David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

8 Easy Ways to Humanize your Digital Branch

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At my library, we like to say “It’s not about the stuff, it’s about the people.” Sure, we have a lot of cool books, videos and services, but our staff are awesome and they help make the library what it is. They help give the library a human face.

How do you present that “human face” of the library online? Here are eight ways to humanize your digital branch:

  1. Pictures
  2. Conversational Writing
  3. Videos
  4. Being Available
  5. Responding Fast
  6. Cut Extra Words
  7. Reach Out
  8. Tell the Customer’s Story

Read the rest of the article at Emerald Group Publishing. I also wrote a whole book on this topic!

Image by Marjan Lazarevski

Managing your Library’s Social Media Channels

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Just an FYI – my new Library Technology Report is out! It’s titled Managing your Library’s Social Media Channels. What’s it about? From the introduction:

“The process of implementing, managing, and measuring social media channels in a library setting will be discussed. Tips include:

  • creating strategy and goals for social media channels
  • creating teams to run the library’s social media channels
  • connecting and communicating with customers using social media
  • tracking usage and engagement levels using analytics and insights”

Here’s a brief summary of each chapter:

  • Chapter 1 – why use social media. Yes, you still need to explain this to people.
  • Chapter 2 – the “landscape” of social media in libraries. It outlines what social media tools are being used and why, with some examples of stellar social media use in libraries.
  • Chapter 3 – How to connect & communicate with customers. I wrote a whole book on that, if you’re interested 🙂
  • Chapter 4 – Social media teams. How to manage the work of a social media team. What they should post, how they should post, and how to deal with problems.
  • Chapter 5 – Analytics, Goals, and Strategy for Social Media. What to track and why, and how to connect social media to those large, multi-year library strategic plans.
  • Chapter 6 – What to do from start to finish. Pretend there’s a new, hot social media tool that appears next week. This chapter provides an organizational approach to incorporating that new tool into your library’s workflow.

There you have it! Get it at the ALA Store.

Nice Book Review of my book Face2Face!

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Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailThe Teachers College Record just reviewed my book Face2Face: Using Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections. It’s unfortunately behind a paywall now, but it’s a nice book review!

Here are some snippets from the review:

At a time when social networking is often criticized for driving humans apart, King’s book is upbeat and suggests that we have more of an opportunity to connect in authentic ways with others than ever before, both on a personal and organizational level. While of course nothing can substitute for true “face-to-face” communication, King’s book provides many examples of how social media tools might actually allow for more humanity in virtual venues than we might realize.

Having just finished Dave Eggers’s The Circle (Eggers, 2014), which paints quite a dystopian picture of social networking, it was somewhat of a balm to read King’s cheery tips. – hee… ok 🙂

In a time when many school districts throughout the country still continue to exist at a level of alarmism that hasn’t been seen since Prohibition, King’s approach seems more of an appropriate required read, not only for business owners and organization leaders, but also for school board members and taxpayers.

Sweet! Go read the whole review ( if you already have an account there – silly paywalls).

And of course … go buy the book. Helpful link to Amazon included :-).

How Do You Thank Your Facebook Fans?

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Thanking Facebook Fans

How do you thank your organization’s Facebook Fans? Here’s how Tinley Park Public Library thanks theirs – with a photo of staff, giving a thumbs up and saying thanks!

Tinley’s staff wanted a way to say “thank you” to their growing Facebook fan base on their library’s Facebook Page. They had a couple of options that I knew about (they had asked for suggestions):

  • They could keep track of new fans, and when they hit 1000, they could thank that newest fan (requires some finagling of Facebook Insights to do this).
  • They could do something a little more general in nature, and thank everyone.

They chose to thank everyone in a really fun way – by posting a photo of themselves, saying “thanks” to their fans. How cool is that?

What’s good about this?

  • It’s easy and cheap
  • it’s fun and lighthearted, yet authentic
  • it’s visual – it communicates the message loud and clear
  • it puts a face to the organization, and to the real people behind the Facebook Page
  • It shows that face2face connection with customers that’s so important in organization-to-customer social media relationships

Great job, Tinley Park! You guys ROCK!