‘Follow Us On …: Using Social Networks And Technology To Reach Readers’ – a CPD25 event

Follow us on...social media

On Tuesday I attended the above CPD25 event at the London Mathematical Society in Russell Square which was organised by Caroline Fletcher of UCL with minor assistance by myself (well, I helped line up one pair of speakers anyway!).  The speakers lined up for the event were:

Dave Puplett (LSE) – Fill the communications vacuum – engage your users online.

Emma Woods and Ellie Murphy (Westminster) – Blogging at the University of Westminster.

Tim Fletcher (Birkbeck) – Twitter Case Study: Birckbeck Library.

Ironically, given the subject matter, Emma and Ellie offered to deliver a presentation after I put out a call on Twitter for someone to talk at the event about blogging in a university library context.  Luckily for me, Emma got back to me pretty quickly and she very kindly agreed to present on blogging with Ellie.

First to present at the event was Dave Puplett.  Dave talked about how important he felt it was to be where the users are.  This was particularly important for LSE as there are a large number of distance learners and part-time students, who are obviously unable to interact with the university in quite the same way as other students.  He also suggested that using tools such as Twitter was a good way to find out what users think about your service in a way they would not necessarily have shared with the library through official channels.  As such, LSE use Twitter to find out what students are saying about the library, identifying any issues that they might have raised, and then addressing them directly to remedy the situation (usually using more formal communication tools such as email).  Comments that students have made about the library are regularly collected and shared across the library team to raise awareness of any areas of concern or, of course, anything positive that was being shared.

Dave highlighted one particular issue where someone was unable to locate a journal they required, publicly complaining about its lack of availability to their followers on Twitter.  This was picked up by a member of staff who was then able to locate the journal and point the complainant in the right direction.  The complainant subsequently declared how impressed he was and how ‘pro-active’ the library was for resolving it in this way.

I had had a sneaky peak at Dave’s presentation prior to the event, and it certainly provided plenty of food for thought about how social networking can ‘fill the communications vacuum’ with both users and non-users.  It also made me appreciate that Dave has a substantial archive of Henry hoover images to call upon!  If you want an interesting image utilising a Henry hoover, I strongly suggest getting in touch with him…

Dave Puplett’s presentation:

Next, Emma Woods and Ellie Murphy spoke about their experiences blogging for the University of Westminster Uni.  Both Emma and Ellie maintain a couple of blogs each covering Resources for Electronics and Computing, Resources for Transport and Tourism, Resources for Fashion Business Students and Resources for Business Students.  As they did not have subject pages, it was decided to try using the blogs instead to share interesting and useful resources for students.  Amongst the tools they used were a LibraryThing widget to share the latest titles added to the library, RSS feeds from relevant news sources and, on the business blog, a business resources FAQ page to help resolve some of the issues faced by students in making use of online resources.  When consulting with students they found that there was some interest in blogs maintained by librarians and wanted them to be a space where they would find links to journal articles, advice for finding items and general library news.  They also found that the best way to promote their blogs was through the academics as this seems to drive up traffic to the blog.  They are currently looking at ways to make the blogs more visible and raise awareness of them amongst students.

To break-up the presentation a little, Ellie and Emma asked us all to discuss in groups what we thought a successful blog would look like.  There was a fairly unanimous feeling that it was important to get the tone right, not to sound too formal and to make use of the author’s personal style and voice.  It was also suggested that they should be regularly updated with timely and up-to-date information as much as possible.  Both points I couldn’t agree more with.  I very strongly believe that communications with students via blogs, Twitter etc should be in a vain that students would appreciate, not in the way that the institution would prefer.  If it becomes too much of the latter it can make for a very dry read.  Personality has to be key in any communication via social media – else what is ‘social’ about it?

Emma and Ellie’s presentation:

Finally, Tim Fletcher from Birkbeck spoke about how the library uses Twitter to communicate with students.   Tim noted that to date the Birkbeck library Twitter account has attracted 1,322 followers.  Birkbeck see Twitter as an alternative way to communicate with students about the library and the services it offers.  Whilst Twitter is used regularly to communicate with students, they are always referred back to the library website as the ‘official’ source of information.  The content that they tweet varies from urgent information to advanced warnings (eg any systems related downtime) to social tweets welcoming students back to the university after their breaks.  They particularly found it useful during periods of heavy snowfall to inform students that buildings were closed or that icy conditions made certain parts of the campus dangerous.  They also made a conscious decision not to ‘follow’ students as they felt that this would make students uncomfortable.

