Library Social Media Use-Week 8 post 2

Library Social Media Use

The social media use in academic library article this week was interesting, because of what I feel have been missed opportunities in the public libraries I’ve worked at.   The article’s statement that most libraries use social media for marketing purposes lines up with my experiences.   I was never in charge of these accounts, but I really wonder at the effectiveness.  They certainly don’t hurt, but when I see most posts garnering a handful of likes, I’m not sure it’s relevance.

I admit I had never considered doing more with social media (as it wasn’t within my list of duties), but I always did think it was a missed opportunity that the two large library systems I worked for only had one account for their entire systems.  At the branch level (and in both cases the systems had 40+ branches), we were not allowed per library system policy to have our own pages for our branches.   These were large county libraries, beholden to policies that extended beyond the library and applied to all county departments.  So yeah, a bureaucracy.  I thought that if the social media marketing was to have a chance, each branch should control their own page and intensify their presence.   But I”m not social media marketing person, and that bureaucracy was trying to avoid having too many people representing a department’s message in public.

I had in the back of my mind, that if we were able to control our own individual branch social media pages, that in the best possible world something like a community would develop around our marketing efforts (since I hadn’t considered the other aspects the article was proposing).   To actively use the social media accounts for actual interaction (ie- to actually use it like a social media platform is intended) would’ve been awesome.   I don’t know how possible it would be for a large system to be truly effective in this manner, but it would be worth it for them to try.

Comments

  1. VanessaJuly 7, 2019 at 2:09 PM

    I chose that article with you and Sila in mind. :)
    And yeah, bureaucracy. I get it. But every so often a person with a special energy and talent breaks through and wins over bureaucracy and when that happens it is awesome! I'm not sure how well it works as a planned intervention.

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