The Sidekick Librarian

It is crazy to think of the future of social media. It’s becoming such a part of our daily lives. People wake up and immediate check their Facebook News Feed or Twitter accounts. People are constantly upload their lives up onto the web to share with each other and keep a history of themselves. I like to think of social media as ongoing documentation of someone’s life. When put that way social media can act as a beautiful thing; however, there are also darker things as far as social media is concern including privacy and over attachment. It always amazes me how many people lie, deceive and bully on social media as well. All things come with both the good and the bad which is the same for the future of social media. When considering the future, one can really picture a science fiction world were social media documentation can be uploaded by the blink of an eye. Truly, it seems so crazy to think about. To get a better idea of what social media will be like, let’s take a look at what the experts think:

1.       News will be share through eye witness by streaming videos. – Cory Bergman, BreakingNews Co-Founder

2.       An overall shared thought process which we use our virtual selves to communicate with one another and experience life. – Piera Gelardi, Refinery Creative Director

3.       Interactions on social media will be controlled by our voices. – Jeremy Goldman, Firebrand CEO

4.       The Internet will surround us all with social media like electricity does now. – Sarah Green, Host of HRB

5.       The largest change from social media will consists of our decisions based on large pieces of information. – Otis Kimzey, Simply Measured Director

All of these things add up to a world where social media becomes the center piece to our lives. It’s going to be an interesting journey that libraries need to start making their way through. The future holds lots of changes; we need to start planning now.

References

Worst

1.      #McDStories – McDonalds came out with a Twitter campaign in 2012 hoping for people to post nice things about their Happy Meals and experiences. Within two hours they took down the campaign, but the people would not stop. Check out some of their tweets:

-  Dude, I used to work at McDonald’s. The#McDStories I could tell would raise your hair. (viaTwitter)

- One time I walked into McDonalds and I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air and I threw up.#McDStories (via Twitter) 

- These #McDStories never get old, kinda like a box of McDonald’s 10 piece Chicken McNuggets left in the sun for a week (via the LA Times)

- The promoted TT  of #McDStories isn’t going the direction I think @mcdonalds wanted it to go. Lots of weed stories and heart attack jokes. (via Paid Content)

- Ate a McFish and vomited 1 hour later….The last time I got McDonalds was seriously 18 years ago in college…..#McDstories (via Twitter)

-  #McDStories I lost 50lbs in 6 months after I quit working and eating at McDonald’s (via The Daily Mail)

2.      #AsckJPM – The next bad time would have to be when Vice President of JP Morgan took over the twitter account to ask any questions. Here are some of the questions asked:

Tim Donovan @tadonovan

As a young sociopath, how can I succeed in finance? #AskJPM

3:11 PM - 13 Nov 2013

David Dayen @ddayen

What's it like working with Mexican drug cartels? Do they tip? #AskJPM

2:54 PM - 13 Nov 2013

J.P. Morgan 

✔@jpmorgan

Tomorrow's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board.

Best

1. #LikeaGirl - Great YouTube ad campaign celebrating and empowering young girls. Check out the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Not only is it necessary and important for libraries to participate in social media, but to measure its effectiveness it is necessary to use specific tools to help report and validate the data. This in turn helps assist with any politics involved as well as staff time and funding. A couple of resources can measure social media use. Large as well as small libraries should be sure to use these tools to report the data. Even large libraries that have very successful social media pages such as the New York Public Library should use the following tools to report measurements.

The first tool is Google Analytics. It has been found that “Within a matter of minutes, you can have Google Analytics set up to tell you, among other things, the number of daily visits to your site, the demographics of your users, how they got to your site, how long they stay, and which of your pieces of content are most—and least—popular” (Honeysett, 2012). Not only is Google Analytics perfect for your library website, but works great on social media websites as well.

