Learning Goals

How to use social media effectively and which platforms are the most optimal and why, also learning the best way to deliver a professional image, message and tone.

To have an effective social media you need three things: content, knowledge of your audience and consistency. It is also important to deliver useful content, current news for your organization, share new shortcuts and tips relevant to your organization, post photos and videos and fun and silly content occasionally. Be friendly and helpful when communicating with patrons. Also, it is important to check your library’s strategic plan and determine what age ranges that they are targeting. The most logical range would be the 20-35 year olds since these would be the young parents and small business owners. Tailor the content to the group you are targeting and also friend these people. Also, by examining analytic data you can determine what content resonates with your users by the amount of engagement on the posts and this will help you to understand what types of posts will receive more attention. Analyzing post and audience metrics will give important insights on growth and engagement as well.

The most essential platform is Facebook because a majority of adults today are on Facebook. Most libraries post library news and fun content on this platform. Twitter is also important because it is a platform where you can post breaking news about the library or any other information that pertains to the library patrons. Linkedin is a great tool to connect with professionals, so creating a company page and posting business or finance related content here is helpful. Instagram is a great platform to connect with younger people under 35 and this is a perfect place to post images or short videos about your library and fun posts. Youtube is a platform where you can post videos and social content as well as find instructional videos. Most social media platforms allow for interaction between the user and the company so it is important to respond promptly and professionally. If the conversation requires in depth discussion, you can move it to a private area to discuss further. (King, 2015)

How to find new people to collaborate and connect with on social media to reach a broader audience as well as find interesting voices and perspectives to learn from.

The article managing your social media channels listed examples of libraries that do a good job of posting on social media and those were facebook was Topeka and Shawnee County, twitter was Kansas City Public Library, YouTube was Allen County Public Library, LinkedIn New York Public Library. One of our weekly activities during class in week 4 was to find social media pages of other libraries that deliver good content. I found a couple of libraries that were doing really great work on social media: Hawai’i State Public Library System @HSPLSHIgov. Hawai’i SPLS responds to patrons quickly, highlights new books for the different divisions and shows the digital programming they are doing. They post videos on interesting programs like screen printing and have great digital book posts. I also found Craigshead Jonesboro Arkansas Library facebook page @ccjpl which was on a librarian bloggers top ten and I can see why it was. They do a great job with their Children’s Library content. They post cooking, books, activities, crafts and a really cute “Enchanted Report” that is funny and gives an overview of the services and content they are offering right now. (King, 2015)

Reaching out to committed and trusted community leaders is important for a community organization in order to create connections and partnerships. Beyond the digital landscape, getting involved with trusted community and civic groups the library can begin to build deeper engagement with the public. Community engagement and involvement on issues like school readiness and success, increasing literacy, employment and inclusivity can not only help the library to reach a broader audience, but also build a stronger community. Taking a leadership role in needed community initiatives also provides exposure to the mission of the library and fosters collaborations and relationships among members of the community that may not have previously utilized the library. Commitment to solving community issues can ultimately nurture new relationships that may impact the library and its services in many positive ways. (Gutsche, 2012)

Learn the best practices and find sources and examples of truly respectful, unbiased, accurate, factual and neutral information.

Finding information sources that are unbiased, accurate and factual is a difficult task. Anyone can put an article on social media, and if this is where you are getting your news, it may be difficult to discern whether the author is reporting from a neutral perspective. The first thing to consider when searching for unbiased information is whether the information was written as news or opinion. According to Caroline Jack in Lexicon of Lies, it is difficult to determine the intent of the author or the speaker when they are creating content. Also it is unclear what the standards are of the person evaluating the content when publishing it online. Misleading and false information circulates widely on social media because some content creators are only looking for web traffic, as they are earning money on every click. Investigating the source of the information may indicate whether there is a history of bias or inaccurate information. Also, any content that appeals to your feelings and attitudes through persuasion or includes political perspectives are suspect because these messages tend to blend facts and interpretations. This blend makes the message sound factual because it does contain some truth but a person’s interpretation of an event usually leaves some trace of bias. (Jack, n.d.)

The best practices of making your own content is to stick to the 80/20 rule. To put it in simple terms, the 80/20 rule is the ratio that you will want to include content that pertains to your customer (80%) and the amount of content that you will want to create that pertains to self promotion of your organization (20%). It is important that you determine exactly who your target audience is, what they like and how they are using your services. Once you know this, the majority of the social media content can be directed toward this audience. Make sure that your content is reputable, grammatically correct, entertaining, interesting and well planned and researched. The remaining 20% of posts can engage the audience to apply a discount, learn more about your services and offerings. The content that you create about you should be less self serving but focused on connecting with the audience by telling stories and sharing what you do. Coming across as authentic and original is important to people, they engage more with real stories and messages rather than constant reposts and memes. (Scacca, n.d.)

