David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Freak Out, Geek Out, or Seek Out – recent presentations

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Freak Out, Geek Out, or Seek Out: Trends, Transformations & Change in Libraries

View more presentations from David King.

I recently gave my Freak Out, Geek Out, or Seek Out presentation at Lawrence Public Library in Kansas, and at three fun events in Wisconsin. A couple of them were longer, 3-hour talks, and the other two were shorter – this Slideshare slidedeck is for the 3-hour version of the presentation.

All 4 were fun talks with lots of great discussion afterwards. Lawrence and Wisconsin – thanks!

It’s the Experience that Matters – Notes from a ULC Webinar

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I attended an Urban Libraries Council webinar on the customer experience today – it was good! Here are some of my notes from the session.

Speaker – Melanie Huggins, Richland County Public Library

Stuff I found interesting…

Definitions:
User Experience (UX) – interaction between technology and humans
Customer Experience (CxP) – all aspects of a customer’s interaction with an organization, its product and services

Think about the whole interaction – the before, during, and after – that’s the customer experience.

6 laws of customer experience:

1. Every interaction creates a personal reaction
– An experience designed for everyone satisfies no one. You need to optimize for a specific set of customers (ie., use personas)

2. People are instinctively self-centered
– don’t sell things – help customers buy them
– don’t show your corporate underpants

3. Customer familiarity breeds alignment
– think of your company as a large production crew making the stars (front-line employees) shine on stage (during customer interactions) – nice thought!

4. Unengaged employees don’t create engaged customers

5. Employees do what is measured, incented, and celebrated
– me – ok. “encented” is a silly word.
– don’t just expect staff to do the right things. Instead, clearly define good behaviors.
– watch for mixed messages

6. You can’t fake it!
– it has to be top priority to be successful
– advertise to reinforce, not create, positioning (ie., job ads)

Definition of brand: a customer’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.

Good stuff!

Supporting Your Community

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I just read You Don’t Sell to a Community. You Support a Community by Dan Blank (found via Chris Brogan’s Twitter feed). And hey – Dan must be ok – he used to work at Reed Business Info (ie., Library Journal, etc). So he gets us library types.

Here’s the gist of the post (make sure to read the whole thing): “As the business landscape rushes into social media – a more nuanced connection with people’s lives – this is something to be understood. The business funnel of marketing to a segmented group of people is not the same as building trust within a community – of supporting a community.”

Two other good quotes:

  • “You don’t sell to a community. You support a community. You provide for a community. You connect a community. You mediate a community. You balance a community. You sacrifice for a community.”
  • “it is hard to truly “build” a community. Communities exist already. A list of Twitter followers is not necessarily a community.”

So – how does this relate to libraries? We don’t sell stuff, do we? Sure we do. My library has a 3-person marketing team that creates newsletters, giant posters, and marketing & promotion campaigns (for starters. They do a lot of great work). Their business is making sure everyone in Shawnee County knows about us, checks out our stuff, and attends our events. That’s selling – selling our stuff and our services.

What do some libraries do soon after they set up their blogs, Facebook Pages, and Twitter feeds? They start selling! Many of us primarily use our online social communities as broadcast avenues. We throw billboards out into the middle of our digital community, hoping someone reads it, clicks the link, and attends the event (or checks out the book).

But I’m with Dan – that’s not the primary thing we should be doing in our online communities.

Think about it for a sec – when it comes to our analog community (ie., our buildings), we get that. We ROCK in that space. Who else (maybe besides a church) has an actual community that visits regularly, connects with the people who work there, and that’s not obviously selling stuff (like a grocery store)? That’s us! We’re not there to sell stuff – our stuff sells itself. In our analog spaces, we exist to support our communities, and we do it well.

So why, when we venture online, do we suddenly turn into snake oil salesmen? How come we have a hard time connecting via a text box, a camera, or a short video? We’ve had some form of these tools for a LONG TIME (ie., email for example). The rest of our community picked it up (look at national Facebook and email adoption rates) – why are we struggling here?

