We talk library marketing and PR with Cordelia Anderson, a marketing and communications consultant who works primarily with libraries and nonprofits. She is also the former director of marketing and communications at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Library in North Carolina. Anderson shares her concept of the library marketing funnel, understanding the library user’s wants and needs, the importance of the overall customer experience, and finding where library users are dropping off at your library.

Resources for this Podcast
Cordelia Anderson website

Libraries Transform – An ALA Public Awareness Initiative

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library

The post FYI Podcast: Library Marketing with Cordelia Anderson first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Among the many informative articles being written about Pokémon Go, there are two worth highlighting. “What is really behind the Pokémon Go craze” provides this pithy description of the game as “the first real success story of the use of augmented reality technology, which blends the digital and real world together. The combined effect is part bird-watching, part geocaching, part trophy-hunting, with a heavy dose of mid-1990s nostalgia.”^[1] The article is a worthwhile read if you’re looking for a succinct description of this phenomenon to share with your staff, board, or patrons; however, this second article brings some more practical ideas for libraries.^[2] Replace the words “small business” in the article with “libraries.” What can you do to get players to use your services while they’re playing the game?

You “gotta catch ’em all”—patrons, that is. Doing so goes beyond marketing and relies more on the behavior of library staff and the environment of your building. You have agroup of potential patrons just at the edge of your grasp. Are you welcoming these people to see what’s happening in the building through signs or other advertisement while they are in your parking lot catching Pokémon? Is all your library staff, from the front line to the administration, able to (at least briefly) talk intelligently about Pokémon Go? Making sure all your staff understand the basic premise of the game will help your overall rapport with this frequently absent-from-the-library demographic. It can be as simple as encouraging staff to walk out of their way while coming into the building for their shift to ask someone hunting Pokémon in the parking lot, “What have you caught so far here?” This provides the same warm feelings as asking a perplexed person in your book stacks, “Can I help you find something?” Your staff show that they care about all their patrons.

Whether you buy a lure and walk through your parking lot handing out fliers on your current services, or you simply track the most successful Gyms in your community and congratulate them on social media, you can show the twenty- to forty-year-olds that you care about what they are doing. And if you care about the game they are putting so much time and effort into, you obviously care about other things they are interested in, too. They may just come back to you when they need something else.

Just a few libraries with  Pokémon GO events:

• Warwick Library: Pokémon Go Gym Meet
• Worth-Pinkham Memorial Library: Pokémon Go: Walk & Train Club
• Bronx Library Center: BLC PokeStop: Pokemon Lure Module
• Midland County Public Library: Pokemon Go Bar Crawl and Pokemon Hunt

Reference

[1] Hayley Tsukayama and Ben Guarino, “What is really behind the Pokémon Go craze,” Washington Post, July 12, 2016.

[2] Walter Chen, “Pokemon Go Is Driving Insane Amounts of Sales at Small Local Businesses. Here’s How It Works,” Inc.com, July 11, 2016.

The post Pokémon Go: Strike While the Iron Is Hot! first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

When you’re a small library, there isn’t always a person or department that has been trained to craft newsletters and other messages for the public; however, there are some simple tips to consider when you are acting as the marketer for your library.

Credibility is crucial. The true art of email marketing is knowing when and how often a person should be contacted by email. Too little and they forget that you are there; too much, and off to the spam blacklist you go. Think of emails as a commodity or a natural resource to help your frame of mind. If it took your library several months to years to build up your list, it is in your library’s best interest to make this expendable resource last for future generations.

Your email address and subject line must be credible. Have the address include the library’s name, or something identifiable. Don’t use any free email account. It could look like spam. Make your message subject clear, concise, and context-specific. Most people triage their mail by the subject line, and a poorly worded subject is very likely to be skipped, recycled, or spammed. Make sure you use separate email addresses for marketing versus circulation information. Patrons have a habit of marking overdue notices as spam. Never use your personal email library address (the only exception to this rule may be the library director).

When you use an email address that can receive responses to your mailings, make sure you check it regularly and respond promptly.

Write compelling copy. This cannot be stressed enough. Many people mark things as spam because they just don’t understand why they received the message or what it has to say. Make the email or newsletter short and sweet so that it can be scanned easily; remember, many of your patrons are reading on the go from a mobile device. Use links judiciously. A poorly designed email begets poor results.

