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Humanizing your Facebook Pages

by David Lee King on February 9, 2010

A “Book and Digital Media Studies” student (wow – what a cool-sounding program!) emailed me last week, asking about my favorite university library Facebook Pages. Well … to be honest, I can’t say I frequent university library Facebook Pages much.

But I followed up a bit, and did a search in Facebook for university library then narrowed the search to Pages, and found over 500 university libraries with Facebook Pages.

As I browsed through the list, I started noticing that some Pages had low friend counts in the 0-30 range, and many were in the 70-200 range. And there were a handful that had thousands of friends:

Why do these Pages have more friends? Glancing through them, it looks like they are doing one thing – they are humanizing their Facebook Pages. What do I mean by that?

They’re “doing stuff.” Stuff like this:

  • Posting regular status updates
  • Interacting with visitors in the comments of status updates – some status updates have 20-30 comments, as well as “Likes”
  • Pointing to stuff that’s happening in the library (ie., lectures)
  • Regularly add photos and videos – sometimes hundreds of them.
  • They use Facebook’s Events feature to list events.

How about libraries with a low fan count? Here’s one example – the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Main Library, with 7 fans. What are they doing? Nothing. They have 1 status update, from August 2009. Their most recent activity was adding the library’s website url, mailing address, and phone number.

So, to answer the question “Do students friend university library Facebook Pages?” (I hear that one a lot) the answer would be yes – IF those pages are being humanized. Looks like the pages with high fan counts have constant activity streams. Pretty much every day or so, something is happening on those Pages – there are regular status update posts, photos or videos are being added, and event reminders are being posted.

Basically, activity attracts Facebook users. Think of your Facebook Page like a party. Anyone ever attended a dead party? If there’s nothing going on, the party goers quickly find an excuse to leave, because the party is boring, right? In the same way, if your Facebook Page has no updates … your party is boring, and you are inviting your students to go do something else.

This is easily fixable if you do one simple thing. Post an update every day, and make it interesting. Examples from the Fan-heavy pages above include helping students out – pointing to a book/resource that has the “answers” for an assignment, just sharing an interesting tidbit of university or library news, sharing quotes, etc. Pretty normal stuff – just shared with Facebook users.

But if you’re not human, if nothing’s going on … no one will show up to your party.

Bunny by Alyssa Miller

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The Librarian in Black has a New Blog!

by David Lee King on August 31, 2009

Anyone read Sarah Houghton-Jan’s blog, the Librarian in Black? I know I do – Sarah always has some great stuff to share. Well, she has an important announcement – she has a shiny new blog & URL!

From Sarah:

“Librarian in Black has been updated, and moved. Please update your links, bookmarks, and RSS feeds.”

So go ahead, click the links, update your RSS feed readers, subscribe via email, whatever you usually do … I’m waiting…

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Making Connections

by David Lee King on May 23, 2009

Social Media connections in my inboxIf you sign up and use social media tools, here’s what might happen to you: the image accompanying this post is my inbox. I recently visited my parents, and I only answered pressing emails … but didn’t really clear stuff out like normal.

Check out the pic – everyone wants to follow! Twitter follow requests … Facebook friend requests … blip.fm new listeners … Friendfeed subscribers … Flickr contacts … even a request to do something from church (they’re using a cool 2.0-ish tool for worship team scheduling). Probably a couple of blog comments in there, too. There were 2 pages of this.

And some of you play with this stuff more than me … I can only imagine what YOUR inbox looks like!

Who to friend? Who to ignore? Who to respond to? And when? Here’s what I do:

  • Twitter: I get more of these than the others, so I’m a bit pickier here. I friend you if you sound interesting and don’t look like a spammer. I read your bio and a couple of tweets. Sometimes, I look at your follow-to-follower ratio. I usually don’t follow other libraries or people that sound too much like snakeoil salesmen (i.e, that mention SEO/make money online/I’ll make your life better stuff).
  • Also picky with Flickr – I’ll follow you if I know you, if I’ve met you, or if I might meet you professionally (i.e., if you’re a librarian or a social media type).
  • Facebook: I follow most people who follow me. I recently had a run of high school chums discover Facebook.
  • blip.fm: If you follow me as a listener, I’ll follow you back.
  • Friendfeed: Same – I follow back almost everyone who follows me.
  • In any of these, if you send me a message/tweet me/write on my wall, I’ll read it and usually respond if it makes sense to do so. Sometimes I read it, think “huh” and move on – no response needed.
  • Also – if I come across your blog, your book, or an interesting tweet/post, I might friend/follow you – so I can receive more interesting content from you!

When do I do this? Personally, I usually when I read it and/or when it’s convenient to do so (for MPOW, it’s slightly different – I might cover that in another post). I think of follow requests and comments/tweets/wall posts as introductions and conversation, so it makes sense to me to do it sooner rather than later. But then, I don’t have a ton of them, and find it’s simply easier to quickly deal with a follow request quickly and move on, rather than letting them pile up (unless I’m out of town or away from the web for a bit).