Understanding the legal and ethical issues surrounding social media and how to educate myself and others about how to avoid any pitfalls that may damage our images and reputations through social media.

Image copyright is one important legal and ethical issue relating to social media. According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, a copyright is “the legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work.” Fair use is the ability to use someone's work that is copyrighted, for a limited purpose either for educational purposes, comment, news reporting, parody, criticism, scholarship or research. Creative commons is an organization that enables sharing and reuse of work from creators who direct the terms of use through license types. Several sites that use the images from Creative Commons are Flickr, fotopedia, google images, open clipart library, wikimedia commons and pixabay. Public domain is work that isn't protected by copyright law so that the work can be used without it being an infringement of copyright law. A work can enter into public domain for several reasons: the copyright has expired, it was produced by the government, it was a work not in a form that could be copyrighted, the work did not include a proper copyright notice, or it was not an original work. (Sehl, 2020)

One of the limits to free speech on social media is when you make threats against someones life. When you make a threat online, there is no ability on social media to determine intent. If your social media account has followers, the account is considered a public forum. Making threats of violence on social media or any behavior that is against the law in public has the same applications in this virtual environment. Creating strong social media policies and standards of conduct are helpful for organizations with social media or groups that moderate or host online groups. This eliminates any ambiguity when it comes to what is acceptable and what can justify removal from a group. Violations of personal privacy could also be problematic for a library if any records were kept on the patron or their personal data were collected. Spreading awareness of these ethical and legal parameters in the library could potentially avoid lengthy and costly lawsuits that could drain an organization financially. (Barnes, 2014)

How to most efficiently and creatively develop a great group to help plan and come up with relevant marketing approaches, messaging, content, branding, and ideas for future posts.

The key steps to building an all-star social media team requires careful planning and communication. The first step is to determine how much money you have to spend, how many people and resources you have to work with. Next you need to determine what your goals are for creating your social media account and how you will reach them through social media. The average size for a social media team is about three people but depending on the size or your organization, resources available and availability of the staff you may have more or less people to work with. There are many roles in social media creation, however the most important ones are:

Social Media Manager - Responsible for coordinating all social media profiles, publishing content, planning, and responding to comments.

Content Creator- Creates and designs content for the social media platforms, publishes and schedules the posts.

Community Manager- Responsible for social listening, responding to questions and comments, organizing events, fostering relationships, and connecting with audience.

Advertiser- Analyzes results of social media ads and works to maximize exposure on social media through paid ads.

Analyst- Analyzes data and metrics from social media to derive trends and usage pattern information.

Once all of these positions are filled, you can move on to finding the best structure of your team for your organization. (Lua, n.d.)

By using the logic model, it is easier to plan activities for your social media that will fit into your short term and long term goals. This models helps you to create achievable goals that can be tracked and measured as you progress over time to determine whether the content and the activities that you create over time are effective. Using the logic model, you can first determine the outcome and work backward or come up with the inputs and map out the process moving forward. Understanding how you are meeting your smaller incremental goals can also help keep a social media team motivated and engaged to make adjustments for better results. The strategies developed over time can then be tracked and analyzed for their effectiveness and then be built on for further planning. This tool is important in the planning, management and evaluation of the activities that are completed in each social media account and serves as a map toward the long term goals of the organization.

Barnes, R. (2014, Nov 23). Supreme court case tests the limits of free speech on facebook and other social media. Concord Monitor Retrieved

from https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/ login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1627146807?accountid=14604

Gutsche, B. (2012, August 31) The Engaged and Embedded Library: Moving from talk to action. Webjunction, Retrieved from

https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/Engaged_Embedded_Library.html

King, D. L. (2015). Managing your library's social media channels. Library Technology Reports, 51(1).

Jack, C. (n.d.) Lexicon of lies. Data & Society Research Institute, Retrieved from https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh

/DataAndSociety_LexiconofLies.pdf

Lua, A. (n.d.) How to Build an All-Star Social Media Team in 5 Steps. Buffer, Retrieved from https://buffer.com/library/social-media-team/

Scacca, S. (n.d.) How to use the 80/20 rule to conquer social media marketing. Virtasktic, Retrieved from https://www.virtasktic.com/clueless-

social-media-marketing/

Sehl, K. (2020, February 24) Can I Use This Photo on Social Media? Understanding Image Copyright. Hootsuite, Retrieved from