Connecting with your clients - social media applications and tools in libraries

Andy Burkard (2009) lists four reasons libraries should be on social media:

• Social media allows you to communicate in a medium that your clients use.
• Social media builds customer relationship, as social tools allow you to gainer feedback (positive and negative) and then respond appropriately.
• Social media allows you to market you services in a social way.
• Social media allows you to understand your clients better as it “allows conversations with your users, and these conversations often reveal important insights.”

What are the social media tools and applications that enable two way conversations and client engagement?

Social Website
Open source web design programs
Use of social tools on website to encourage interaction, such as
    VoiceThread
    Social tagging
    Commenting and discussing
    Like-ometers
Integration of social applications into website, such as
    Photo sharing (Flickr)
    Podcasts and vodcasts (YouTube)
Use of tools that allow easy sharing of site content, such as
    Bookmarking / Add this

Social Networking Site to complement main website
Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites

Delivery of information and marketing of services
Simple and complex RSS feeds
Library related widgets (e.g. loan due date)
Mobile access to OPAC and other applications
Podcasts
Twitter
Skype, online chat, text message, Twitter used for service contact and virtual reference

Collaboration
Collaboration tools and applications for internal and cross organisation collaboration

Community engagement and building
Online book reading and sharing communities
Crowdsourcing
Exploration of 3D worlds and augmented reality

The above is not merely about putting in technology. For an organisation to embrace the fundamentals of social networking and social media (connecting, contributing, conversing, collaborating) there has to be a shift in the mindset of staff and the organisation towards the use of social tools, which includes:

• the development of processes so insights from conversations do not fall on deaf ears;
• an appropriate level of staffing to support social technology based services; and
• adequate training for staff in the maintenance and use of social tools and applications.

NCSU Libraries Mobile Web

References

Brown, L. (2010, December 21). Social media and library trends 2011 [blog post]. Retrieved from http://socialnetworkinglibrarian.com/2010/12/21/social-media-and-library-trends-for-2011 Also refer to trends list for 2009 and 2010.

Greene, C. (2010, October 26). Social media trends: Applications for higher education professionals [SlideShare]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/colleengreene/social-media-trends-applications-for-higher-education-professionals

Hayward-Wright. N. (2011, April 25). Website design [blog post]. Retrieved from http://on-socialnetworking.blogspot.com/2011/04/website-design.html

Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2011 Also refer to Horizon Report 2010

Rogers, C.R. (2010) Social media, libraries, and Web 2.0: How American libraries are using new tools for public relations and to attract new users -  Third survey, November 2010. Columbia, SC: South Carolina State Library. Retrieved from http://www.statelibrary.sc.gov/docs/pr/201012_pr_social_media_survey.pdf