What do you do? Who do you friend? And when do you find the time? Stuff to think about…

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Attracting Friends, Part 3: Facebook

by David Lee King on December 2, 2008

This is part 3 (or really part 4 or 5) of my slowly-growing series on organization-based friending in social networks. Here’s what I have so far:

Now, on to Facebook. How do you attract friends using Facebook? You really have to think of your organization two different ways with Facebook – think in terms of organizations and of people. Organizationally, you can create Pages and Groups. Personally, you can create an individual Facebook account that you use professionally.

For example, one of our Youth Services librarians has created a personal Facebook account specifically to connect with our teen audience. It’s working – she’s gathered over 500 friends – mostly teens in Topeka. And she uses the account to push out stuff to that group.

Ideas on attracting friends in Facebook:

  • search for local people, request to friend them
  • friend local Facebook Pages – businesses, authors, etc.
  • Advertise your Facebook Page outside of Facebook (i.e., website, twitter, myspace, email newsletter, etc)
  • Business cards with Facebook contact info at a public services desk, passed out at programs
  • Teach a class on Facebook
  • Create a Facebook Ad to advertise your Page to other Facebook users (there’s a cost attached)
  • Leave those business cards at place local Facebook users hang out, like coffee shops
  • Have good content on your page – send your blog there, add some photos that connect to flickr, same with youtube
  • photos and visuals are important – helps you look more real
  • Especially for people using a personal Facebook account – interact with your Facebook friends!

What else? How do you attract friends using Facebook?

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Attracting Friends, Part 2: Twitter

by David Lee King on November 22, 2008

In my last post, Attracting Friends, Part 1, I discussed how to attract friends for your library social networks generally … by doing the hard work. Now on to the specific tools – how do you find and attract friends, as an organization, using Twitter? Here are some ideas:

  • use local services like TwitterLocal or TwitterMap to discover local twitter users, and subscribe to their feed. Say hi. Interact with them. They won’t friend you if they don’t know you’re there.
  • put a Twitter chicklet on your site. You can use a chicklet that does a specific thing, like TwitterCounter (shows the number of people following you – I have an example on my site), or a generic chicklet/graphic link that simply announces that you use twitter. Go one better, and say “follow me on Twitter” in your link/chicklet. This announces that you’re looking for followers.
  • Does your organization have accounts set up in other social networks, like Facebook, flickr, or YouTube? Mention your Twitter account on those other profile pages.
  • Do local media/businesses use twitter? Connect with them. For example, in Topeka, my twitter friends include some tv news anchors and the general manager of a local news station. Connect with them, and start talking. Others that have connected with them will notice, and maybe follow you.

What am I missing? Please share!

Update: This is part of my slowly-growing series on organization-based friending in social networks. Here’s what I have so far:

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Attracting Friends, Part 1

by David Lee King on November 17, 2008

A couple posts ago, I suggested that libraries stop friending other libraries and to focus instead on their local community. (aside – If you need/want to connect with other librarians, that’s great – make your own personal account for that).

Now, on to how? What are the different ways one can friend others in popular social networking sites, and how can you find and attract friends in each? That’s a bit more difficult, and takes a bit more work. I’ll take a couple of posts and give some pointers (and would love for you to join in and suggest your own idea,s too!).

Here are some general ideas that work for most of the new social networking tools:

  • Setting goals (have I mentioned this one enough?). You need to figure out what you want to achieve with your twitter/facebook/etc account. Do this first!
  • Focus on a target audience – it might help to focus on a target audience, rather than to focus on a generic “patron.”
  • Be human, instead of a stuffy organization. @Zappos and @Timbuk2 do this well in Twitter – when you send them a question or comment about their product, you generally get a real, live person replying, being helpful, answering questions, etc. (hmm… that sorta sounds like a reference librarian).
  • Good content rules! Make interesting posts/tweets/updates
  • Advertise/promote it! Think business cards in the library, articles in the library newsletter, etc.
  • Link to it on your website, and explain what it is and why I should care.
  • Find out where people who use these tools hang out, and go there. And post flyers, pass out cards with your social networking info on it, etc. in those establishments (I’m thinking bulletin board in a coffee shop here).
  • Teach classes on the tool. Show attendees how to set up an account, and how to follow the library. Instant followers!
  • Even better – do the same thing at a local chamber brown bag lunch or other business oriented gathering. Show them how the library can meet real needs via these tools.
  • Library programs/events? Take the first 2 minutes and push it there.
  • Colleges/high schools nearby? Put an ad in their newspapers.
  • How about a local newspaper or local magazine? Put an ad there or check into writing an article for them (better yet, a weekly tech column).

You might have noticed that most of my suggestions on getting friends for social networking tools … doesn’t involve using the tool to make friends. Instead, it’s all about YOU leaving the library and meeting your community. Getting out of the building. Actively introducing your community to these tools. Or even talking to peole inside your library that you notice use the tools.

That’s the hard part – lots of walking and talking and meeting people, physically and digitally. But it will pay off.

Next post – I’ll look at some specifics of finding friends by using the tools – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.

Now – on to your ideas. How do you get friends with social networking tools? Have I left off anything?

photo credit

Update: This is part of my slowly-growing series on organization-based friending in social networks. Here’s what I have so far:

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