marketing

Give Away some Ebooks

by David Lee King on March 7, 2011

A couple weeks ago, I saw a pretty cool idea at the Denver International Airport, and thought it could be adapted to libraries.

1st Bank had some large advertisements up in the airport, giving away free ebooks (see the pic in this post – this was one of two signs I saw). All you needed was a smartphone with a QR Code reader – aim and read the code, and you were directed to download a free ebook (there was also a button to open a new banking account).

Pretty ingenious, if you ask me. Just guessing here, but I’m pretty sure the only books I saw were “free” out-of-print classics. For most people – people who are stuck at the airport with nothing much to do – what a cool idea! Give em a book (even if it’s freely available online), and brand it as your business.

How can this work for a library?

Why not copy this idea? Use a QR Code, put up a sign at the mall or the grocery store, and offer a “free” ebook (maybe something legally free from Project Gutenberg). Send the user to a mobile webpage, branded as your library – with a link to the ebook, and some info about your other cool services.

In essence, it looks like the library is giving away a free ebook – that works with multiple ereaders! Even those pesky Amazon Kindles that don’t play well with libraries.

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More on Rockstars

by David Lee King on October 12, 2010

dlk on guitarJust an update to my last post The Librarian IS the Rockstar. There’s a good bit of discussion going on in the comments to that post – go revisit, read the comments, and chime in!

There’s also some discussion going on in two other places:

Andy Woodworth wrote Shine Like a Star, Star. Nice post that fleshes out the whole promote staff idea: “But for those who don’t mind the exposure, the promotion pays in branding dividends. If you can put a human face to the library (and not a picture of a building, as is commonly done on Twitter and Facebook), then patrons can make the better connection to a person than simply identifying the place. In thinking beyond the immediate, when it comes to advocating for the library, it’s an easier emotional connection to say “Miss Jessica at the library needs you to write to your representatives” than “The library needs you to write to your representatives”. Patrons will be doing it for the people at the library, not simply the library itself. It’s that kind of identification that the library really needs; that personal connection that emphasizes that we are a people business.”

And Nancy Dowd, over at The M Word – Marketing Libraries blog, also wrote about Rock Stars. She’s a marketing director, and really knows her stuff. Here’s what she said: “The more people from my library that I can get into the newspapers, on a podium or winning an award, the happier I am.” Then, Nancy goes on to list 5 really goodreasons why this is a good thing.

So – go read the posts (and subscribe to Andy and Nancy’s blogs, if you don’t yet), then add to the discussion.

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The Librarian IS the Rockstar

by David Lee King on October 7, 2010

pic by libraryman

About a year ago, I tweeted this:

But I leave u with this to ponder: are your librarians your rockstars in your community? Should they be? If so, how do u get there? (from Twitter).

Here’s where I was going with that tweet: Awhile back, my library’s Communications Specialist said this to one of our librarians, who was worried that an article in our library newsletter focused a bit too much on her. Our Communications person said this (summary) “yep – my goal is to make YOU the rockstar, not me.”

I thought that was an insightful statement.

Our marketing person realized that one HUGE asset our library has, and therefore our community has … are our librarians. So we sometimes need to focus on our staff, rather than just on our stuff.

Why NOT “showcase” some of our fine staff a bit? We do that with all our other important, cool stuff, right? Our Harry Potter books and movies were all over some of our websites a few years ago. We make banners for important author events. We turn our “stuff” into the attraction (which makes sense – people come for our stuff).

How about this – why not create a banner showcasing, say, the librarian storytime dude that plays guitar and attracts a crowd? We’ve actually done that. In the process, instead of focusing on our “stuff” (in this case, the fact that we have storytimes), we focused on the specific staff person that did the storytime.

This also makes sense, because some people come for our stuff … AND our staff. You’ve seen this, too. More kids attending a certain person’s storytime. Patrons asking for a specific person at the reference desk. Maybe even one librarian blogger getting more hits on his/her blog posts because of their more personal writing style. People like our staff.

Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. We have amazing staff – and I’ll bet you do to. So why not showcase them a bit? Put them out into the community. Get them on the news (we do that on an afternoon news program). I know some librarians that write weekly newspaper columns.

Get out of your building. Step away from the reference desk. Call the newspaper. Start emphasizing your rockstar staff – not just your rockstar stuff.

Then see what happens.

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Free State Social – Sarah Evans #fssocial

by David Lee King on April 30, 2010

Sarah EvansTitle: How to Make Your Brand Stand Out Online

Sarah Evans – She runs Sevans Strategy out of her home

Telling a story about the Chicago earthquake a year or so ago… she was able to be a citizen reporter, and ended up on national news (and got 5 solid client leads from it, too).