Be judicious with email attachments. Most email readers regard attachments with suspicion anyway, and the attachment may trigger spam filters set up to screen unwanted material. Many of your readers may have limited inbox space; by avoiding attachments, you won’t give them an extra reason to delete your newsletter unread.

If at all possible, preview your email communications in an email client, like Outlook, as well as on a mobile device. Don’t let your email presentation turn people off because something has gone awry in their viewing environment.

Spam and blacklists were mentioned in our last blog entry. Bulk mailings, like library newsletters, can get caught, and library emails can end up on the blacklists. As you write and then send your newsletter, work with either the library’s IT departments or whomever handles your email to stay current with any messages received about bad email addresses or anything else that is received. Finally, keep working and keep trying. Newsletters will only get better with practice.

The post Optimizing Your Library’s E-Newsletters first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Not good at tooting your own horn? You don’t have to brag, just give your awesomeness a voice. A lot of librarians recoil at the thought of self-promotion, and that’s both understandable and admirable; however, nobody’s going to make use of the resources and programs you’ve carefully pruned to perfection until they hear about it. So if you’re not comfortable talking up your efforts, here are a few pointers to get you proactive while keeping you humble:

Work with your marketing, PR, or communications department.

These are the guys who get paid to do this! They are passionate and skilled at getting messages out to your patrons, plus they are the official voice of the library itself. Regularly updating your marketing department guarantees that your public will see what’s going on. If you don’t have a dedicated marketing department, get in touch with whoever runs your social media. Having an online presence is the best way to reach all sorts of potential patrons.

Use your own social media account(s).

If you’re a librarian, you have friends who love books, free activities, and useful services. Use that to your advantage by posting about your specific awesomeness on whatever social media accounts you happen to already have. This doesn’t require signing up for anything new, attempting the awkwardness that is making new online friends or trying to attract followers, or doing anything besides posting a link to what you’re most excited about in the upcoming days. Trust me, your followers will be very excited to find a post they can actually use in the midst of brunch photos and election headlines. If you don’t have a social media account, consider signing up for either Facebook or Twitter; they have proven their staying power, don’t cost anything, and let you post as much or as little as you want.

Connect to a bigger group.

What if your library marketing initiative doesn’t seem to be making a difference? Don’t sweat—if you’re connected to bigger groups such as ALA and PLA, you have another platform to showcase your ideas. Professional organizations are built to connect workers in the same field, which means that you can get advice from peers as well as use the network to pass along your awesomeness to an otherwise inaccessible audience. This is a two-way street—give back and share your successes to someone you recognize is struggling, too!

Marketing shouldn’t be hard, but we have to work with the reality to reach who needs us the most. Have you had any massive successes or failures in getting your library’s awesomeness out there? Share in the comments!

The post Sharing Your Awesomeness: Personal Library Marketing first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Public Libraries Online: Give a quick marketing lesson. What is the difference between marketing and advertising?

Trenton Smiley: Marketing is an overarching process of identifying and engaging the targeted audience(s) with the goal of creating a desired exchange or outcome. For an exchange to occur, both parties have to have something of value for each other. One of the most important exchanges for libraries is to sign up for a library card. The fact that the card is free or library services are already paid for through taxes doesn’t automatically make it more desirable to a potential patron. As library marketers we must communicate how our services add value to the lifestyle of the potential patron. Of course, the value to the library is a new user and supporter. Advertising and publicity are the promotional elements of a marketing strategy.

PLO: What are some easy things that libraries that don’t have a marketing/publicity department can do to increase their visibility in the community?

TS: Perhaps the easiest way to increase visibility in the community is to become a content provider. Many libraries already create content for social media posts, blogs, and newsletters. This great information can easily be shared on media sites that are always looking for content. Newsletters for school districts and other community organizations are also good outlets for your content. Working with the media has worked great for CADL receiving a great deal of support, including anchors and DJs recording and airing promos for free. The librarians write weekly columns for some of the local newspapers, while placement is sometimes hit or miss, a great deal of information still reaches the public.

PLO: What are some of the most successful marketing campaigns that you have been involved with at your library?