The next tool works specifically with social media. It is called Klout. Klout uses a scoring system that measure the amount of influence your organization has on social networks. It looks at “how many people you influence, how much you influence them, and the influence of your network across your social media platforms” (Honeysett, 2012). It shows your organization specifically what had a dramatic impact on social media while giving you the analytics of how. This tool takes into account about three month’s history in its measurements.

Lastly, there is a tool called HootSuite that makes your social media life so much easier as an organization. It combines and compiles your social media data across all networks. This way it creates a one stop shop to compare and analysis data from Twitter to Facebook to Instagram. It provides a “major time-saver when you have multiple brands, strategies, and sites to monitor” (Honeysett, 2012).

Overall, it is extremely important and necessary to analysis the data given by the these social media tools to prove and continue to promote the organization’s goals and ideals.

References

Honeysett, A. (2012). 4 Ways to Measure Your Social Media Success. Forbes. Retrieved from

To market social media to library customers, libraries can use a variety of methods. One of the best ways to increase library social media traffic is to follow mainstream organizations and corporations in their social media methods. For example, a local college bookstore gave away cheap water bottles for every person who checked out at their counter after liking their bookstore Facebook page. Libraries can act in a very similar manner when increasing social media traffic. An example would be to give everyone who liked the library Facebook page a library bag to keep all of their books in. This would increase the amount of people who like the library’s Facebook allowing for all of the events and library news to appear in their news feed.

Another way to market library social media is to work with the current library customers. For example, library customers who attend events such as story time should be encouraged to like the library Facebook page. One way is to ask to take their photo to post on social media. The customer may be intrigued to follow the library to share that photo on their Facebook page. Then all of their friends will see their photo and the cool things they are doing at the library thus increasing library social media traffic as well as library traffic.

The last idea libraries can use to increase social media traffic is to hold competitions, raffles or games. This acts a wonderful way to build the community up while increasing the social media use of the library. Library customers could see signs posted at the library about current campaigns and then share it on their social media pages. One example is the current campaign put out by Random House Publishing called #gonereading. In this campaign, people are encouraged to post a photo with their favorite summer read and that hashtag to be put in a drawing to win ARC copies and a Gone Reading bag. It’s a great way to increase social media traffic while spreading the word about particular topics.

Overall, there are many ways for libraries to increase their social media marketing. Many libraries need to get create and try a variety of methods to make it work for their particular organizations. Corporations have been in the social media world for much longer and it is good to take ideas from them. Libraries have the potential to do great things on social media. It is all about finding out what works best!

Maintaining privacy is one of the core values of the library. It is at the heart of everything we do. We work to ensure everyone the access to information and knowledge without the judgement or involvement of anyone else. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure the privacy of our customers in the digital age. Not only do libraries require and keep more information on their customers, but the digital world transformed the way we view privacy.

Social media is changing the way the library views and works with customer privacy. In order to promote, connect and share information through social media, it becomes almost necessary to break through all of those privacy thoughts. I remember when we needed a photo release form for any individual who happened to even be in the background of a photo. Now libraries are able to take photos of anyone in the building because they are on public property therefore adhere to having their photos taken and published. Libraries are then able to use those photos on social media to promote and share different programs and events. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain the privacy of our library customers due to the new ways we need to use social media. However, that does not mean it is impossible.

Libraries can work to maintain privacy in the digital age even with the use of social media. For instance, libraries may take photos and share them, but they do not have to include any information on the customer like name or age. Another way is to make sure most of the photos are group or actions photos. If the photo is an individual photo, make sure to have their permission and perhaps a blurb with they’re permission. Just because the library shares things on social media does not mean we are giving the world our customer’s personal information. Due to the changes in technology, more and more people are accepting of photos being share. However, it is of the utmost importance for libraries to hold strong and true to their core values and not share any personal information. Due to the digital age there is a distance divide between personal and public information that can be viewed. I typically think of the photos as public information and the personal information as email, name, age, and address.