First – know what you want to accomplish

9 ways to stand out online

1. Find an opportunity to showcase what you do best

2. Hijack a conversation – gave a example of using the sxsw crowd and speakers to host another simultaneous event

3. Meet a need in an innovative way. She identified a larger need. Asked permission to be in charge of the #journchat thing. Innovate – do something different. It evolves. One pitch – she lets them do one pitch at the end – she gives them something quick to share. We’re a community.

4. Generate a LOT of quality content. Think multimedia.

5. Do it for a good cause. The #beatcancer hash tag as an example. And #crisisovernight as another example.

6. Give freely, give often. Share, acknowledge, give tips and tricks for your industry, trade secrets, etc. Retweet, like, comment post engage. Read your feeds, respond, etc.

7. Think like those you’re trying to reach. Use the tools they use. She checks out people’s twitter feeds before she contacts them to pitch them something and brings something from the feed up in her initial contact. It makes it more personal.

8. Get sourced … A lot. Sign up for helpareporter.com, follow journalists. Online, identify story opportunities where you are the best source and pitch them. Focus on media, bloggers, and online influencers bonus – use Pitchengine for your releases. Write for the consumer and the media…

9. What else? We had audience participation here.

Prtini? A pr blogger. …

How do we manage our message? You. Don’t. You start it, but your community takes it somewhere else.

It cant be a good sign when you have more twitter followers Han t he subscribers to your local newspaper.

@prsarahevans

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The Accidental Library Marketer – a Book Review

by David Lee King on October 20, 2009

Enjoying the accidental library marketer by Kathy DempseyInformation Today sent me a copy of Kathy Dempsey‘s new book, The Accidental Library Marketer (Amazon Associate link). I read it and loved it! Let me tell you a bit about the book.

As Kathy says right in the introduction, on pg. xv – “The Accidental Library Marketer fills a need for library professionals and paraprofessionals who find themselves in an awkward position: they need to promote their libraries and services in the age of the internet, but they’ve never been taught how to do so effectively.”

There’s a lot that’s good in the book (check out my post-it notes in the pic!). Why am I interested in marketing? Well … by being a Digital Branch Manager, I AM part marketer/promoter. Part of my job is sharing the library’s digital branch with Topeka. And that takes … well, marketing and promotion.

Kathy starts with the basics – what IS marketing, anyway? The rest of the book is full of “how to’s” – including creating a marketing plan, basic rules for producing good promotional materials, different ways to get your promotional materials out, and using demographic data as a great starting point. Good stuff indeed – I learned things.

Anything bad about the book? … … well, not the book itself. I was more bummed out that my grad school’s library science program (University of Tennessee) didn’t teach me squat about marketing. Zilch. Seems to be a pretty important topic to me (and it is completely plausible that at the time they DID have classes on marketing, but I wasn’t interested – best-laid plans always seem to change)!

So… go read, go learn. Go market – but not accidentally!

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IL2008: Digital Marketing – Successful Plans and Organizations

by David Lee King on October 20, 2008

Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt presented

Outreach – connecting users with librarians – important to highlight the librarians!

Make your library website two-way.
- can people register for library cards?
- can they share their opinion?
- can they have an identity?

Make sure you rlibrary is listed correctly in all the library directories (like LibDex, publiclibraries.com, etc)

submit your RSS feeds to blog search engines (Feed Submitter is great)
- look at Robin Good’s list of where to submit your blog/feed
- RSS Specifications list of where to submit, too…

make sure you’re listed on maps (wikimapia, etc)

search engine findability: search for different variations of your library’s name, make sure you’re there.
- also buy adwords from google, hire an SEO to help

wifi:
- list yourself in wifi directories (check the presentation for a list later on)

Community website presence
- list in places like upcoming.org, eventful, etc.

LibraryThing Local – they have a subsite called Local – book events are listed
- they have a “do you work here” link and you can take ownership of the info

presence on local websites, see who’s linking to you

Social Review Websites – yelp (you can claim your business in yelp, too)
- when someone says good stuff about you, USE IT

phone numbers – make sure you’re listed correctly (google maps, askcity, yahoo local, etc)

make a/v content findable – make sure it’s listed in blinkx, singingfish, etc

social networking sites – in ning, flickr, etc

find local blogs – blogs by city, blogdigger local, metroblogging, feedmap

… and interact with these people!

local forums and boards, too

facebook flyer ($10 or so for 5000 ads/flyers)

list your staff in expert sites (yahoo answers, ziki, yadda, etc)

push info out via email/rss
- newsletter software
- use those email addresses

wikipedia – make an entry, update an entry

text a librarian – combines sms, im, email, etc – this is cool!!!

