social media | emerging trends | libraries
Here are my slides from my session.
Here’s the session description – Ever had that feeling there was something missing on your website, or something not quite right … but you couldn’t put your finger on it? In addition to the seven essential elements, King describes ways to take your library’s web presence to the next level. Leave with lots of insights and ideas to improve your library’s website!
Great turnout, and a ton of tweets from it, too. Thanks!
Gina Millsap and I gave this presentation last week at the Texas Library Association’s annual conference (this year in Houston, TX). Great conference, fun people!
Especially check out the final part of this presentation – it will give you a little insight into how my library decides on strategy – through data-mapping and GIS market segmentation data. Really handy stuff.
Enjoy!
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As usual, I had a great time at Computers in Libraries 2012 (#CILDC). I learned some interesting things, and met some really cool people too.
I also gave a few presentations (ok – five presentations). Here are a couple of my slidedecks and some notes people took during the presentations, so you can get a feel for my sessions. Enjoy!
1. Seven Essential Elements to an Awesome Library Website
Nicole Engard took some pretty thorough notes! This slidedeck made the main page of Slideshare, in the Featured and the Top Pro Content sections!).
2. Digital Hangouts: Reaching Outside the Building
Digital Hangouts: Reaching Outside the Building
4. Benchmark Study – Library Spending and Priorities 2012 (another panel – notes from Joanna’s Conference Reports blog).
5. Let’s Make Video! (a preconference workshop with Michael Porter. Notes from the Montana BTOP Technology Training blog).
Sarah Houghton – librarianinblack.net
#1 – where to put your websites.
WordPress. Blogger. Drupal – not really where your website goes… Squarespace – not free, but cheap.
#2 – images.
Gimp. Image editing program.
picasa – edit and host images.
Picnik – simple editing that most people need. Connected to Flickr
Flickr – great place to host, find cc-licensed photos
Pictobrowser – great slideshow for images
Openphoto – free images – high quality
#3 – hot topics
Addictomatic – info gathering place Sarah’s library used this for a local city emergency
#4 – make ur codez priteez
Beautify JavaScript – helps make code pretty – also CSS beautify
#5 – surveys and polls
Google forms – simple and easy
Polldaddy – easy polling
#6 – slider
Wow slider – web based image rotator/slider
#7 – translate
Google translate – easy, adequate.
#8 – remote assistance
Log me in (logmein) – remote access to your pc or Mac – there’s a free version. This is a very quick tool. I sends an email asking for permission to access the other persons computer
#9 – wireframing
Balsamiq – gives pre-made parts and pieces
Wow – 40% of Sarah’s library web traffic is mobile
#10 – testing your mobile stuff
W3c mobileOK Checker
#11 – stats
Google analytics
#12 – Skype
Great place to talk to users, to staff, etc
#13 – social management
Tweetdeck
Namechk – searches dozens of sites to find names that you can use
#14 – webcasts
Slideshares zipcast – works great.
#15 – video
Jaycut – browser based editing tool
YouTube – they have online editing too
Animato
Xtranormal
#16 – audio
Audacity
Podbean – great place to host audio
#17 – learning environments
Moodle
#18 – infographics
Visual.ly
#19 – librarything
#20 – the google
Google plus has some potentially cool stuff…
Helios – from the audience
Cheap calendar … ?
One more question every webpage should answer – #3: “Why should I care?”
This one comes from my library’s Executive Director, Gina Millsap. Another way to ask this question is “Why would I want to do that?” or “What’s in it for me?”
This is where your PR, marketing and promotion skills come into play. Why? Because you need to sell your content to your customers.
Selling? I hate selling – I’m a librarian, for peet’s sake!
Yep – I get that. But just putting information about something up on a website doesn’t mean people will attend that event, read that blog post, or check out that book. Sometimes we need to go a bit further, and work on convincing our customers to take those next actions I talked about in my last post.
The goal on a website is to move people from point A to point B – from reading a book review to actually checking out the book, for example. This isn’t selling as in “smarmy used-car salesman” selling … but it IS a form of selling, and a good organization learns to do this – on posters, in person, and even on our websites.
Answering “why” can be as simple as a brief explanation on why something is useful. For example – why should I apply for a library card? Because you get to read all your favorite books, and check out movies … for free! And you have already paid for it anyway (via taxes).
Look around your website, and see if you are answering the “why should I care” question. If not – rework your content so this question is answered up-front and often.