Here are my notes from yesterday’s SLA Europe event. The speakers were Ned Potter and Bethan Ruddock.
Ned Potter: Marketing your Library Service
- new professionals are library professionals who started work in the past 10 years
- we are all marketers now
- offer ideas to people in charge: more established staff might appreciate fresh view points, more than you might expect -> they will appreciate if you come with a plan that show benefits and is based on research -> give them two options to choose from
- demonstrate an understanding of what social media can achieve that isn’t happening already; also what works for Web 2.0 -> participatory/interactive
- 1-in-4 rule: one tweet promoting your own stuff and three tweets that are replies, RTs and other content -> add value
- know your organisation’s culture to decide what could work
- streamline internal communications and they might let you lose on external communications
- storify useful for showing feedback
- start talking benefits not features -> example: course titles: Come and meet your information heroes, Taking the hassle out of research, Find stuff
- quality control -> make suggestions when you see something that doesn’t work well
- focus groups: make each user bring a non-user -> use food as “bribes”
Ned’s presentation can be found at http://bit.ly/6thingsyoucando. His website about the Library Marketing Toolkit is at http://www.librarymarketingtoolkit.com/.
Bethan Ruddock: Personal marketing/promoting yourself
Bethan talked about the three main criteria in promotion: motivation, medium and message.
Motivation
- motivation is not just a single thing: different “hats”
- think of your target audience
- motive: e.g. educate, inform, amuse
- be clear about your success criteria
Medium
- social media: choose one that’s right for your message, audience -> be comfortable with social media
- at work: your main medium -> live your message!
- face-to-face
Message
- authentic/honest (enough)/engaging
- congruent: activities need to fit together
- let your message flow from your activities
- don’t pretend to be an expert but say if you are
Further notes
- don’t assume your target audience reads/consumes your output but make it suitable
- share what you do and your expertise -> let people know what you’re good at and how it can benefit others, try to help people
- colleagues and bosses know you best -> you need their recommendations at some point
- make goals for yourself -> achievements fuel motivation
- you’ll have different “faces” for different audiences
- make the most of what you do & project benefits of what you do
- build feedback and CPD into what you do anyway; marketing should be part of everything you do
- think about impact!
- don’t be scared to share
Bethan’s website about the New Professional’s Toolkit is at http://lisnewprofs.com/
