Library Marketing and Promotion via Social Media

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Google Buzz
  • Forward

(An Infopeople Online Learning Course)
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 – Monday, August 27, 2012

Fee: $75 for those in the California library community and Infopeople Partners, $150 for all others. (about payment)

Course Instructor: Dawne Tortorella

Has your library marketing message gone viral? Social media provides more opportunity to reach your community, target specific audiences, and give them a chance to interact with your library. Communication is a two-way street and these days social media is where the rubber meets the road.

Statistics measuring social media use are staggering - nearly 800 million active Facebook users, over 135 million LinkedIn members, 5 billion+ images on Flickr, 24 million pages on Wikipedia, nearly 300 million Twitter users posting over 7,000 tweets per second, over 2.9 billion hours of YouTube watching per month. Behind these statistics are stories of both successful and disastrous messaging.

Whether your library already has a social media presence or is in the early stage of launching social media campaigns we'll share tips and techniques to keep it manageable and fun. Social media is about engagement and connecting with your community so we'll concentrate on quality over quantity and find a blend of media channels that works for your library.

In this course, Dawne Tortorella will help you:

  • Understand how libraries effectively engage in social media.
  • Manage social media tools and messages.
  • Learn to listen, as well as act, in the social media landscape.
  • Explain how and why social media can be used to promote/market library services.

Your library may never gain rock star status like Lady Gaga and her 18 million fans, but following completion of this course you might just find the community more "gaga" over your library than you ever expected!

Course Description: This four-week course includes weekly scheduled online meetings, as well as assignment options and discussions to be done anytime during the week. You will choose from options to increase awareness, make improvements or better manage your library's social media – you choose a path that matches your experience. You will learn from example, as well as look at some of the challenges and solutions for using social media in your library. The instructor will provide practical tips and techniques, best practices, and resources that your library can use to be effective and efficient using social media.

Preliminary Course Outline: Using your web browser and your Internet connection, you will log in to the Infopeople online learning site and complete the following learning modules:

  • Week 1: Introducing the Social Landscape
    • Definition of social media and examples of positive and negative effects based on social media messaging
    • Stages and cycles of a social media strategy
    • Visual cues to social media sites
    • Levels of participation in social media
  • Week 2: Social Media Platforms
    • Claiming organizational ownership of key services
    • Comparison of social media platforms
    • Demonstration of library uses of social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest)
    • Integrating social media – audience and message
  • Week 3: Organizing Social Media Messaging & Responsibilities
    • Tracking social media presence and staff access/responsibilities
    • Social media management tools (e.g. HootSuite)
    • Streamlining social media participation and management
    • Coordinating personal and professional personas
  • Week 4: Targeting Audiences and Determining Success
    • Creating a social media listening dashboard
    • Capturing and evaluating social media metrics

Time required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 2½ hours per week, for a total of 10 course hours.  You can work on the assignment options and discussions at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night, but it is recommended that you complete each week's work within that week to stay in sync with other learners.

There will be four live online meetings in this course. They will be held at 11 am Pacific time on: Wednesday, August 1, Wednesday, August 8, Wednesday, August 15, and Wednesday, August 22. Please plan your schedule accordingly. (Meetings will be archived but you are strongly encouraged to attend in real time to derive maximum benefit from interaction with the instructor.)

Who Should Take This Course: Anyone who is interested in using social media to promote library services. This course is suitable for library managers, branch managers, children's and teen librarians, staff responsible for programming and special projects, outreach staff, and anyone responsible for library publicity and promotion.

Online Learning Details and System Requirements may be found at:
infopeople.org/training/online_learning_details.

Payment: Your invoice will be emailed to the email address of the person who completed the registration. If that is not the person paying the invoice please forward invoice to the appropriate person. Payment is due within 30 days. If you have any questions about your invoice or payment please contact Gini Ambrosino at assist@infopeople.org.

Course Start: This 4-week-long online learning course starts on Tuesday July 31, 2012.

After the official end date for the course, the instructor will be available for limited consultation and support for two more weeks, and the course material will stay up for an additional two weeks after that. These extra weeks give those who have fallen behind time to work independently to complete the course.

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