TechSoup and WebJunction got together last fall to present an excellent webinar series on libraries and social media. Our intent was to help you develop your library's social media strategy. We wanted to demystify the best practices in social media so you could keep patrons and library staff engaged, develop measurable goals, and cultivate new readers and learners.
One of the really helpful free tools that our attendees were able to take away from the online events was a set of worksheets. If you missed the events, never fear. Download the free worksheets and learner guide (PDF), listen to the webinar recordings, and up your library's game.
Why Social Media?
Over 200 million Americans are now using Facebook, and 69 million are on Twitter. Social media was made for cellphones, especially smartphones, and 224 million Americans are using those. Most of us check our smartphones a hundred times a day or more. If we want to communicate with patrons, social media is where many of them spend a good amount of their waking hours.
Getting Started with Social Media
The free webinar series Learner Guide (PDF) has worksheets for all three webinars. To get the most out of them, I would recommend also listening to the webinar recordings. The first webinar, Getting Started with Social Media, is all about how to identify the appropriate social media platforms to market library services and events. It also goes into how to integrate best social media practices into your library's marketing plan. Get the free first webinar recording here. You will be prompted to log in to WebJunction's free course catalog.
Measuring Your Social Media Effectiveness
Social Media Analytics: What to Measure and Why is the second webinar. Find the webinar recording here. The recording and learner guide worksheet cover building measurement strategies for your library's social media program. They show you how to analyze your library's social media metrics with various tools for hashtag tracking and analytics reporting.
Going Deeper with Social Media
The third and final webinar in the series covers some best practices in growing your library's social media program and managing user engagement. Learn some tips on assessing your library's audience based on their preferred platforms and get ideas for converting your in-person library community into an online community. Find the webinar recording here. And once again, download the free worksheets and learner guide here (PDF).
Addititional Resources
In this webinar series, we collected an impressive number of additional resources for each of the three segments. Here are just a few of them.
- TechSoup's Social Media Starter Kit
- Image Resources, collected by WebJunction
- WebJunction's Social Library series, highlighting libraries we follow on Facebook
- Geek the Library on Facebook, maintained by WebJunction
- Worksheet: Understanding Facebook Activities (Word document), by Jessica Bacon
- 8 Free Ways to Boost Your Library's Facebook Reach, by Jessica Bacon
- Pew Research Center:
