social media | emerging trends | libraries
Did you know that Emerald Group Publishing has a Special Features part of their website? They have some really useful articles there … one of them being an article from me!
I just posted this – Your Digital Branch has Unique Content. What do I talk about? What the title says – the fact that your library’s website – your digital branch – has some very unique content. Think ebooks, or the full catalog vs browsing the shelves for stuff not checked out.
And some other ideas too. Go read it!
I was recently interviewed by Angela Hursh, the Content Team Leader for the Marketing Department at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Angela has a cool new blog called Content Marketing for Libraries.
Go subscribe to it right now!
Anyway … it was a fun interview. Here are the questions she asked me. If you want to see my answers, you have to visit her blog!
The questions:
Enjoy!
Picture from Angela Hursh’s Twitter account
What’s the deal with Facebook’s recent drop in Reach? I’ve been reading about it and I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Read on to find out why!
What exactly IS Facebook Reach, and what happened to it? Facebook Reach is a number that reflects how many people saw your Facebook post. Facebook changed something in their algorithm, and Facebook Reach (more specifically, Organic Reach – reach not generated through Facebook Ads) seems to have dropped. Dramatically. Some Facebook Page owners have seen a 40% or more drop in Organic Reach.
Bummer!
Why is Facebook messing with Reach? Facebook is trying to keep their customers interested. To do that, they are constantly tweaking what can be seen on the Facebook News Feed. When you log into your Facebook account, you are dropped into your News Feed, and you see the Top Stories view (you can toggle to the Most Recent view, which provides all stories).
The Top Stories view automatically sorts through your News Feed, finds the stories that you would most likely be interested in, and presents those to you rather than showing you everything.
Here’s what Facebook says they’ve done (from Brian Boland, who leads the Ads Product Marketing team at Facebook):
Rather than showing people all possible content, News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.
Over the past year, we’ve made some key changes to improve how News Feed chooses content:
- We’ve gotten better at showing high-quality content
- And we’ve cleaned up News Feed spam
As a result of these changes, News Feed is becoming more engaging, even as the amount of content being shared on Facebook continues to grow.
Because of these changes, some Facebook Pages have experienced a drop in Engagement and Reach, because Facebook is effectively hiding posts from those Facebook Pages.
What does this mean for a library’s Facebook Page?
Should you stop using Facebook? Um, no. According to Pew Internet, 57% of American Adults are on Facebook. And that percentage is still growing. That’s still a majority of your community – your customers – on a social platform that you can use. For Free.
Should you just pay for ads? Advertising is a good thing if you do it well. Advertising on Facebook is cheap, and can have a quick response (i.e., people actually click over to your site from a Facebook ad – go figure). So yes – experiment with Facebook ads to see if it works for you. Just remember that ads aren’t the only way to use Facebook. It’s just one strategy.
Should I worry about the drop in Facebook Reach? No. Instead, focus on creating better content and making it into your Facebook Fan’s “top 300†posts on their News Feed. Because that’s the real problem. The reason some posts don’t make it into the News Feed is simple – Facebook users don’t find that content engaging, and ignore it. Then, Facebook helps them continue to ignore it.
If you don’t improve your content to make it into the top 300 posts, your Fans will ignore you (with Facebook’s help), and your content won’t appear in their News Feed.
Here’s a simple Facebook formula to remember: useful content = more engagement = better Reach.
Read more about the drop in Facebook Reach:
Image by Johanna
In my last post, I purposefully title it “Forbes Wants to Close Libraries.” Why?
Well – I was critiquing an article on Forbes website.
The article is written by a “contributor.” Apparently, you can fill out a form (and probably do a lot more stuff) to be able to post as a contributor at Forbes.
And guess what? Forbes wants you to write for them, but doesn’t want to necessarily be associated with the content that contributors write.
Under the contributor’s names and photos is a tiny statement that says: “Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.”
Well yeah. It’s an opinion piece, after all.
Here’s my problem with that idea:
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck …
I know – magazines and newspapers have always had opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and love using that “opinions expressed are not held by the organization” statement.
I’m just not sure it works all that well in an online setting. Either own the content on your site (like Techcrunch, Mashable, etc do) or don’t post it.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
I’ve been talking about developing an online first mentality for your library. In part one, I introduced the concept. In part two, I gave some examples of how it might work in a library setting.
In part three, let’s make sure that everything your library does is represented online. At least, all the parts that customers interact with.
What’s that mean? Think about what your library does for a second. Is everything – programs, events, services, etc. – represented online? Can you sign up for them online? If not – how come?
Sometimes, a library doesn’t represent a service online – because it might become too popular. Seriously. I’ve heard of libraries purposely NOT sharing something online because of capacity issues.
It might be a book group with limited seating. It might be a service that the library couldn’t handle if the service got too popular. Sorta like the In-N-Out Burger secret menu (if it wasn’t shared online) – if you happen to know about it, we’ll do it. We just won’t tell you that’s an option.
There are a few ways to handle those situations:
So … can you represent everything your library does online? I think so – get busy!
Photo by Steve Rhodes