Want to fix this? Here’s a couple of things to try:

  • Take a look at your organization’s social media spaces (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Is it full of answering questions, or is it full of announcements? Think about balancing those out a bit.
  • Think of your social media spaces like a large gathering of people where you’ve been asked to represent your library. I’m guessing you wouldn’t bring your bullhorn, right? Instead, you might say “Hi – I’m from the library. What do you do?” … then you’d go from there. Treat your social media spaces the same way.
  • Give this quote from Dan some thought – “You don’t sell to a community. You support a community. You provide for a community. You connect a community. You mediate a community. You balance a community. You sacrifice for a community.” Are there ways you can do this online? Probably so.
  • In your library’s social media spaces, don’t be “The Library.” Be “David, the dude who works at the library.” Be a person, not a billboard.

More later.

Photo by cindiann

Facebook from a Patron’s Perspective

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A day or two ago, we invited a couple of our patrons in for a focus group session on our website. The goal was to gather insights about our current website that can be incorporated into our redesign … but in the process, one patron in particular shared some eye-opening insights into how she uses Facebook.

This patron shared that she sits in front of a computer for 8 hours a day at work, and starts her morning out by opening up Google Reader, email, and Facebook as separate tabs on her web browser, and keeps them open all day long (while she’s working).

What does she do in Facebook? A lot. She follows co-workers, friends, and family there. The keeps up with the news and other organizations she’s interested in … through her Facebook news feed.

And the library? She primarily keeps up-to-date with the library through Facebook, too. Yes – through status updates and links within those status updates to interesting things.

OK. She was just one person who works in front of a computer all day. But I’m guessing she’s not alone – in the last three months, my library’s Facebook Page has added almost 900 fans.

Implications?

  • We need to not treat our Facebook Page as an afterthought. Some of our more savvy, active patrons are using Facebook as a primary source for library news.
  • We need to develop strategy and goals around our Facebook Pages (and any other social media tool our library incorporates).
  • We need to be actively sharing and conversing. Not just broadcasting press releases, but actually holding conversations with our patrons (just like we do in our physical spaces)

Are you seeing a similar thing with your customers? Your friends? How are you talking with patrons using a Facebook Page?

Photo by Paul Walsh

How a Meme Gets Started

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It’s been fun today watching the #inatweet meme take off on Twitter. Which made me think it’d be fun to document it a bit – memes, trends, and interesting topics CAN originate from your organization (it’s certainly happened to my library before).

Here’s how the #inatweet meme started:

Justin Hoenke (@justinlibrarian) was talking to Joe Murphy (@libraryfuture) about Dropbox, a cool file sharing and storage service, and I chimed in too (’cause Dropbox really IS a cool tool). Justin asked Joe and I if “either of you point me in the direction of a good place to start for learning about Dropbox?” I just said “they have a video about themselves – I’d start there.”

Joe, however, tweeted this: “Dropbox in a tweet: Transfer/synch files across comps & mobile devices via web or software @JustinLibrarian @davidleeking.” And I replied back “@libraryfuture @JustinLibrarian good job! Hey, u cld start a meme – describe *** in a tweet!.” …

And of course Joe, master of all things social, actually DID it – “Let’s do it! @davidleeking Librarians- share an intro to a useful tech in a 1 Tweet blurb & use the #inatweet hashtag.” Then we both did a couple of retweets …

And now we have this:

  • #inatweet hashtag on Twitter is being used quite a bit today
  • 14 pages of tweets so far! That’s 200 tweets and counting
  • Way over 50 different services and tools … described in a tweet

Besides being pretty useful – short, to-the-point descriptions of services is always a good thing – think about this:

  • how can YOU start a hashtag meme, a local trend, or even a good discussion in your community’s favorite social media tool of choice?
  • What would you talk about?
  • could you keep it going, AND make it useful to your community?

We need to engage our communities, and something as simple as starting a conversation on a social media tool can be a way to do it. Think about it.

ps – make sure to add to the meme! Describe a service in a tweet, and add the #inatweet hashtag. It’s that simple!

Twitter bird by Marc Benton