TS: I am always proud of the work that CADL does to create awareness of its summer reading programs. Although the “Everything right here” campaign is just beginning, I am very encouraged so far on how it’s unveiling.

PLO: What is peer-to-peer marketing and how could libraries potentially use it to reach a younger audience?

TS: It’s a new strategy being tested at CADL to target teens. Since this is a hard audience to connect with through regular marketing and outreach efforts, CADL is working with high school athletes to help market services to their peers. In addition to being a sponsor of their teams, CADL is working to get the athletes signed up for library cards, featured in special ads and conducting clinics for younger kids. CADL also hopes to garner information from them in the hopes of finding ways to better market to their peers.

PLO: What new trends are you seeing in library marketing?

TS: In the past, many libraries depended on traditional media (print, TV and radio) as the primary method to get information out to the communities. Studies, including CADL’s own research, point to digital marketing as the most effective method to communicate with the communities. While I still buy some traditional media, a great deal of the budget is allocated to digital.

PLO: What is the difference between an outward vs. inward approach to marketing?

TS: Throughout my career I have found that a great deal of time and resources are used to market programs to current users. While some services were marketed too, it was never to the degree as programs. The term “outward” refers to the importance of getting outside the walls of the library in order to connect with those non-users, which is a tough task but necessary in growing the base.

PLO: How can libraries begin to establish their brand?

TS: The term “library” is already a strong brand name. The goal is to redefine in your community. The library needs to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, as well as the needs of the community. Then, identify what niche it will fit. Positioning the library as a unique provider of particular services that connect with both users and non-users. Your advertisements, programming, and service model must all play off each other. If you don’t want to be known as just a place for kids, then the programming and ads need to reinforce that fact. Also, attach your library to partners and events that help evolve your brand or promise.

Resources:

Trent Smiley, “Marketing with a Smile,” PowerPoint presentation for Library Conference 2015.

Capital Area District Libraries (CADL)

“Everything Right Here Spot (Featuring Taylor Taylor),” audioBoom , audio file, 0:30, January 11, 2016.

“2016 Grammys (Featuring Taylor Swift & Capital Area District Libraries),” YouTube video, 0:15, posted by “cadlvideos,” January 25, 2016.

“Celebrate Black History Month at Capital Area District Libraries,” YouTube video, 0:30, posted by “cadlvideos,” January 28, 2016.

The post Marketing 101 with Trenton Smiley first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Retail marketing is often uses this type of information to make many decisions on how or where to place products. It also focuses on where complementary products or impulse purchase products should be placed. It questions whether there is a way to drive customers to high demand products by way of other things. Retail marketing explains why milk and bread tend to be in the back corners of the grocery store. Using some of these same general principles, what can your patrons tell you about your library through their behavior?

What do your dirtiest carpet and rattiest furniture tell you? If you’re in a cold weather climate, where are there white salty circles or carpet that never dries out from snow? In general, your carpet shows wear patterns even if you don’t live in an area with a lot of snow. It shows where patrons stop and how they travel within your building. Those are the places where the dirt never quite comes out no matter how many times it gets cleaned. Should you make sure there are more displays in this area or information about upcoming activities? Is this the place to put the OPAC, if people are already stopping nearby? The same is true of your furniture. Are there permanent indentations in some of the chairs from constant sitting or scratches on tables from where watches and other jewelry bump and scrape? If you know what chair everyone sits in, should you put materials or displays near it? If everyone stops where the new movies are located, do you need even more copies than you’re already buying?

Are there patches of grass that never grow or footprints in one of the flowerbeds? Your patrons are using the outside of your building as well. If everyone stands in the same spot to wait for the building to open, do you want to pave that place instead of trying to grow grass there? Should you purchase a bench? Should you place advertisements for library services there? Do you want to put an “ash can” in a different place because there are always cigarette butts getting caught in the lawnmower? Probably you don’t want to put outdoor signage, no matter how helpful, in the flowerbed that everyone seems to step through as they take a shortcut to the library, but putting pavers there may make life better for everyone involved.

