If you’ve ever flown on a plane, you’ve probably heard the pilot say something like this: “The wind is blowing south southwest at a speed of 10 miles an hour.” They usually say this like it’s either extremely interesting, or it’s highly useful information that everyone needs to know.
Does anyone really care about that? Does knowing how fast the wind is blowing and what direction it’s coming from really help make your plane ride a better one?
I’m guessing not.
Here’s what I’d much prefer hearing from a pilot: “this is the best plane I’ve ever flown, it should be a smooth ride, and I’ll get you there 15 minutes early.”
And maybe from the flight attendant: “the ginger ale is really yummy today!”
Some organizations share the wrong information. Information that’s inward-facing. Information that’s really important to the organization (i.e., windspeed to a pilot), but not really all that important to the customer. Libraries are certainly guilty of that – anyone ever seen a description of a library database? For example, here’s how Madison Public Library describes EBSCOHost:
EBSCOhost is a collection of databases provided by EBSCO and funded through a statewide contract with BadgerLink. Most databases reference collections of magazine articles or newspaper articles, each with a different focus. You may search all databases, or use only the collection that interests you by connecting to individual collections below. A few EBSCO products, such as the Auto Repair Reference Center, have different search functions and interfaces due to the nature of the content.
This is on their “more info” page. Their more customer-focused description is better (on their main list of databases page):
EBSCOhost includes thousands of indexed magazines, many full-text, for over fifteen years. Magazine coverage ranges from the popular to the academic.
Is this the right info to share with customers? Do either of these descriptions tell customers what they’ll find if they use EBSCOHost? I think the smaller paragraph does. I don’t think the first paragraph says much of interest to a library customer.
And that’s just one example, for one small part of a library’s website. My question – do you do that on your website (I’m sure my library does)? Do you do that in other parts of your organization?
And more importantly – have you asked your customers if you are sharing the right info with them? Something to think about.
photo by Alex Marshall
This was my panel session. I shared the panel with three fabulous people:
When talking to librarians about ebooks and econtent, I often hear things like this: “we can’t do anything – we’re just a small public library going up against Amazon/Apple/Barnes & Noble/fill in the blank.” Or “we don’t have the right connections” or maybe “we don’t have the resources we’d need to do something.” Etc.
Two huge social media sites have been mentioned in the news in the last couple of weeks: Pinterest and Instagram:
