Here’s a fact that blows my mind. According to OCLC’s Perceptions of Libraries, 2010, only 11% of larger U.S. public libraries have a Facebook site. I guess I have to say…are you kidding me?
If you don’t have a library Facebook site, email me today (send it through my Facebook page!) I can walk you through how to set it up, what you need to focus on and why you should be there. Let me put it this way: there is no better way to engage, mobilize and communicate with your core. These are your people, people! They’re looking for you on Facebook and not finding you.
Enough with the harranging. Seriously. Call me. Email me. It’s easy. I’ve even attached here our Social Media plan and policy so you can get started. But don’t forget: don’t just use Facebook to inform people about your events. Engage them by asking provocative questions that gets them talking to each other. Here are a list of questions we’ve stole from Shelf Awareness with great results.
About Alison Circle
Thanks so much for this suggestion! I’ve been reading your blog for one of my library school classes, and I love your suggestions. This week, I started implementing these “book talk” questions on my library’s Facebook page, and the first one got a great response.
Thanks again!
You are welcome. We’ve started monthly a monthly book chat via a Tweet Chat as well. The first one will be via #CMLbookclub. Read & join the conv. on 4/12, 7-8 p.m. http://ow.ly/4fHl9
The book is Olive Kitteridge.
Alison, followed the link to your catalog and wanted to tell you how much I LOVE the format with the aquabrowser that you can turn on and off. Even though we’re a medical library, very left-brained, I’ve been trying to push this format as I think offering both option would be great for people – if the have a citation and know what they want, they can use the “usual” way of “document retrieval” – but, if they don’t know exactly what they want or want to be inspired, they can use the other. The best of both worlds it seems to me and also acknowledging the “right-brained” people in the audience.
Hey, fellow Mover/Shaker! At Arlington Heights, we’ve not only got our FB page (http://www.facebook.com/arlingtonheightslibrary), but we’ve also had a class training local businesses to create their own pages: http://www.ahml.info/content/create-facebook-page-your-business.
Not only should libraries be using social media as a way to connect with users, but we should also be teaching our users to to take advantage of it themselves. Of course, yes…get your own page up, first!
I work in the Youth Dept and we started a Facebook page to let patrons know what events we have going because at the time our old website was not being kept up to date we also post pictures and videos from events that we have. We do not get people posting back even when we do put questions out to them because our age group we have in the Youth Dept. goes to 6th grade and they are not able to be on Facebook so it is just the partents that are looking at our page and they hardly comment on anything at all. Not sure what more I can do to make it more interactive.