Why do they keep moving the furniture? If you find at the end of most days that there is always a conglomeration of chairs in an area, it’s a good sign that you need to consider reorganizing your furniture or space a different way. Your patrons are congregating in a specific area for a reason. Groups are meeting somewhere. Should you find out why? Is there no other place to gather? Is the material there supporting the purpose of the gathering? Can the library support this group?

Why is this area always a mess? A surefire sign that people are using your materials is that they are in disarray. Do you let things get a little messy just to see what people are using? If things are still in order, then people aren’t using them. Sometimes order hides valuable information you can use. Magazines are a great example. What magazines are all crinkly with issues out of order? Those are the ones people are reading. Where do people leave their piles of materials they have looked at but are not taking home? Are you consistently finding materials from one section of the library being left in a different part of the building? It could be that the messy place has better lighting, more comfortable seating, or a better sightline to watch small children. Is there an array of cell phones strewn somewhere in your building? Does that tell you there needs to be more accessible outlets for people to use? It is frustrating to find your “house” a mess, but it is telling you what your patrons are using.

Most librarians love cleanliness, tidiness, and order. Look at what the absence of these things can tell you. How do you want to integrate what you know about how your patrons use your library into what you are doing at the library?

The post Being a Library Detective first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Summer Reading Club 2015 – Read to the Rhythm from Vernon Area Public Library on Vimeo.

The video itself took approximately two months to make, from the initial concept to the finished product. Three Youth Services Librarians, including myself, were on the SRC promotional video team and we decided that a current hit would be a good way to engage all ages. Once we picked “Uptown Funk,” we had to write the lyrics! Youth Services Librarians are known for their creativity and silliness, and our crew is no different. We knew what main points we wanted to cover and filled in the lyrics to go with the original melody. We made sure to emphasize that it really was for all ages. We then recorded our lyrics on GarageBand and used a karaoke version of “Uptown Funk” as the main track.

At this point, it was time to storyboard, which turns out to be the most important element of making a great, professional-looking video. It’s also a great way to keep the filming process on track. You can google “storyboard template” for a variety of free templates. We had an idea of how to visualize the video based off our lyrics and then combined moments similar to the original music video. We used the library’s camera, a tripod, and iMovie and GarageBand on our library’s Macbooks to do the film and soundtrack editing. We didn’t use anything that most public libraries wouldn’t already have on hand!

For more creative shots, we used duct tape and taped our camera to a library cart for stability. We also recorded more footage than we needed in order to ensure that we had enough material to work with. How did we convince other departments to participate? By gently reminding them that “it’s for the children” and by bringing donuts for all participants as friendly bribery. We filmed for an hour before the library opened one morning, and for an hour after the library closed one night, with all participating staff paid for their time (something we had discussed with all of our department heads ahead of time).

One caveat of making a quality music track and music video is that you do need to have at least one person on your team who is comfortable working with or learning to work with iMovie and GarageBand. If no one on your library’s staff is familiar with this technology, you can use lynda.com for some training if your library has it available, or search on YouTube for instructions. Once you know the basics, you’re ready to make a promotional video that engages the library staff and your patrons. Plan ahead and you’ll have a rollicking start to next year’s Summer Reading Club!

The post Summer Reading Club Promotional Videos first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The life of a word can be investigated using an n-gram search in the digital book collection of the National Library of Norway. Suddenly an enormous corpus of texts offer new possibilities not only to linguistics, but also to humanities and social sciences.¹

Words are at the core of a project started in April 2013 by a research group headed by professor Rosa Maria Paniccia (Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome) at the Public Library in Rome, with the aim of comparing the representations of patrons and librarians regarding the public libraries as social places.

Paniccia remarks the difference between inclusion and integration: the first assimilates diversity, and is based on individualism; the second recognizes diversity and works on skills and relationship building in an ever-changing environment. The two paradigms (and exclusion) are evident in the findings of the research.

The project team adopted a methodology called “Emotional Analysis of Text” ( AET for “Analisi Emozionale del Testo”), already experimented in other contexts ². The technique, with the help of a specific software, tracks the words which are dense – emotionally meaningful – and group them in clusters. Dense words provide information about the so-called “local culture”, the dynamic context which is organized in categories based on emotions and the unconscious. The clusters of words are located on a multi-factor map and analyzed through psychological models.

