Every once in awhile, someone asks me how my library manages our social media channels. Here’s how we do it:
We create teams of staff for our social media sites. So for example, we have a Facebook Posting Team (with a team leader). For that team, we create some goals and define who our main customers are (the largest percentage of our Facebook users are females ages 25-45, so we focus on that group the most).
Goals might include: number of posts per day, how many friends we want to reach, being an active presence in the local Facebook community, etc.
Then we created three content areas to focus on in Facebook:
- Reader’s advisory (we post about books, characters, authors, etc)
- Current news and pop culture, both national and local
- The normal library stuff (events, library news, etc)
Next, we assign days and times for our team. So I might get Wednesday afternoons, and be assigned to post about current events. Whoever is “on†for that time slot will also answer questions, etc. as they appear.
That’s basically it! We have done that so far with Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, and it seems to be working pretty well for us.
Want to create a social media team? Here’s how I’d do it:
- Gather your team. Make sure to include public services staff. They already interact with customers, so it makes sense. This can be a team of 2-3 or more (depends on the size of your library). Also figure out who is the team leader.
- Create some goals. Why do you want to use social media? What do you want to do with it? How do you want to connect to customers using it? What should the end result look like? Answer those types of questions.
- Create 2-4 broad content areas to focus on. Figure out 2-4 broad areas you want to post about, and how often you want to post. That really helps focus your library’s message. These should be based on the goals you created earlier.
- Pick the best tools that will help meet those goals. This will most likely include Facebook (about 60% of your community is probably using it). It might also include tools like Twitter or Instagram.
- Create a posting schedule … and start posting!
How do you run social media at your library? I’d love to know!
Photo by Melanie Holtsman