Finally, they use RSS feeds from various aspects of the website to feed information through Twitter automatically, reducing the need to manually tweet items and helping to keep the information current and timely.  This is particularly useful when the regular administrator is away on leave or otherwise indisposed.

Tim did have a one word of caution however.  It is essential to consider how to deal with messages directed at the Twitter account in the appropriate way.  Should they be dealt with via email or via the Twitter account?  Clearly there is the danger of failing to deal with the issue appropriately (particularly given the character limit that is central to the service) and policies should be put in place to ensure that such issues are managed professionally.  One thing you certainly don’t want to do is get into a very public spat with a student/academic – it would not look good in the timeline and would certainly undermine the effort made to build relationships with students/academics.  It is far more sensible to deal with ‘hot’ issues privately and promptly to resolve them to the satisfaction of the complainant.

I certainly found the event very interesting, particularly as I have a strong interest in the use of social media to promote services (it’s one of the reasons I was quite keen to oversee the Voices for the Library social networks when we first started out).  Certainly my experience managing the VftL Twitter and Facebook accounts chimes with much of what was said yesterday.  Sometimes I have had to deal with ‘difficult’ or critical messages sent to one of our social media accounts.  How I dealt with it often depended on the nature of the comment.  Sometimes it is best to ignore, sometimes it is best to provide a measured response.  One thing is absolutely certain however sometimes you definitely need to be able to take a bit of criticism on the chin.  Once you stick yourself out there as a ‘brand’ you are bound to attract some criticism – it’s the nature of the beast.

Of course, the beauty of an event like this is that the environment is constantly changing.  New networks crop up all the time.  Since the event was planned, Google+ has already come on the scene and who is to say what the landscape will be like another year from now?  What other essential tools will crop up in that time?  A year from now another similar event could be put together and it wouldn’t even mention Twitter.  But that is the nature of the internet and that is the challenge we all have to deal with.  It’s not easy, but I certainly think it is vital to keep on top of the latest trends and services that are emerging (I’ve even recently signed up for Foursquare despite vowing never to do so!).  One thing is for certain, you can guarantee that your customers/users most definitely will be in tune with the latest developments.

A parable for the social network generation…

Want to join the party? Then make sure you get involved! (Image c/o brettarthur on Flickr)

About a year ago I met a guy called Jim.  He’s a nice bloke and we chat to each other almost daily, I guess you could say we are quite close friends.  Anyway, as nearly a year has passed, I thought I’d share the story of how we met.

It all started at a party at a friend’s house.  I was mingling and chatting with some friends and having an all-round good time.  These parties were always really popular; people came from all over just to be there.  They were kind of the ‘in’ place to be.  Anyway, I was chatting away and having a merry old time when the doorbell went.  As I was standing nearest to the door, I took it upon myself to see who it was.

Waiting on the doorstep was a fairly non-descript guy with a blank look on his face.  Before I had a chance to say anything, he announced:

“I have never been to one of these parties before. I’m going to see what it’s all about.”

He strolled straight past me and joined the party.  This guy seems a bit odd I thought.  How weird that he didn’t even introduce himself and just strolled right in.  He seemed to be a pretty harmless type though so I didn’t think to tell the host that he should be ejected.  I just shrugged my shoulders and got back to chatting with my friends (hey, I’d had a bit to drink ok!?), practically blocking out this weird newcomer to the party.

Nothing much happened for another hour or so, the party continued and the new guy just stayed quietly in the corner, eating olives and drinking beer.  He was as harmless as I suspected. Until, out of the blue, new guy stood up, moved to the centre of the room and loudly exclaimed:

“I want to punch slow walking people on the back of their heads!”

And promptly sat back down again.  Nobody really knew what to say, so we just went back to our conversations and again tried to ignore this strange new guy who had joined the party.

After a while, it was clear that new guy was getting a bit bored sitting all alone with no-one to talk to, so he made his way over to me and my friends who were discussing something that had happened in the news.  As we were talking, new guy tapped me on the shoulder and said:

“Do you like cake?  What type of cake do you like? I love cake.”

I was kinda weirded out (once again) by this random question, but wanting to be polite I replied “chocolate cake” and continued to talk to my friends, increasingly coming to the realisation that this bloke had turned up at the wrong party at the wrong time.   I was weirded out further when he suddenly started randomly repeating things I was saying loudly to the rest of the room.   I found his behaviour increasingly strange and, at this point, I was starting to get very annoyed.