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Twitter Best Practices So Far

by David Lee King on June 25, 2008

I’ve just spent some time subscribing to a bunch of Twitter social media and community manager types (via twitterpacks.pbwiki.com) My goal in doing this is to learn more about digital community management, and how that relates to the library version of digital communities.

But while doing that, I started noticing some similarities in twitter account pages, and thought I’d share those with you.

Twitter Best Practices:

1. Have a bio. When people see an interesting tweet, they might click through and want to read a bit about you – the first place they’ll look is your Twitter bio. Most bios provide a brief outline of who you are. For example, mine currently says “I write about, talk about, and work in libraries!” (yes, that’s a very boring bio – I should change it). “I write about, talk about, and work around libraries, social media, and digital communities. Also check out my videoblog: http://davidleeking.com/etc” (just changed it :-)

Even better – include an invitation in your bio. Here are two examples:

  • I’m a 35 year -old marketing professional who is learning about new media. Help me learn Twitter please! Follow me and I’ll follow you!
  • New followers: please @ me to start or join a conversation.

2. Extra links in your bio. You can add links to pertinent sites and services in your bio. If the URL is long, make sure to shorten it with one of those tinyURL services. Otherwise, the link text will run into the background of the page… and make you look like you look bad.

3. Spell check your bio text. Misspellings look bad. Nuf said.

4. Use a good headshot for your picture/icon: Best practices for the little pic that accompanies your tweets – a headshot of you, smiling. Or maybe you being silly. If possible, show your personality.

Don’t frown – if you don’t look friendly (or you look scary), others might think twice about friending you. And on the web, thinking twice means you’ve lost them.

5. Add a background image. Any image. Silly. Professional. Ugly. The point here is that using the default Twitter background on your account makes you look like a newbie. And that’s bad, especially when it’s so easy to add an image.

Brownie points for using the image like these two tweeters. See what they’ve done? They smartly positioned an image version of a link list that appears in the far left portion of their twitter page. Nice way to share links and promote themselves!

6. Say “Hi” to new followers. When someone follows you, reply back. That’s nice! Here’s one example: “you might be the first librarian I’ve met.  HI!”

Even better – one person direct messaged me with this message: “Welcome New Follower!! How goes it?  Have you tweeted anything that I should know about that I may have missed?” Wow – he’s asking you to introduce yourself in a very direct and helpful (to him) way. Nice.

7. Silly observations:

  • Social media and community manager types tend to play guitar in a band and mention it in their profiles…
  • they all subscribe to Chris Brogan’s twitter account.

8. Finally, don’t do this: I saw one twitter account (that I didn’t follow) with these characteristics:

  • Bio said the person is a “key executive in digital media”
  • No picture/icon was included
  • No background image was used
  • He’s not following anyone
  • He has 7 followers
  • He’s only written 5 updates

Notice the irony here? This person’s bio and his actual Twitter activity don’t match up. He doesn’t sound like a key executive in “digital media” He needs to take 5 minutes to add a pic, add a background, follow a few usual suspects in his field, and add a couple more tweets. This will make his account look “normal” – and he’ll look more knowledgeable to boot.

Update: after writing a whiz-bang twitter article, I completely fogot to add a link to my own twitter account (twitter.com/davidleeking)! Duh…

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I Don’t Get It, or The Wonders of Mudflap Babe

by David Lee King on September 20, 2007

More than one blogger this week has been pontificating on the wonders of the Wyoming Library Campaign’s mudflap girl. Here she is:

<sarcasm and nasty disagreeable Dave starts here>
I’m sorry, Wyoming. I realize that you hired “a team of Wyoming library public relations specialists” and that those professionals “have been planning this campaign for months.”

And I know you state the goal of the mudflap babe is to first allow people to see the babe, and then to somehow… miraculously… get from the mudflap babe to the realization that “There is something for me at the library, and I can grow, explore and wonder.”

Uhm… I just don’t see how the mudflap girl does that! See, I grew up in the midwest. Driving down I-70. Behind trucks. Big trucks. Lots of trucks. With mudflaps. Those mudflaps looked like the one below:

When I was a kid, everyone and my sister understood that those truckers liked scantily-clad women, that those truckers had pretty much no respect for women, and treated them as sex objects. That was just a given – especially when you tacked on all the silly sexist trucker songs and movies that were also popular when I was a kid.

[I asked my wife to take a peek. She said "but that's a naked lady!"]

Sorry, Wyoming. I simply do not see how mudflap babe shows me that libraries are “reliable and exciting.” Or how said hottie shows me that libraries “add value to our lives.” Whose value? Certainly not the women being treated as eye candy.
< / sarcasm off>

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