order to improve. Jones also said that many of the things libraries measure aren't necessarily the right things. Instead of asking these questions:


What is the library doing?
How much is the library doing?
How is the library doing things?


To make measurements about impact, progress, goals, and success, it's better to ask this:


What difference did the library make?

After the day's sessions there was a nice reception in the exhibit hall, and conference organizer / publisher Information Today, Inc. hosted a book signing that included yours truly (there I am next to my giant book-cover sign!) along with big-name authors like David Lee King, Nicole Engard, Scott Nicholson, and Mary Ellen Bates.


Special thanks to another great author, Rachel Singer Gordon, for taking the picture. She was my book's editor, and is the editor for the whole "Accidental" Series. If you don't know about the other titles, such as The Accidental Webmaster, The Accidental Fundraiser, and The Accidental Library Manager, you'll want to look them up! Each does a good job at covering a topic you didn't learn about in library school but needed to know once you were on the job. Good stuff!

Heading to the Computers in Libraries Conference

See me in Washington, DC next week! 

I'm speaking on Monday about Community Partnerships and on Thursday about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Marketing. I'll be writing a few blog posts on location.

Here's the full program.

Hope to see some of you there! 

~Kathy 

What's Going On in The M Word World

Time flies when you're having fun. And when you're working a lot. If flies extra fast if you're doing both! We haven't posted in a while so I wanted to do a quick update. 

Nancy has just been in Ireland speaking at the Ennis Book Festival (see the link in her speaking list, left side of page). What a lucky lass! And that was shortly after she presented in Florida. I wonder how many frequent flyer miles she has now?  

Last week, I (Kathy) was in New York City consulting with a group from some very specialized German libraries, which was really interesting. I've also been working my talks for the Computers in Libraries conference in DC later this month. And, just as March is ending, I'll be headed for the Netherlands where I'll be presenting at a seminar on authors, publishers, printers, libraries, and books. 

We'll both be adding up more miles as the year rolls on, and we'd love to see our readers while we're out and about. You can always see lists of our upcoming events if you scroll down the left-hand side of the page.

Finally, I wanted to mention a new Facebook page that I've started for my marketing business, which is named Libraries Are Essential. Anyone interested in promoting libraries can follow me over at www.Facebook.com/LibrariesAreEssential. Five or six days a week, I post tips about marketing, links to articles or studies you can use, pictures, and good examples of library promotion. It's a great way for me to share things quickly when I don't have time to write a full blog post, and it's fun! Check it out, comment, interact with others, and let me know what you think of it all. I hope to see you there!