However, I decided to continue ignoring new guy and re-joined the conversation with my friends.  As I did so, I noticed new guy wondering off to another corner of the room, muttering and shaking his head.  You could tell just by looking at him that he was finding the experience increasingly frustrating.  Any moment now he would cut his losses and leave with the knowledge that parties aren’t really their thing (I know, weird eh?).

Then, just as I thought he was on his way, he made his way over to me once more.  This time he sidled up to me and said:

“I saw that stuff on the news today too.  Terrible eh?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “Don’t know how they get away with it.”

“Me either.  So, what do you think they should do about it? There must be something, right?”

And so we continued, chatting about the news and various other things.  He told me his name was John and that he was interested in literature, music and worked in an IT department (oh, and he also likes cake of course!).  I introduced him to my friends and he never looked back.  Chatting away, engaging with people and generally having a great time.  It seemed like he finally got what these parties are all about – engaging, sharing ideas and generally having a good time.

Since then, Jim and I have become really good friends.  We chat constantly and introduced each other to a range of people from all sorts of backgrounds from all over the world.  Looking back, he was a bit embarrassed about how he behaved when he first arrived at the party, but he’s over that now and everyone’s pretty much forgotten about it (they’re a nice forgiving crowd).  Which is just as well…randomly shouting things out at parties (or anywhere else for that matter) really isn’t a good way to make friends!

Twitter – If you want to join the party you have to ENGAGE!

I should add, I am not a ‘party person’.  I’m the guy standing in the corner with a bottle of beer eating all the crisps and generally keeping out of the way.  See those people in the picture?  The ‘crazy’ ones? I hate people like that. Hate them. Just thought I should make that clear

The many good things about Twitter….

I don’t know if it is the fact that some of my recent posts have been reflective (perhaps unsurprisingly for end of year blog posts) or perhaps the events of the past few days (check the Voices for the Library website), but the sheer greatness of Twitter has been playing on my mind.  This post is probably not going to add anything new to previous posts about Twitter, but I am going to plough on regardless because it really has made some quite fundamental changes to my life.

Last year I came to the conclusion that it was time for an alternative campaign for libraries.  Too often library workers had been overlooked as a voice for libraries (no pun intended!), and I felt it was time that an alternative was developed.  At the time I only envisaged something very small-scale.  A simple blog or wiki that would share resources or comment on events.  I was thinking very, very, very, very small-scale.  In hindsight, it never would have achieved anything.

Then I discovered, via Twitter, that some fellow library professionals were also thinking the same as me.  Within weeks we had launched a website and numerous web 2.0 entities.  It was bewildering and impressive and mind-blowing and, most importantly, really satisfying.  Never had been involved in something that made me feel so energised (yuck!) and motivated.  Here were a bunch of people working together to try to achieve something really fantastic.  But the thing that gets me now, looking back, is that without Twitter this would never have happened.  That’s not hyperbole.  It’s pretty much nailed on fact.

I know there is a lot of talk about Twitter leading to real change.  Whether it be in Iran or in the UK, people seem to truly believe that Twitter alone can overturn injustice and heroically right wrongs.  Of course, it is not that simple (it never is).  That said, it can play a big role in engineering change.  In the case of Voices for the Library, it has played a central role in getting a national campaign off the ground and noticed.  For without it, I would not have been in contact with any of the people who ultimately established the campaign.  It is virtually impossible to imagine this campaign getting organised and launched without Twitter.  How else could a bunch of people from across the UK have got together to launch a library campaign?  Not only a bunch of people from across the country, but in many cases a bunch of people who had never even met face to face (I still haven’t met any of my fellow members).  Every time I think about it I am taken aback by what has been achieved.

I know for many people Twitter has that reputation of inane chatter about what people are having for dinner (and sure we all engage in that crap from time to time to lighten the mood) or something that is impenetrable and impossible to get into.  However, the truth is that Twitter can open up so many opportunities.  Yes it may not affect change on its own, but it can certainly help.  And in terms of Voices for the Library, it has definitely played a major role in its genesis.  Without it there would be no campaign.  So you see, Twitter isn’t all inane nothings.  Now, I’m off to eat some cake…..

Replyz – a useful advocacy tool

I’m always looking out for new tools that can be used to engage with people and promote libraries and librarians (maybe I should get out more……). The many social networks have certainly provided ample opportunity to do so – particularly Twitter with the ability to search tweets and see what people are saying about libraries and librarians. This is particularly useful if you want to set up a library account and want to engage with people in your area who mention your library in their tweets. Nothing like a bit of proactive engagement, not least because of the benefits that can accrue for both yourself and the user. Replyz is a new tool which can help to take this a little step further.

