IL2008: Digital Marketing – Successful Plans and Organizations

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!!!