Spotlight on Students:

Student-Centered Strategies for Your Library’s Social Media Presence

October 6, 2013

Michelle Bishop

First-Year Experience Librarian

Penfield Library, SUNY Oswego

Brandon West

Online Instruction/Instructional Design Librarian

Penfield Library, SUNY Oswego

We’re All Social Media Experts...Right?

Activity I

Your experiences with social media:

• What do you hope to get from this workshop?

• What are your current concerns about your library’s social media presence?

Why Invest in Social Media?

18-29 Year Olds

• 86% on Facebook

• 31% on Twitter

• 19% on Pinterest

-Pew Internet & American Life Project Surveys 2012

Social Media @ Penfield Library

• Pinterest• Account created May 2012

• 19 followers (3 Oswego students)

• 14 boards

• Trial period: May-July 2012. One librarian building boards, April-August 2013

• Pinterest Coordinator assigned August 2013.

• Librarians and staff contributing to the development of boards

Social Media @ Penfield Library

• Twitter• Account created January 2012

• 452 followers

• 1,290 tweets

• Our Facebook account is linked with our Twitter account (via Ifttt.com).• Be mindful of posting limits

• We also post original content on Twitter, ReTweet, etc.• Twitter librarian uses Hootsuite to monitor when Penfield is mentioned

• Can retweet and/or respond to student concerns

Social Media @ Penfield Library• Facebook

• Account created 2010

• January 2012: 319 likes

• October 2, 2013: 558 likes

• Facebook account was originally created by a librarian with an interest in social media.

• There was no social media team at Penfield Library during this time or formalized direction for our social media presence.

Sharing the Fun – Team-Based Approach

FACEBOOK

Rule of Thumb: At least one post per day to appear active.

Additional Posts: Librarians & library staff are encouraged to post updates as they see fit. Examples: pictures from special collections, library memes, campus news, etc.

Mondays

Michelle

Tuesdays

Chris

Wednesdays

Brandon

Thursdays

Jim

Fridays

Ray

Research Tips Library

Services

Penfield

Personality

Library Issues Website of the

Week

PINTEREST

Managing Schedules – Mix of Librarians & Library Staff

October 2013

• One person responsible for adding to or maintaining a board each month

New Books Staff Picks Seasonal/

Holiday

Subject Areas

Judy Michelle Emily, Kathryn Tina, Michelle

Sharing the Fun – Team-Based Approach

Considerations• Monitoring Social Media – Even with new content being posted,

librarians still must monitor the social media presence to respond to our followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

• Librarians are continually busy and social media can quickly become a “low priority.”

• Solutions:• Place social media posting reminders on your schedule

• Share the fun – take turns monitoring social media

• Try to recruit individuals who are interested in using social media

• Teach and encourage those who don’t use social media

What is a “student-centered” approach?

• Connecting with students over social media to build a rapport (Phillips, 2011)

• Engaging students in conversations about the library

• Engaging students in participation over social media (polls, contests)

• Posting what is relevant to students. Hint: ask them! (Lee, 2012)

Polls

• Naming New Book Study Rooms

○ Boost interest by choosing relatable pop culture themes

○ Student opinions count

Photo Contests

● New Student Photo Contest○ Library orientation for new students

○ New students took photographs of favorite spaces and/or people in the library

○ Encouraged new students to follow us on Facebook

○ Early impression made that Penfield is a progressive library

● Photo Contest Planned for Spring○ Many requests from sophomores and other upperclassmen wanting

to participate in New Student Photo Contest

New Student Photo Contest

Library Orientation – “Rep Your Hall”

Facebook Primary Communication Medium

● Teams of new students represent their dorms in library challenge

● Tasks posted weekly to Facebook

● New students encouraged to follow us on Facebook

○ Spike in new likes during the first week of event

● Campus will vote for winning team on Facebook

“Rep Your Hall”—Launched September 9, 2013

Week of September 11, 2013

Penfield People

Yin Yin Chen

Grad Student & Student Assistant

16 Likes

2 Comments

Sherod Laliveres

Library Staff

11 Likes

4 Comments

Emily Thompson

Librarian

14 Likes

2 Comments

1 Share

Current Students, Past Students & Beyond

• 1, 861 Views

• 36 Likes

• 22 Shares

Considerations

• Some activities like contests require significant time to develop and implement.

• We have no students on the social media team• Concerns about what students may post

• Social media not ideal for instruction

Social Media Success @ Your Library

Activity II

Now that you have heard about the strategies we use at Penfield Library, start thinking about your library’s social media presence.

● Who are your students?

● Managing social media at your library

● Student-centered strategies

• Next steps

Thank You

Michelle Bishop

michelle.bishop@oswego.edu

Brandon West

brandon.west@oswego.edu

Emily Thompson

emily.thompson@oswego.edu

References

Duggan, M. & Brenner, J. (2013). The demographics of social media users--2012. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-media-users

King, D.L. (2012). Social media. Library Technology Reports, 48(6), 23.

Phillips, N. (2011). Academic library use of Facebook: Building relationships with students. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37(6), 512-522. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2011.07.008

Social Media Concerns Discussed at Conference

•Content

•Reaching users/engagement

•Time it takes to manage social media

•Coordinating social media activities/people to post to social media

•Creating buy-in with other faculty & staff

•Understanding the functions of social media, such as analytics

•Strategic Planning

•Managing the library’s presence via social media

•How to decide what social media outlets to use

Concerns Continued

• Aligning library’s social media with the social media from other social media on campus

• Assessment of social media

• Social media’s impact on library

• Maximizing schedules/content

• Best practices and policies

• Sharing ideas

• Responding to negative comments

• Maintaining an academic focus vs. personality

• Maintaining “one voice” for social media when using a team

• What’s next in the world of social media?

Strategies and Solutions Shared at Conference

• Involve students. One person noted that student workers can help lend a stronger student voice to social media. They would need guidelines to ensure quality posts and need to understand the message the library is trying to portray over social media.

•Using social media aggregators, such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, can help make managing social media easier. This software can allow you to see when the library is mentioned on these outlets.

•Copyright can be a tricky to navigate in the world of social media. One person suggested using ideas from popular memes, but replace the pictures with library content, such as photos from special collections.

Strategies/Solutions Continued

•Begin your venture into social media with colleagues who are interested in social media – those who are already using it will likely embrace it and be an ally.

•Libraries should be developing best practice guidelines for dealing with posting limits, how to respond to students, etc.

•A social media policy is desperately needed for many libraries. One person recommended an article about social media policy located at http://www.infotoday.com/mls/mar13/Breed--Creating-a-Social-Media-Policy.shtml

•A good book to check out is Face2Face: Using Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections by David Lee King

Thanks Again!

•Like Penfield Library on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Penfield-Library-SUNY-Oswego/281128012940?ref=nf

•Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PenfieldLib

•View our Pinterest boards: http://www.pinterest.com/penfieldlib/