David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Two Ways to Improve your Presentations

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me giving a presentation in Spain. Fun time!In the last couple of days, I’ve been working on a new presentation that I’m giving up in Toronto for Future Tech Strategies for Libraries. I’m looking forward to it! I’ll be giving the presentation around the same time you’ll be reading this 🙂

Over the years, I have given and attended a TON of presentations. Some I’ve learned from, some I’ve been entertained by, and some – honestly – have bored me to tears.

Here’s what I’ve learned – there are two things most of us could work on to raise the level of our presentations.

  1. Tell a story.
  2. End with Next Steps.

Let’s look a bit closer at each of these:

Tell a Story: We like stories. Heck, most of you work in libraries – places full of stories! Stories are good. One way to greatly improve your presentation is to treat your presentation like a story, or at least incorporate elements of a story into your presentation.

Why do this? Stories are easy to follow, and easy to remember. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, which works great for a presentation outline. Stories have chapters, which can be individual slides, or sections of your presentation, complete with visual queues and themes. Stories have pictures – so emphasize visual elements on your slides, rather than a wordy outline.

Here are some examples stories you might tell in your presentation:

  • The story of how your library improved something.
  • The story of what you do (your job, your coding, your new service).
  • The story of why your organization needs more funding.
  • The story of what’s on the horizon (emerging trends).
  • The story of – fill in the blank…

End with Next Steps: So many presentations just end. With an embarrassed “and that’s my last slide, so I guess I’m done.”

First things first – work on transitions and writing a good ending to the presentation. But even better – end with what’s next for your listener/participant/attendee. Here are some examples of next steps:

  • What can I do next week after hearing your presentation?
  • What can I do different or change?
  • What are three steps I can take tomorrow to improve something?
  • How should I respond to emerging trends?
  • etc.

See how that works? Share stories and next steps .. and immediately improve the quality of those presentations!

Fun Interview – Check it out!

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Angela!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:

  1. It amazes me that, even today, libraries have an image of being stodgy and traditional. I think there are so many libraries doing amazing, forward-thinking things. So we obviously have a promotion problem, individually and as an industry. How can we do a better job at spreading the word about the cool things happening in the library space?
  2. What’s the biggest marketing problem libraries tell you they are having right now?
  3. Share your top three tips for improving a library website.
  4. Social media still seems to intimidate many libraries. Can you give three tips for libraries looking to take their social media game to the next level?
  5. You’ve written a book about using social media as a tool to make customer connections. Why is it so important to libraries to connect with their cardholders?
  6. Many library marketers have told me they just don’t have time to do all the things they want to do. You do a lot… you have your full-time job, your blog, your speaking engagements, and your personal life. How do you manage it all? Do you have some tips on time-management?
  7. What’s an emerging technology trend that libraries and particularly library marketers need to pay attention to?
  8. You worked a lot of jobs before landing in the library world… and you’ve stayed here for a long time. What’s so great about working for a library?
  9. What book are you reading right now?
  10. If you could send a message to yourself ten years ago (in 2005), what would you say?

Enjoy!

Picture from Angela Hursh’s Twitter account

Use a Different Browser for Work Stuff

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using two browsersMy last post talked about some tools to use when managing multiple Instagram accounts. When I was writing that post, I realized that I had another tip to share … here it is!

And it’s an easy one. Use separate browsers for work and personal stuff. This works great for me. For example, I’m logged into my personal Google account (for gmail, Google plus, Google Apps, etc.) all the time at work. I use Chrome for that. Chrome is also hooked into Facebook, my personal Twitter account, etc. – pretty much anything “me related” goes on Chrome.

For work-related web tools, I use Firefox. This gives me an easy way to log into separate social media accounts at the same time. For example, I can be logged into work and personal Twitter accounts, or work and personal Google accounts at the same time. No logging out of one and into the other one.

So – a simple tip that might work for you. Have any other tips to share? Please do!

 

Managing Multiple Instagram Accounts

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screenshot of fotogramme app on my iphoneI recently created an Instagram account for my library (and you can find my own Instagram account here, if you’re interested).

So far, we are having fun with it! I’m in the process of planning (i.e., gathering a team and setting up our first meeting), and we’ll be setting some goals for 2015. More on that later.

After creating the library’s account, I quickly noticed a problem. It’s sorta awkward managing multiple Instagram accounts on my iPhone. If I want to do something on the library’s Instagram account – post a photo or manage the account (i.e., follow people or respond to comments) – I have to log out of my own account and then log into the library’s account, and then back again.

Thankfully, there are some web and app-based tools to help manage multiple Instagram accounts:

  1. Fotogramme: Fotogramme is an Instagram management iPhone app with multiple account support. It allows me to view photos, post Likes and comments, manage followers, and Favorite users and hashtags for easier recall. It also sends alerts to my iPhone, so I know when there’s activity on the library’s Instagram account.
  2. iconosquare: Iconosquare is a web-based tool that lets you manage an Instagram account. It allows you to browse and comment or like photos, and manage your Instagram accounts comments. But the best part of Iconosquare are the statistics. It provides a variety of statistics and trends on your photos, followers, likes, and follower interaction.
  3. unfollowers: This is a handy tool to quickly manage followers. For both Twitter and Instagram, it shows you who’s following you, who unfollowed you, etc. It can help you figure out who to follow. I’m playing with the free version, which limits the activity you can do on a given day. But still – it’s easy to use, and cheap ($6.90 per month for one account) if we wanted to actually pay for it.

face2faceWhat’s missing from each of these tools? Actually taking photos. So yeah – I still have to take a photo, log out of my Instagram account, then log into the library’s account. And then back out again so I don’t post to the wrong account. But the management and statistics help is appreciated.

Here are a couple of articles that mention these and similar Instagram tools:

Have anything else that helps you manage your organization’s Instagram accounts? Please share!