David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Face2Face Book News

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Face2Face: Using facebook, Twitter, and other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections Just some recent Face2Face-related book news! For those not up-to-speed, my newest book, Face2Face: Using Facebook, twitter, and other Social Media Tools to Make Great Customer Connections, was published in September.

Book News, Inc recently published a short review of my book. Here’s the review:

King (digital services director, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library) explain the keys to making social media work for your organization. They are listening, authentic communication, and joining in on social networks beyond your own website. Writing in a casual style, he recommends that organizations also use a casual style, coupled with quick and honest responses. Some of the examples relate to work in libraries or events in Topeka, Kansas.

Very fair and nice review – sweet!

Also, just yesterday, an article/interview of mine was published on Business Insider – 5 Ways to Run as Social media Campaign Like a Pro. Check out the article! For some reason, they linked to my first book (Designing the Digital Experience), but what the hey – a link is a link, is it not?

One more – a recent interview for the Ontario Library Association’s Education Institute.

If you haven’t bought/checked out/borrowed/read Face2Face … please do!

My book is now an Ebook!

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Designing the Digital ExperienceThe fine folks at Information Today/Plexus Publishing just emailed and told me … my book is now an ebook! Sweet!

So – my book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use EXPERIENCE DESIGN Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love, is now in ebook format at these fine publishers:

If you haven’t yet purchased it (or if you have the burning desire to have my book in ebook format and didn’t download a rogue copy), please go buy it!

And one more slightly vague, mysterious plug for my upcoming book – it’s in editing mode at the moment. I have some touch-up work to do on it before sending it back. There are a few more steps after that, too – publishing a book is definitely a multi-step process.

The new book (tentatively called Face2Face) focuses on the nuts and bolts of  using emerging web tools to connect with customers. There are tons of books on emerging web trends, but honestly not too many that include practical “how to” tips for actually using those tools to connect with customers, patrons … and people. So I thought I’d write about that.

Look for it next year!

A Book Review of Designing the Digital Experience

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Designing the Digital ExperienceMy publisher just told me about a review of my book Designing the Digital Experience, and I thought I’d share it with you. The review was published in New Library World (Vol 111, No. 7/8, pg 359-360), and was written by Sarah McNicol.

She nailed it (and I’m not just saying that because it was a positive review). Here’s the start of the review:

“David Lee King is a librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee Country Public Library in Kansas, but he also writes an excellent blog (www.davidleeking.com) on emerging trends in library web sites and digital technology. In this book, he writes in the same accessible and interesting style, focusing on experience design and its role in building web sites. This is not a book about technical specifics, nor a step-to-step guide to building a web site, rather it is a book to make librarians and others, including web developers and marketing professionals, think more deeply about how they design an experience so web site users are “enchanted and captivated.”

Yes! I never intended to write a step-by-step guide to building an experience – how the heck do you do that, anyway? Building experiences, even digital ones, really depends on your individual setting – your staff, your stuff, and your community. My hope is that you read my book, and think. Think about how you can transform a simple website into an interactive experience – much like you already do in your physical buildings.

And … since I’m writing about the book … why not throw in a discount, too? If you buy the book from Information Today before September 5, use this promo code – ITISP. It will give you a discount. Otherwise, buy it from Amazon.

Thanks for reading! And … drumroll please … look for my second book sometime next year! I am a week or so away from sending it to the publisher to do the editing thing to it. Fingers crossed, and more info coming!

Designing the Digital Experience Presentation

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Designing The Digital Experience

View more documents from David King.

On Tuesday, I gave a Designing the Digital Experience presentation at Nassau Library System in New York. It was a fun time – lots of good questions and discussion!

So … here are the slides from that talk. Enjoy!

Writing an Experience Brief

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Designing the Digital Experience was reviewed!I just realized that I mentioned using an Experience Brief in my book and in some of my presentations, but haven’t explained much about actually writing one. Since it’s something I want to do for my library’s website, I decided to do some “how-to” research on writing experience briefs … here’s what I found.

First of all – what exactly is an Experience Brief? It’s related to the Creative Brief, from marketing land. A Creative Brief is used to succinctly describe all the stuff the creative group plans to do to promote a new product. An experience brief uses that same concept … but helps define the experiences a customer should experience while using your website.

An Experience Brief is summed up by 8sharp: “The Experience Brief goes beyond “look and feel” and asks, “What is the experience we want the user to have?””

37signals’ ebook, Getting Real, gives another brief taste of what an Experience Brief is all about. “So what should you do in place of a spec? Go with a briefer alternative that moves you toward something real. Write a one page story about what the app needs to do. Use plain language and make it quick. If it takes more than a page to explain it, then it’s too complex. This process shouldn’t take more than one day.” They don’t really mention writing an experience brief … but writing a one page story about what the app/website needs to do IS a way to focus completely on the experience of the site/app.

MJ Braide goes a bit further in Get More From Brand Strategy Part Two: The Experience Brief. Here are some relevant quotes from the article:

  • “The Experience Brief is designed to help focus on the experiences that have the greatest impact on those that matter most to you. It begins with an inventory of the major interactions with whomever you consider to be your most important audiences.”
  • “For each of the most important groups, target experiences are defined that are closely linked to the brand promise. Important: this is about THEM not about YOU. It is the impressions, feelings and beliefs that you want to occur in THEIR minds, through what you do.”
  • “As with the Creative Brief, the Experience Brief is then used by every division and department of the organization to inform service standards, interaction protocols and whatever else the playbook demands, based on your strategy and the economics of your relationships.”

Finally, some words of advice from Advertising Age – What Are You Packing Into Your (Creative) Briefs?

  • Think simple. The more sophisticated the brief, the simpler it should be. The more glissandi and grace notes the piece has, the harder it is to play.
  • More spaces to fill present a greater opportunity for bad poetry. Avoid theoretical definitions; keep the language at the 8th-grade level.
  • It’s been suggested that you’ll know you’re onto something big when you can pitch the story in under 30 seconds. Can you deliver an elevator speech for your product? Are you writing it to be read?

Hope this helps! Anyone have anything to add? Do you know what goes into writing either an experience brief or a creative brief? Ever written one? Please share!