Education is in a constant state of change. One of the greatest changes to education would be the advent of Web 2.0. It completely modified how educators and learners operate in a school environment. With the Web 2.0 additions, there have been many great advantages and some serious pitfalls. To completely understand the changes put in place by Web 2.0, we are going to take a look at some of the greatest achievements and issues it offers.

 The greatest gift Web 2.0 gave to educators and learners is the access to information and knowledge. There is a constant free-flowing, endless stream of knowledge and information. While this creates its own issues, there are many advantages to the wealth of information available via Web 2.0. One website educators are able to share and use other materials to help enhance their students learning experience is Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media application that provides a wealth of information and knowledge on a variety of information. It is a great way for educators to keep track of, plan, and learn other lessons and ways of teaching. Students who are interested in a particular topic can also use this page to find more information and projects. Overall, Pinterest enhances the learning experience to more exposure to different ideas and projects while increasing the creativity of the learning experience.

Now there is a downside to this wealth information. The access to ideas, knowledge, and projects may also enhance the ability to plagiarize and cheat on the part of the student. For example, students may use Pinterest to come up with a science project and the link could potentially take them to a website where the paper is available for their use as well. Another way students are easily able to cheat through is Facebook. I know teens that have created class pages on Facebook and use it to share answers easily as they complete their homework at home. The access to knowledge and information will always come at a price.

Libraries use social media in a variety of different ways to connect with their customers and colleagues. Some libraries are able to use it to a larger extent due to purchasing, but all have access to the easy capabilities of the world of social media. One social media website most libraries are accustom to is Facebook. Libraries are able to create a profile page for their library on Facebook. They can then add photos, post events, reminders, articles, and much more. It is a great way to show your customers what is going on at the library while creating a little community through connecting with the events and photos. Since you need friends on Facebook to get it to work, it is important for libraries to have so sort of kick off campaign to get friends. One idea is to give away free library bags or water bottles for everyone that likes your page. That way your friends following will greatly increase and you can reach more people.

Another social media website libraries are getting into is Instagram. What is great about Instagram is the ability to use hashtags to its fullest potential. Libraries can create an Instagram page with all of the cool happenings of the library while making announcements. Libraries can also encourage their customers to post their own photos of the events and to use a certain hashtag. Then libraries can collect photos of the events and reach more people through the hashtags. Prizes and contest can be conducted to really increase the use of hashtags.

Lastly, YouTube is another social media channel many libraries have and are creating. Although YouTube is not going to reach as many followers as Instagram or Facebook, it does have its uses. For example, creating fun library videos with your library teens and posting it to YouTube is a great way to engage your teen community. Another awesome way to use YouTube is to post book trailers or movie trailers that are coming out soon. That is a great way to get people excited about the upcoming materials while increasing the hits on your YouTube channel. Another way is to post video book reviews about new books. People who are book fans love watching what other people think of their favorite books.

Overall, there is a lot of different ways libraries use social media. The positives of social media are endless. It is just important for libraries to take advantage of this free resource.

Social media is a very interesting topic. It completely changed the world as we knew it to be. Everyone is on social media and constantly checking/updating it. When social media first got big, there seemed to be confusion on how to handle oneself online. After a while it became known that your personal and professional life must be completely separated. Now I honestly don’t think it is that strict. There is still structure for maintaining a personal and professional balance in social media accounts.

I love to use my social media accounts in my personal life to keep in touch with all of the family and friends I have back home. Another aspect I really enjoy about social media is that I can work on my photography a little bit and post it. After social media got big, I took an interest in developing better photos and it’s a lot of fun to post them online. I also see social media as a timeline or scrapbook of my life. I like to post things I’m doing, people I’m hanging out with, and the things I like. It’s kind of a nice collection of all things me. It is always fun to go back and see what I was doing three years ago. However, I am very coconscious of what I post. I don’t want to embarrass myself, lose my job, or embarrass my future kids.