Social Media/Networking for Libraries and Staff: Following the Herd or Finding your Own Hill? Slides from the Library Staff workshop held at Leicester, 14th June 2012.

1. Library Staff Conference
June 14th 2012
Gaz J Johnson
@llordllama

3. What’s in the Box?
 Understanding of the diversity of
social media and networking
 Awareness of the impact for
librarians and library staff
 Some ideas on how you can make
a better use of it
 Yoursocial media profile – and how
to use it to your advantage

4. Know your Twitterati
 Stephen Fry Follows Me on Twitter

5. Unlearn What You Have Learned
 As much new ways of thinking as new
technologies
 It’s about communication, sharing and
collaboration
 It’s an Organization 2.0 kinda way of
life and work
 It’s about augmenting content in shared
public spaces
 Less about controlling the message
and more about embodying brands
 Social Media takes time to master but
so does email, telephone…

6. Why is Social Media Important?

8. The Influence Impact

9. What is Social Media?
 Noisy
 Vibrant
○ Interactive
 User defined
- Searchable
- Attributable
• About Sharing

10. Social Media Isn’t
 Just Text
 Static
○ Controlled*
 Risk Free
- One Directional
- The Only Channel
• For Everyone
*Certain regimes might argue differently, please check with your local dictator if you’re not sure

11. More than just Friendface…
Just the tip of the iceberg…
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites

12. What Kinds of Sites?
 Blogging (WordPress, Blogger)
 Microblogging (Twitter, Yammer)
 Photo & Video sharing (Flickr, YouTube)
 Wikis (Wetpaint, PMWiki)
 Social Community (Facebook, LinkedIn)
 Audio (PodBean, Last.FM)
 Content & File Sharing
 Chat & Instant messaging

14. Gartner’s Hype Cycle

15. Your Social Media Archetype
 The Informant
 Current, timely, regular, informative, brief
 The Personality
 Passionate, colourful, engaging, wide-ranging
 The Philosopher
 Deep, detailed, wise expansive
 The Lover
 Sharing what they love, niche and specialist
 The Teacher
 Expert, guide, knowledge sharer
 The Friend
 Welcomer, enabler, content augmenter

16. Social Brand & Presence
 How you or your organisation are perceived in
social cyberspace
 Difference between having one and having a good
one
 Number of factors influence it
 Quantity and quality of output
 Responsiveness and interaction
 Preconceptions and previous experience
 How comparators contrast with you
 Your avatar and biog

17. Your Social Brand and You
1. Three phrases that describe how
you like to be perceived
2. Now the same for the your team
3. Now think about how you’d make
people perceive that…online

18. Improving your Social Presence
1. Know your audiences
 What they want to know and why?
2. Plan your content
 Use themes, cycles of news, group items
3. Use readily available tools
 Free tools are powerful
 Don’t forget to measure your impact
4. Don’t use in isolation
 Compliment your other resources and channels
5. Don’t forget it’s two way
 Interact, engage and converse

19. Social Comfort Zones
Greatest safety Greatest benefit
Smallest impact Greatest risk
Personal
Career &
Workplace
Professional

20. Minimising Risk
 Be wary of breaking laws
 Be careful what you share and with
whom
 Don’t share personal data socially
 Max out your password complexity!
 Be wary of befriending people you
work with in your social spaces

21. What Do I Use It For?
 Crowdsourcing answers to problems
 Collaborating with colleagues or people with
shared interests globally
 Engaging in conference back-channels
 Highlighting new LRA deposits
 Sharing ideas, outputs and news as well as
keeping up to date myself
 Doing my job better, smarter, easier

22. What about Libraries?
 Customer engagement and outreach
 Promotion, marketing and news
 Breaking down communication barriers
 Team and community building
 Promoting University/Library social
brand and presence
 Project work and collaboration

23. Don’t Take My Word…
 Enabled us to crowdsource 700 photos of Central Library from public before
refurb and to take part in social media surgeries, Manchester Libraries
 Excellent for keeping up to date professionally and great for connecting with
students - "be where your students are“, QUB
 Put me in touch with other library and info staff. I'm only CILIP staff in Wales,
would struggle to meet this many in person. Put me in touch with other library
and info staff. I'm only CILIP staff in Wales, would struggle to meet this many in
person For planning line up of conferences / events. Most of the speakers I've
booked have come from Twitter, CILIP Wales
 Got me back in touch with people I thought I'd lost. Plus it gets people to come
to the events I run at work after reminders!, Berkshire Libraries
 Social media has given me a sense of the wider library community, away from
the Ivory Tower in which I exist, Oxford University
 SM got me in touch with library camp people. Now I'm involved with library
camps which gave me back enthusiasm for profession. It go our libraries on
global stage and made us 1 of leading info providers (via SM) in our field. Also
helped me forge online friendships with 2 photographers & reunite one of them
with his old school chum! , Leeds Libraries
 Removes the barrier of distance & allows me to participate. I learn through my
online network, University of Aberystwyth
 Instant feedback and opinion, University of Leicester

24. Wrap Up
 There’s a difference between
doing it and doing it well
 The
best way to find out
more…is to try it!

25. Questions?