Essentially, Replyz enables you to search tweets and see what people are saying. So far, so familiar. What makes it interesting for me, however, is its ability to display conversations rather than isolated tweets. This is particularly useful as sometimes these tweets can be missed when completing a normal search. As a result, it presents a great opportunity to engage with people interested in libraries and librarians (or even those that aren’t!) and demonstrate the value of the service and the profession.

As it is a Twitter based tool, you don’t need to set up an account, just log-in with your Twitter account, authorise access and away you go.  Once signed in you can start searching and viewing conversations.  To view a conversation you simply conduct a search for your chosen topic and, when presented with the results, look for the green speech bubble at the right-hand side of the screen.  The number in the speech bubble indicates the number of tweets involved in the conversation so far.  Simply click on the speech bubble and you are presented with all the tweets within the conversation (presumably this relies on people replying appropriately on Twitter).  So, for example, a search for ‘library’ found the following conversation:

Conversation thread on Replyz

 

Bizarrely, Replyz currently displays one of my older profile pictures and not my current one (which I have been using for several weeks now).  Not sure why this is.  Anyway, if you want to contribute to the thread, all you need do is fill in the reply box – there is no need to visit Twitter and tweet from there.

As well as simply responding to conversation, you have a number of other options too.  You can follow particular topics and add a feed to this topic to your RSS reader.  For example, search for ‘library’ and you are presented with a ‘Follow this topic’ button.  Click on that, head to your dashboard on Replyz, click on the ‘Topics I follow’ link and you will be presented with an RSS feed to follow your chosen topics.  You can also choose to follow a particular conversation if it is of interest and any conversations that you have taken part in are also stored on the dashboard – useful if other contributors don’t @reply to you on Twitter.

Overall, it looks like quite a handy tool.  As well as the features already mentioned you can post anonymously and use up to 500 characters in any message (presumably it only displays 140 on Twitter and then sends you to a link for the other 360).  Of course, it is of fairly limited use if your tweets are protected as any attempts to join in the conversation will not be picked up by those that are engaged in it (unless they both follow you of course!).  But if your tweets are public, Replyz provides an interesting opportunity to engage in conversation with those curious about libraries (or any other topic to be fair!), interested in the profession or have a general query that an information professional can help with (or a library service if the conversation is about their local library).

Flavors.me – A Portal to Your Social Networks

One of the problems with having so many social networking accounts is that you have your footprint all over the place making it difficult for you to conveniently share all your networks.  Sure, you can find people via the normal ‘Find your Friends’ applications and links on their blogs, but it would be handy to just have a one-stop homepage where you can sure all your profiles.  Not only would this be good for sharing your profiles, it would be great if you could aggregate all your stuff onto one page.  If you want to integrate your stuff in this way, quickly and easily, then Flavors.me may be for you.

Flavors.me - A Personal Homepage

Of course, this isn’t a new idea.   There are a few other sites out there that do exactly the same thing.  But Flavors is the best one I have seen so far.  Once you have signed up for an account, you have the opportunity to incorporate a number of social networks on your homepage (up to 4 for a free account and as many as you like for a paid account), including:

• Twitter
• Last.fm
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• WordPress
• Flickr
• YouTube

And loads more (around 18 at the moment with more to come according to the developers – including LibraryThing!).  You then have the opportunity to edit the name of the subsequent hyperlink to your social network.  For example, you can change ‘Flickr’ to ‘Look at my photos’…handy if people visiting your site aren’t aware of what Flickr is (there are people out there, believe it or not, who aren’t addicted to social networking….).  Once added, visitors can click on the relevant link and the content you have decided to share will be displayed directly on your Flavors.me page, rather than opening the relevant profile in a new window.

My Flavors.me Homepage

Once you have added your networks you can also fill in a bit of detail about yourself to be displayed on your page and adjust font styles, sizes and backgrounds.  When finished you have a very simple, clean portal to all of your social networks….and at no cost!  That’s got to be a good thing.  There is also a paid account ($20 per year) which gives you more design options, more data sources, custom domains and stats.  At present I only have the free account but I am quite tempted to upgrade to the full version at some point in the future.  If you’re looking to have a single portal for all your social networks, it is certainly worth giving it a look.

