Marketing Libraries

Arranged by what came to mind first.... 1. Grammarly Just  SHOWING UP WITH SOMETHING COOL AND COMING TO ALA FOR THE FIRST TIME  demonstrates a company's respect for ALA and its members, and provides a new technology to evaluate. (Note that Google and Nintendo have stopped coming to ALA.) Grammarly hooks on to Word or tags along as you go about your business on the Web -- cleaning your messes. Grammarly has broken the Microsoft Word monopoly on spell check. "Clippy" is weeping wherever it is. Grammarly made their marketing lead, Greg Carpets, available to me for an hour-long discussion about the technology behind the product -- which has to do with neural networks and machine learning. They are employing folks who are both linguists and programmers, so wow. Grammarly learns, in aggregate, about English style, context, and so on based on its many users. According to their blog, Grammarly is  PRO SERIAL COMMA . Grammarly has a lot of funding and is going to be arou

4/2/2017 Why did you become a librarian and what do you like about the career of librarianship? I became a librarian in 2000. I love playing detective and teaching people how to “find stuff” and critically evaluate what is high quality and what is junky. Assuming Information Literacy (InfoLit) was your first stab at librarianship how did the marketing issue become important to you? Marketing information literacy takes time. It requires buy-in which can take years. It is much more than creating a brochure and flyers. I would target specific departments and attend meetings and discuss the benefits that InfoLit would have on their department and their students and the courses they are taking. I think selecting a target group to promote InfoLit to is the first step. Asking questions to learn about their needs and then developing information literacy lessons to address their needs should be the next step. Constantly tweaking your infolit lessons and classes to address your target mark

3/15/2017 I am excited to be in the Proquest database and even more so to be honored with publication by  ALA's Reference and User Services Association . The editors of  Reference and User Services Quarterly  say: When Spenser Thompson said he’d like to devote this issue’s marketing column to “personas,” I have to be honest—I had no idea what he meant. But his description of “watching the movie” to see how different people use and perceive the library is really intriguing. Much like sportscasters “roll the tape,” to get a better look at a play, librarians can also watch the movie to design better marketing experiences. … Read the Article >>

Librarians are good at marketing, which is clear from a mere glance at the  ACRL Library Marketing and Outreach page on Facebook . The new  Library Marketing Journal  that is accepting submissions now and promises to be a hard-core addition to what librarians can learn from each other. In addition, the  ALA’s Libraries Transform  Campaign  is a comprehensive set of tools for library marketing. The ALA put a lot of money and effort into this campaign and it shows. If you want to see how to do things the right way at the campaign level, pull this material apart. (You can also find out how to participate in the campaign by making social media videos, press releases, and using their graphics.) There are several non-librarian-authored sources that can help you figure out how to market your library’s services.  Here is a bibliography of sources have influenced my thinking over the years. The Copywriter’s Bible Learn about the history of advertising and how to write prose that dazzles a

11/17/2016 These are the main points of a presentation I gave at the  Library Marketing Communications Conference 2016  called "What Libraries Can Learn from the Best Companies and Ad Agencies". The best companies focus on the community not operations, products, or services. They harmonize marketing and customer-facing staff. They have passionate, market-focused leaders. They know that good marketing = good business. They know marketing is ears not just a tongue. They love their audience or are their audience. They hire great people, not LinkedIn profiles. I got some good feedback on my presentation and a few questions about personas that I will be addressing in future blog posts. Creating personas is a great process because it helps you to design better services and more precise messages. You can then take your personas and create dramas for them. How will your library fit into the drama of their lives?

7/18/2016 Never missing out on a chance for fun or a new technology, librarians are already exchanging ideas on how to bring Pokemon Go players to their libraries. Libraries have done amazing things with hot apps. For example, Burlingame Public Library was  written up in the New York Times  for their #bookface social media posts. But that is so 20 minutes ago! It's "Go" time. 1) Library Aware, a digital marketing platform provided by EBSCO, sent out an announcement today about   free materials to get Pokemon Go going  . I am not sure if it is open to non-customers but you may want to write to the email on that landing page and see it any EBSCO customer can take advantage. 2) A librarian, Erin Washington at  Spartanburg Methodist College , was already working on a digital scavenger hunt that she is going to rename  LibraryGo . Since all the "kids these days" are meandering around doing PokémonGo, I thought I'd design a game called LibraryGo. I h

6/27/2016 Did you get on the exhibits floor and check out the latest technology demos? What kind of interaction did you have with your tech vendor? Was it productive or satisfying?  Did they hear what you had to say and did you understand what they were pitching? If not, you may want to consider these tips next time. If you are a member of a tech committee, a department head, or a director identify yourself right away. They will listen harder if they think you are a decision maker. If you are part of the staff, let them know that what you are asking for is relevant to the overall goals at your library (i.e. service). Asking for a tiny feature enhancement probably won’t have any impact, and there are other forums for that. Find out if you are talking to sales or not. Salespeople are trained to give demos of the product so don’t shy away from them. Find out if there are any product managers, coders, CEOs on the floor if you have detailed information you need or just to pick t

6/27/2016 If I worked at a library and the library director said she was going to take a half a day off and play tennis with the university heads, I would say “great.” I would understand that my director is looking out for the library. She is doing her part to get her bosses to open their minds and their checkbooks. The library director may have a terrible serve, but she may “return” to the library with a new piece of information or commitment. Relationships are key market research moments. The Director’s relationships may not seem to have anything to do with marketing but they are closely tied. If you think your library has no salespeople, you are mistaken. Anyone in a position to deal with users or funders is in a position to prompt them to use or fund a new service. The way forward is getting to know the specific world someone lives in, and offering him or her the right solution. Getting to Yes is part of the library director's world. Library directors can share what t

5/8/2016 "Who are you talking to and why do they care?" This is a good question to start with if you are trying to get the attention of an audience and get them to do something. I mocked up some sample ads to demonstrate this point. Most important is the process is how I got to these cute - and I hope effective - ads. I used a series of questions called a  creative brief  that is used in various forms by ad agencies worldwide. In this case we are talking to freshmen (and we know what they care about, if you know what I mean). They also care about getting through the agony of their first college research paper, especially if they do not consider themselves research enthusiasts or writing experts (most of them!). It's likely that they will walk into the library in some state of overwhelm. The ad seeks to connect them to a solution at their library. While our hope may to be to connect them with a particular database, keeping it general helps in two ways: they don

3/19/2016 “Brand” matters to libraries, but it is a term that is used in many ways. Without a template or a firm definition, finding yours can turn into an endless brainstorm or arrive at a notion that is not a brand. The benefits of having a brand – persuasiveness and inspiration - are lost. Here is a way to brand your library that is consistent with how the biggest agencies in the world do it, with some of my pet peeves thrown in. 1.    Start with the unshakable belief that a brand is an idea—not a logo, mission statement, object (a high tech device), or a list. This will get you to a true brand that has unique benefits. “High Tech” can describe an object but is it an idea? Or enough of one? Hint: High-tech is a gray area between idea and service. "Relevant" may be the idea behind high-tech. 2.    Come together and ask what is your library really about. Make a list of ideas that could be a library brand. Freedom is an example. If you can’t think of one, ask: “If the