In June and July 2013 nine managers and 24 staff members of eleven branches were interviewed. Seven focus groups with patrons were held in six branches. The texts of the interviews and focus groups were analyzed using the AET technique and a first report was presented in May 2014 ³.

The research with patrons produced five clusters of words which somehow portray the various types of patrons. The “study/take” and “critique/poetry” clusters are radically opposite: the first relates to the efforts for the acquisition of knowledge in the individual study versus the shared participation and production of reading groups. The “experience/social” cluster is linked with taking part in the life of the neighborhood, commitment and connection, and the values of cultural activities. The “control/pay” cluster describes the big city as a place of anomie, war, competition and robbery. Perhaps it refers to the formal procedures that patrons are obliged to undergo at the desk. The “children/parents” cluster describes the typical context of children’s areas, where families live in isolation.

The work with librarians produced three clusters. The “loan/catalogue” is the cluster which describes the library as the owner of the book as artifact, and its relationships with the single user. The “school/guide” cluster highlights the library as a reassuring and friendly place which includes and assimilates diversity.
The “space/aggregation” cluster relates to the library which builds connections with the different components of the community, such as the marginalized ones.

It would be too easy to identify the implications of this research only within the area of management and evaluation: i.e., to support the qualitative analysis of user groups or the profiling of personas. They also affect policy-making and the ongoing discussion about the mission and role of public libraries.

References

1. Jon Arild Olsen, Digital book collections as a cultural telescope, in Scandinavian Library Quarterly, no.2, 2014.
2. My translation. The methodology is described in Renzo Carli and Rosa Maria Paniccia, L’analisi emozionale del testo. Uno strumento psicologico per leggere testi e discorsi, Franco Angeli, 2002. The work has not been translated yet.
3. More details can be found in Rosa Maria Paniccia and Cecilia Sesto, “A research-intervention with the Municipal Libraries of Rome as a place of social coexistence in the city. Librarians and clients’ expectations in comparison,” in Rivista di Psicologia Clinica, no.1 (2014). Preprint version courtesy of prof. Paniccia

The post Marketing Libraries Through Word Clusters first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Billboards sell everything from soda to lawyers to hotels so why not sell libraries that way?  The Wilmington Memorial Library in Massachusetts gave it a try by renting a billboard for the month of November[2]. I’ve never seen a billboard advertising a library, but I see billboards advertising other nonprofits pretty regularly around Indianapolis.  The most recent campaign that caught my eye is a local hospital promoting free information about the Affordable Care Act.  How many people driving on that same interstate noticed that sign and thought, “Wow, I never thought to call the hospital for help signing up for insurance?”  If my personal reaction to billboard advertising is any indication, I’d guess that this type of promotion could be very effective in reaching huge numbers of people.

Given the high visibility of billboards, I imagine public libraries don’t use them for advertising because the funding simply isn’t there.  I couldn’t find anything in the library literature about marketing campaigns with billboards and the Wilmington Memorial Library doesn’t know of any other libraries in Massachusetts trying it.  Most libraries are lucky to even have a marketing or PR department. 

Even if our Friends of the Library were paying for the advertising, there is always a danger that a group of patrons could become angered and start a campaign blasting the library for using tax payer funding for expensive advertising.  Others will of course simply state that there are better uses of that money ($2,000/month for Wilmington).  But then again, advertising could be the best use of library funds.  We spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on collections, but complain that our circulation is low and program attendance is small.

As Wilmington Marketing Librarian Joanna Breen said, “It’s really easy to advertise to the people who are already coming in.”  We need to reach the population who doesn’t know how great the library is—and that population isn’t watching our Facebook pages or websites for news and events.  We need those people to come in and use our collection and attend our programs.

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project [2] found that 91 percent of respondents said libraries are important to their communities, but 31 percent said they knew not much or nothing at all about what the libraries had to offer.  This is a huge problem that libraries need to address.  Our messages, for the most part, fall on the same ears that are in the 69% who already know what the library is doing.

Clearly we need to reach that 31 percent in untraditional ways, even if it’s costly.  Why not start with billboards?

1.  http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_24449188/wilmington-memorial-librarys-new-marketing-tool-billboard#ixzz2kvLzbU7R

2. http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/01/22/Library-services/

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