Marketing Libraries

One of the good things about the course I am taking is that you (eventually!) have the option to break away from the mandatory modules and choose one of the many option modules that are available.  The two modules I went for are Digital Information (which I am still working on….still haven’t managed this “write up an assignment and don’t endlessly redraft” thing I keep telling myself to stop) and Marketing of Services.    I chose both because I thought they were essential in terms of the future of the service.  The former because of increased digitisation, the latter due to decreasing usage and budgets.

The marketing module has certainly thrown up some interesting things to mull over.  One of the most interesting theories brought up in the readings so far is the so-called “leaky bucket” model of customer retention and defection.  Palmer, in his book Principles of Service Marketing, argues:

A bucket that has holes in its sides and bottom will leak water, so if a stable level is required, this can only be achieved by topping up the bucket with fresh water.  This may be an expensive process, so it would make more sense to prevent water escaping in the first place, perhaps by investing in a better quality bucket that does not leak.  So too for businesses that ‘lose’ customers.

Palmer appears to be suggesting that it is better for a service to concentrate on improving the service for existing customers rather than in investing time and money in trying to “top up the bucket” with new ones.  In other words, libraries should concentrate on their existing customer base than trying to attract new users to the service.  I’m not sure where I stand on this argument.  I firmly believe that we should do what we can to promote the service to non-users, although not with a lecturing, Victorian “we know best” type attitude.  One of the reasons I am keen on the use of web 2.0 technologies in libraries is because I believe it can help the service to reach parts of the community who have lost interest in what the library service can offer.  Social networking is the primary communication tool for many people now,  and it is vital that the public libraries have a presence in this arena.  I also believe that there should be a national advertising campaign to raise awareness of public library services.  The lack of awareness is quite striking and such a campaign, in my opinion, would have a massive impact in drawing in non-users.

On the other hand, are we just waiting our time preaching to those who will never have an interest in using the library service as they just do not believe that the service is relevant for their needs.  Should we really invest time and energy into encouraging non-users to adopt the service?  Is it just frittering away resources that would be better directed and improving the service to existing users?  Should we just cut our losses and focus on those that do use the service?

I’m not sure I know what the answer is.  I think there is too much of a tendency to equate the public library service with a corporate entity.  How the private sector operates is very different from the public sector and there should not be an attempt to ape every strategy employed by the business sector.  Yes there are things that could be learnt, but there are things that are just not right for libraries to adopt.  Maybe this is one of those things, maybe it isn’t.  I would be interested to hear what other people think about this in the comments section below and in completing my (very un-scientific) poll here.

Riding High Amongst the Waves*

Google Wave seems to be just about the hottest thing on the internet at the moment.  People have been eagerly waiting that magic invite dropping into their inbox just so they can get onboard the Next Big Thing.  Fortunately for me, I was lucky enough to receive an invite care of a fellow Tweeter (Twitter certainly has its advantages!).  So what is Google Wave actually like?

Google Wave - The Next Big Thing?

Well, to be honest, I haven’t spent a great deal of time on it so far so I’m not really in a position to give a full and fair appraisal.  That said, I’m still going to share some initial thoughts on it.  The first thing I feel I should point out is that it is quite bewildering when you first start playing with it.  When presented with the homepage (see image above), it took a little while to work out how it was supposed to work.  That is maybe why Google recommends you watch a ridiculously long video before you even contemplate diving in (do you see what I did there?!).  However, I did find this handy little video that talks you through some of the main features of Google Wave:

Although it is a little confusing to start off with, there is potential there for it to be a very useful collaborative tool.  By inviting others to join you on a ‘wave’ you can work together on a shared piece of work or just communicate in real-time (a bit like MSN Messenger but you can actually see what they are typing as they type it).  There are a number of gadgets that can be incorporated into ‘waves’ including Sudoku puzzles and chess.  It is also possible to embed Google Maps which enables people on the same ‘wave’ to collaborate on a map (which is quite useful and very easily done).  I think Mashable’s description of Google Wave sums it up quite nicely:

It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client.

So pretty much all the best elements of Web 2.0 rolled into one.

It will be interesting to see how Google Wave develops over the coming weeks and months as more people get onboard.  It certainly has great potential to be a very useful tool, as long as people are prepared to overcome the initial hurdles.  I’ll certainly continue to play around with it and share more thoughts on it as time goes by.  Hopefully I’ll be able to share something a little more comprehensive than this effort!

There is also a Complete Guide to Google Wave available that may also help with getting to grips with it.

* I have been wondering how I would incorporate my love of Pearl Jam into one of my blog posts….looks like I managed it!